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Author: Katarzyna Chmielewska
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633863791
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
The thirteen authors of this collective work undertook to articulate matter-of-fact critiques of the dominant narrative about communism in Poland while offering new analyses of the concept, and also examining the manifestations of anticommunism. Approaching communist ideas and practices, programs and their implementations, as an inseparable whole, they examine the issues of emancipation, upward social mobility, and changes in the cultural canon. The authors refuse to treat communism in Poland in simplistic categories of totalitarianism, absolute evil and Soviet colonization, and similarly refuse to equate communism and fascism. Nor do they adopt the neoliberal view of communism as a project doomed to failure. While wholly exempt from nostalgia, these essays show that beyond oppression and bad governance, communism was also a regime in which people pursued a variety of goals and sincerely attempted to build a better world for themselves. The book is interdisciplinary and applies the tools of social history, intellectual history, political philosophy, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies to provide a nuanced view of the communist regimes in east-central Europe.
Author: Katarzyna Chmielewska
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633863791
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Get Book Here
Book Description
The thirteen authors of this collective work undertook to articulate matter-of-fact critiques of the dominant narrative about communism in Poland while offering new analyses of the concept, and also examining the manifestations of anticommunism. Approaching communist ideas and practices, programs and their implementations, as an inseparable whole, they examine the issues of emancipation, upward social mobility, and changes in the cultural canon. The authors refuse to treat communism in Poland in simplistic categories of totalitarianism, absolute evil and Soviet colonization, and similarly refuse to equate communism and fascism. Nor do they adopt the neoliberal view of communism as a project doomed to failure. While wholly exempt from nostalgia, these essays show that beyond oppression and bad governance, communism was also a regime in which people pursued a variety of goals and sincerely attempted to build a better world for themselves. The book is interdisciplinary and applies the tools of social history, intellectual history, political philosophy, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies to provide a nuanced view of the communist regimes in east-central Europe.
Author: Jan Kandiyali
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315398044
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 398
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Book Description
Interest in the study of Marx’s thought has shown a revival in recent years, with a number of newly established academic societies, conferences, and journals dedicated to discussing his thought. This book brings together distinguished and up-and-coming scholars to provide a major re-evaluation of historical issues in Marx scholarship and to connect Marx’s ideas with fresh debates in contemporary Anglo-American social and political philosophy. Among the topics discussed are Marx’s relationship to his philosophical predecessors—including Hegel, the young Hegelians, and the utopian socialists—his concept of recognition, his critique of liberalism, and his views on the good life. This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in Marx, Hegel, the history of political thought, and social and political philosophy.
Author: Yan Sun
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400821754
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365
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Book Description
A momentous debate has been unfolding in China over the last fifteen years, only intermittently in public view, concerning the merits of socialism as a philosophy of social justice and as a program for national development. Just as Deng Xiaoping's better advertised experiment with market- based reforms has challenged Marxist-Leninist dogma on economic policy, the years since the death of Mao Zedong have seen a profound reexamination of a more basic question: to what extent are the root problems of the system due to Chinese socialism and Marxism generally? Here Yan Sun gathers a remarkable group of primary materials, drawn from an unusual range of sources, to present the most systematic and comprehensive study of post-Mao reappraisal of China's socialist theory and practice. Rejecting an assumption often made in the West, that Chinese socialist thought has little bearing on politics and policymaking, Sun takes the arguments of the post-Mao era seriously on their own terms. She identifies the major factions in the debate, reveals the interplay among official and unofficial forces, and charts the development of the debate from an initially parochial concern with problems raised by Chinese practice to a grand critique of the theory of socialism itself. She concludes with an enlightening comparison of the reassessments undertaken by Deng Xiaoping with those of Gorbachev, linking them to the divergent outcomes of reform and revolution in their respective countries.
Author: Cheng Li
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815726937
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Chinese politics are at a crossroads as President Xi Jinping amasses personal power and tests the constraints of collective leadership. In the years since he became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Xi Jinping has surprised many people in China and around the world with his bold anti-corruption campaign and his aggressive consolidation of power. Given these new developments, we must rethink how we analyze Chinese politics—an urgent task as China now has more influence on the global economy and regional security than at any other time in modern history. Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era examines how the structure and dynamics of party leadership have evolved since the late 1990s and argues that "inner-party democracy"—the concept of collective leadership that emphasizes deal making based on accepted rules and norms—may pave the way for greater transformation within China's political system. Xi's legacy will largely depend on whether he encourages or obstructs this trend of political institutionalization in the governance of the world's most populous and increasingly pluralistic country. Cheng Li also addresses the recruitment and composition of the political elite, a central concern in Chinese politics. China analysts will benefit from the meticulously detailed biographical information of the 376 members of the 18th Central Committee, including tables and charts detailing their family background, education, occupation, career patterns, and mentor-patron ties.
Author: Grigore Pop-Eleches
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887828
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 355
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Book Description
It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.
