Author: Tom Gallagher
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814732011
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
Since the 1989 fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Romania, arguably the most regimented of states in the Soviet bloc, has struggled with the transition from totalitarian state to democratic nation. In this insightful examination of modern Romania, Tom Gallagher provides an overview of Romania’s unique political and social history, focusing on both its national identity as well as the legacy of Soviet rule. Gallagher provides an in-depth look at Romania since 1989, focusing on the government’s attempts at economic reform, engagement with democracy, problems with corruption among the ruling elite, as well as the weakness of civil society and the resilience of implacable expressions of nationalism. Ultimately, Gallagher argues that thus far democracy has essentially failed in Romania. In fact, he warns that Romania is on its way to becoming one of the most unequal states in Europe and quite possibly a future trouble-spot unless efforts to resume much-needed reforms are undertaken.
Author: Paul Kenyon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1789543150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545
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Book Description
A vivid, brilliant, darkly humorous and horrifying history of some of the strangest dictators that Europe has ever seen. 'A witty and page-turning narrative full of grotesque characters' Misha Glenny 'Will leave you astonished, exhausted and curious... An unapologetic page turner' Spectator 'Essential reading for anyone interested in Romania past and present' John Simpson 'An engaging introduction to the rich history [of Romania]' New Statesman Balanced precariously on the shifting fault line between East and West, Romania's past is one of the great untold stories of modern Europe. The country that gave us Vlad Dracula, and whose citizens consider themselves descendants of ancient Rome, has traditionally preferred the status of enigmatic outsider. But it has experienced some of the most disastrous leaderships of the last century. After a relatively benign period led by a dutiful King and his vivacious British-born Queen, the country oscillated wildly. Its interwar rulers form a gallery of bizarre characters: the corrupt and mentally unbalanced King Carol; the fascist death cult led by Corneliu Codreanu; the vain General Ion Antonescu. After 1945 power was handed to Romania's tiny communist party, under which it experienced severe repression, purges and collectivisation. Then in 1965, Nicolae Ceau?escu came to power. And thus began the strangest dictatorship of all.
Author: Marius Rotar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443845426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
Cremation, as a means of managing the post-mortem body, was reintroduced to Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, but would not become common practice until the second half of the nineteenth century. This was a major development, with multifaceted implications which generated heated debate. Initially, armed with a variety of arguments (hygienic, economic, aesthetic, and philosophical arguments citing freedom of conscience and will) the advocates of modern cremation – who tended to come from the social and cultural elite – sought to impose their new model. This brought them into conflict with the traditional structures and patterns of burial, and thus with the Church, which had of course originally ended the practice of cremation. The present study is a history of cremation in Romania, beginning with the emergence of cremationist ideas in 1867 and taking the reader up to the present day. It analyses the following key periods: the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the Interwar period (Romania then being the first Orthodox country in the world to possess a crematorium, which provoked a vehement reaction against cremation on part of the Orthodox Church), the Communist period (when no new crematoria were built even though the Communist regime proclaimed itself to be atheist), and the post-Communist period.
Author: Henry F. Carey
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739105924
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 672
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Book Description
The most comprehensive study of Romanian politics ever published abroad, this volume represents an effort to collect and analyze data on the complex problems of Romania's journey from sultanistic national communism to a yet-unreached democratic government.
Author: Nicolae Ceaușescu
Publisher: Pergamon
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
Author: Jill Massino
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785335995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
Focusing on youth, family, work, and consumption, Ambiguous Transitions analyzes the interplay between gender and citizenship postwar Romania. By juxtaposing official sources with oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, Jill Massino illuminates the gendered dimensions of socialist modernization and its complex effects on women’s roles, relationships, and identities. Analyzing women as subjects and agents, the book examines how they negotiated the challenges that arose as Romanian society modernized, even as it clung to traditional ideas about gender. Massino concludes by exploring the ambiguities of postsocialism, highlighting how the legacies of the past have shaped politics and women’s lived experiences since 1989.
Author: Maria Bucur-Deckard
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253038472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
What is it like to be a woman living through the transition from communism to democracy? What effect does this have on a woman's daily life, on her concept of herself, her family, and her community? Birth of Democratic Citizenship presents the stories of women in Romania as they describe their experiences on the journey to democratic citizenship. In candid and revealing conversations, women between the ages of 24 and 83 explain how they negotiated their way through radical political transitions that had a direct impact on their everyday lives. Women who grew up under communism explore how these ideologies influenced their ideas of marriage, career, and a woman's role in society. Younger generations explore how they interpret civic rights and whether they incorporate these rights into their relationships with their family and community. Beginning with an overview of the role women have played in Romania from the late 18th century to today, Birth of Democratic Citizenship explores how the contemporary experience of women in postsocialist countries developed. The women speak about their reliance on and negotiations with communities, ranging from family and neighbors to local and national political parties. Birth of Democratic Citizenship argues that that the success of democracy will largely rely on the equal incorporation of women in the political and civic development of Romania. In doing so, it encourages frank consideration of what modern democracy is and what it will need to be to succeed in the future.
Author: Luminita Machedon
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262133487
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 446
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Book Description
Modern architecture flourished in Romania between the two World Wars, and is still visible as a neglected and almost forgotten past amid the contradictions of present day Bucharest. Much of the text is based on archival research in Bucharest.
Author: Constantin Barbulescu
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9789633862674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This monograph, a coherent and consistent historical narrative about Romania's modernization, focuses on one section of the country's elites of the late nineteenth century, namely the health professionals, and on the imagery they constructed as they interacted with the peasant and his world. Doctors ventured out of cities and became a familiar sight on dusty country roads in of Moldavia and Wallachia. Beyond a charitable impulse they did so thru patriotism as the rural world became ever more prominent within the national ideology. Furthermore, new health legislation required the district general practitioner (medicul de plasă) to visit the villages in his catchment area twice a month. Based on solid original research, the book describes rural conditions of the time and the efforts aiming to improve peasants' way of life with abundant quotes from doctors' public health reports and memoirs. The book sheds light on a variety of microscale realities of social life in the medical discourse on the peasant and the rural world in the mirror of medical discourse. Themes include general hygiene, clothing, dwellings, nutrition, drinking habits and healing practices of the peasantry, in the eye of medical specialists. Related official measures, laws, regulations, norms about public health are also discussed in the frame of wider modernizing processes.
Author: Ahmet Ersoy
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9637326642
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 403
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Book Description
Presentations of National Cultures. Fifty-one texts illustrate the evolution of modernism in the east-European region. Essays, articles, poems, or excerpts from longer works offer new opportunities of possible comparisons of the respective national cultures, from the different ideological approaches and finessing projects of how to create the modern state liberal, conservative, socialist and others to the literary and scientific attempts at squaring the circle of individual and collective identities.
