Central Europe

Central Europe PDF Author: Lonnie Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195100719
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Throughout the ages, small nations struggled valiantly against a series of imperial powers - Ottoman Turkey, Habsburg Austria, imperial Germany, czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union - and they lost regularly. Johnson's account is present-minded in the best sense: in describing actual historical events, he illustrates the ways they have been remembered, and how they contribute to the national assumptions that still drive European politics today.

Central Europe

Central Europe PDF Author: Lonnie Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195100719
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Get Book Here

Book Description
Throughout the ages, small nations struggled valiantly against a series of imperial powers - Ottoman Turkey, Habsburg Austria, imperial Germany, czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union - and they lost regularly. Johnson's account is present-minded in the best sense: in describing actual historical events, he illustrates the ways they have been remembered, and how they contribute to the national assumptions that still drive European politics today.

Understanding Central Europe

Understanding Central Europe PDF Author: Marcin Moskalewicz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351654519
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
“Central Europe” is a vague and ambiguous term, more to do with outlook and a state of mind than with a firmly defined geographical region. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Central Europeans considered themselves to be culturally part of the West, which had been politically handicapped by the Eastern Soviet bloc. More recently, and with European Union membership, Central Europeans are increasingly thinking of themselves as politically part of the West, but culturally part of the East. This book, with contributions from a large number of scholars from the region, explores the concept of “Central Europe” and a number of other political concepts from an openly Central European perspective. It considers a wide range of issues including politics, nationalism, democracy, and the impact of culture, art and history. Overall, the book casts a great deal of light on the complex nature of “Central Europe”.

Diversity and Dissent

Diversity and Dissent PDF Author: Howard Louthan
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 085745109X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Early modern Central Europe was the continent’s most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe’s most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region’s Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration—one of the most debated questions of the early modern period—is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.

Central Europe Since 1945

Central Europe Since 1945 PDF Author: Paul G. Lewis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317900707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Central Europe - here, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and Hungary - is at the centre of international attention since the Soviet collapse. An understanding of its postwar history is critical to an appreciation of the challenges facing its present rulers. This is an engrossing account of the installation, development, operation and eventual downfall of its (very different) communist regimes, and the transition to the freedoms and uncertainties of the post-Soviet world. The book covers political, economic, social and cultural change, emphasising the crucial relationships with the USSR throughout.

Understanding Multiculturalism

Understanding Multiculturalism PDF Author: Johannes Feichtinger
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Multiculturalism has long been linked to calls for tolerance of cultural diversity, but today many observers are subjecting the concept to close scrutiny. After the political upheavals of 1968, the commitment to multiculturalism was perceived as a liberal manifesto, but in the post-9/11 era, it is under attack for its relativizing, particularist, and essentializing implications. The essays in this collection offer a nuanced analysis of the multifaceted cultural experience of Central Europe under the late Habsburg monarchy and beyond. The authors examine how culturally coded social spaces can be described and understood historically without adopting categories formerly employed to justify the definition and separation of groups into nations, ethnicities, or homogeneous cultures. As we consider the issues of multiculturalism today, this volume offers new approaches to understanding multiculturalism in Central Europe freed of the effects of politically exploited concepts of social spaces.

Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe

Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe PDF Author: Pieter M. Judson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571811769
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
"The hundred years between the revolutions of 1848 and the population transfers of the mid-twentieth century saw the nationalization of culturally complex societies in East Central Europe. This fact has variously been explained in terms of modernization, state building, and nation-building theories, each of which treats the process of nationalization as something inexorable, a necessary component of modernity. Although more recently social scientists gesture to the contingencies that may shape these larger developments, this structural approach makes scholars far less attentive to the "hard work" (ideological, political, social) undertaken by individuals and groups at every level of society who tried themselves to build "national" societies." "The essays in this volume make us aware of how complex, multi-dimensional and often contradictory this nationalization process in East Central Europe actually was. The authors document attempts and failures by nationalist politicians, organizations, activists, and regimes from 1848 through 1948 to give East-Central Europeans a strong sense of national self-identification. They remind us that only the use of dictatorial powers in the 20th century could actually transform the fantasy of nationalization into a reality, albeit a brutal one."--BOOK JACKET.

The Politics of a Disillusioned Europe

The Politics of a Disillusioned Europe PDF Author: André Liebich
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030839931
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Moving from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the present day, this book traces the trajectory of the six East Central European former satellites of the Soviet Union (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria) that have joined the European Union. It seeks in particular to explain these countries’ disenchantment with the “return to Europe” in spite of their significant advances. The book proceeds country by country and then devotes chapters to some contemporary issues, such as minorities, migration, and the relations of these “new” members with the European Union as a whole. The book eschews theory and is intended for a general audience, including students at all levels in political science and history classes devoted to the EU and to contemporary Europe, and to an academic and practitioner audience interested in world affairs and the evolution of the European Union. The book strives to fill a persistent knowledge gap in the English-speaking world concerning East Central Europe, and to offer fresh insights about the region in the context of contemporary geopolitics.

The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe

The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe PDF Author: Frank Schimmelfennig
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801489617
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This book demonstrates the importance of the credibility and the costs of accession conditionality for the adoption of EU rules in Central and Eastern Europe.

Europe Central

Europe Central PDF Author: William T. Vollmann
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143036599
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A daring literary masterpiece of historical fiction that weaves together the gripping stories of those caught in the web of authoritarian rule. Through interwoven narratives that paint a portrait of 20th century Germany and the USSR and the monstrous age they defined, Europe Central captures a chorus of voices both real and fictional—a young German who joins the SS to fight its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, and the tumultuous life of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich amidst Stalinist oppression. In this magnificent work of fiction, acclaimed author William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye on these two authoritarian cultures to render a mesmerizing perspective on human experience during wartime.

Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe

Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe PDF Author: Stefan Auer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134378599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
After the collapse of communism there was a widespread fear that nationalism would pose a serious threat to the development of liberal democracy in the countries of central Europe. This book examines the role of nationalism in post-communist development in central Europe, focusing in particular on Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It argues that a certain type of nationalism, that is liberal nationalism, has positively influenced the process of postcommunist transition towards the emerging liberal democratic order.