Author: Constance Bantman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131763280X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
This edited volume reassesses the ongoing transnational turn in anarchist and syndicalist studies, a field where the interest in cross-border connections has generated much innovative literature in the last decade. It presents and extends up-to-date research into several dynamic historiographic fields, and especially the history of the anarchist and syndicalist movements and the notions of transnational militancy and informal political networks. Whilst restating the relevance of transnational approaches, especially in connection with the concepts of personal networks and mediators, the book underlines the importance of other scales of analysis in capturing the complexities of anarchist militancy, due to both their centrality as a theme of reflection for militants, and their role as a level of organization. Especially crucial is the national level, which is often overlooked due to the internationalism which was so central to anarchist ideology. And yet, as several chapters highlight, anarchist discourses on the nation (as opposed to the state), patriotism and even race, were more nuanced than is usually assumed. The local and individual levels are also shown to be essential in anarchist militancy.
Author: Hyung-A Kim
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295801794
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
The Republic of Korea achieved a double revolution in the second half of the twentieth century. In just over three decades, South Korea transformed itself from an underdeveloped, agrarian country into an affluent, industrialized one. At the same time, democracy replaced a long series of military authoritarian regimes. These historic changes began under President Park Chung Hee, who seized power through a military coup in 1961 and ruled South Korea until his assassination on October 26, 1979. While the state's dominant role in South Korea's rapid industrialization is widely accepted, the degree to which Park was personally responsible for changing the national character remains hotly debated. This book examines the rationale and ideals behind Park's philosophy of national development in order to evaluate the degree to which the national character and moral values were reconstructed.
Author: Achim Siegel
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042004238
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
Concepts of totalitarianism have undergone an academic revival in recent years, particularly since the breakdown of communist systems in Europe in 1989-91: the totalitarian paradigm, so it seems to many scholars today, had been discarded prematurely in the heat of the Cold War. The demise of communism as a social system is, however, not only an important cause of the recurring attractiveness of the totalitarian paradigm, but provides at the same time new evidence and, correspondingly, new problems of explanation for all approaches in communist studies and totalitarianism theory in particular. This book contains articles by philosophers, social scientists and historians who reassess the validity of the totalitarian approach in the light of the recent historical developments in Eastern Europe. A first group of authors focus on the analytical usefulness and explanatory power of classic concepts of totalitarianism after having observed the failed reforms of the Gorbachev-era and the collapse of Europe's communist systems in 1989-91. In these contributions the totalitarian paradigm is contrasted with other approaches with respect to cognitive power as well as normative implications. In the second group of contributions the focus is on the reassessment of methodological and theoretical problems of the classic concepts of totalitarianism. The authors attempt to reinterpret the classic concepts so as to meet the objections which have been put forward against those concepts during the last decades. The study thereby traces some of the intellectual roots of the totalitarian paradigm that precede the outbreak of the Cold War, such as the work of Sigmund Neumann and Franz Borkenau. It also focuses on the most famous authors in the field: Hannah Arendt and Carl Joachim Friedrich. In addition it discusses theorists of totalitarianism like Juan Linz, whose contributions to totalitarianism theory have too often been overlooked.
Author: Stephen Kotkin
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0812966791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies–East Germany, Romania, and Poland–to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be swept away in political bank runs. This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class–communism’s establishment, or “uncivil society.” The Communists borrowed from the West like drunken sailors to buy mass consumer goods, then were unable to pay back the hard-currency debts and so borrowed even more. In Eastern Europe, communism came to resemble a Ponzi scheme, one whose implosion carries enduring lessons. From East Germany’s pseudotechnocracy to Romania’s megalomaniacal dystopia, from Communist Poland’s cult of Mary to the Kremlin’s surprise restraint, Kotkin and Gross pull back the curtain on the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy, an outcome that opened up to a deeper global integration that has proved destabilizing.
Author: Norman M. Naimark
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 067423877X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Winner of the Norris and Carol Hundley Award Winner of the U.S.–Russia Relations Book Prize A Financial Times Best History Book of the Year The Cold War division of Europe was not inevitable—the acclaimed author of Stalin’s Genocides shows how postwar Europeans fought to determine their own destinies. Was the division of Europe after World War II inevitable? In this powerful reassessment of the postwar order in Europe, Norman Naimark suggests that Joseph Stalin was far more open to a settlement on the continent than we have thought. Through revealing case studies from Poland and Yugoslavia to Denmark and Albania, Naimark recasts the early Cold War by focusing on Europeans’ fight to determine their future. As nations devastated by war began rebuilding, Soviet intentions loomed large. Stalin’s armies controlled most of the eastern half of the continent, and in France and Italy, communist parties were serious political forces. Yet Naimark reveals a surprisingly flexible Stalin, who initially had no intention of dividing Europe. During a window of opportunity from 1945 to 1948, leaders across the political spectrum, including Juho Kusti Paasikivi of Finland, Wladyslaw Gomulka of Poland, and Karl Renner of Austria, pushed back against outside pressures. For some, this meant struggling against Soviet dominance. For others, it meant enlisting the Americans to support their aims. The first frost of Cold War could be felt in the tense patrolling of zones of occupation in Germany, but not until 1948, with the coup in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin Blockade, did the familiar polarization set in. The split did not become irreversible until the formal division of Germany and establishment of NATO in 1949. In illuminating how European leaders deftly managed national interests in the face of dominating powers, Stalin and the Fate of Europe reveals the real potential of an alternative trajectory for the continent.
