Italy And East Central Europe
Italy And East Central Europe

Author: Vojtech Mastny

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-13

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 0429723571

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As a medium-sized power in strategic proximity to east central Europe, Italy has sought a special role in the region following the collapse of Communist regimes there. Building on historical traditions and cultural affinities, Italy has drawn on its newly acquired economic power and important position within the European Union to develop an "Eastern" policy, for example, as originator of the Pentagonale project for regional cooperation. As a result, Italy has often been perceived by east central Europeans as a key country in their efforts to become more closely integrated with western Europe. More recently, however, both ethnic strife in the region and the collapse of Italy's own political establishment have cast doubt on the country's ability to play the role that many east central Europeans as well as Italians hope it can assume in the future European order. In this timely volume, leading European and U.S. experts examine the multifaceted dimensions of what has been in many ways a unique relationship in contemporary Europe.

The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700
The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700

Author: Irina Livezeanu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-16

Total Pages: 722

ISBN-13: 1351863428

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Covering territory from Russia in the east to Germany and Austria in the west, The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700 explores the origins and evolution of modernity in this turbulent region. This book applies fresh critical approaches to major historical controversies and debates, expanding the study of a region that has experienced persistent and profound change and yet has long been dominated by narrowly nationalist interpretations. Written by an international team of contributors that reflects the increasing globalization and pluralism of East Central European studies, chapters discuss key themes such as economic development, the relationship between religion and ethnicity, the intersection between culture and imperial, national, wartime, and revolutionary political agendas, migration, women’s and gender history, ideologies and political movements, the legacy of communism, and the ways in which various states in East Central Europe deployed and were formed by the politics of memory and commemoration. This book uses new methodologies in order to fundamentally reshape perspectives on the development of East Central Europe over the past three centuries. Transnational and comparative in approach, this volume presents the latest research on the social, cultural, political and economic history of modern East Central Europe, providing an analytical and comprehensive overview for all students of this region.

The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe
The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe

Author: Barbara J. Falk

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 9789639241398

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"In addition to the huge list of written sources from samizdat works to recent essays, Falk's sources include interviews with many personalities of those events as well as videos and films."--Jacket.

Wars and Betweenness
Wars and Betweenness

Author: Bojan Aleksov

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9633863368

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The region between the Baltic and the Black Sea was marked by a set of crises and conflicts in the 1920s and 1930s, demonstrating the diplomatic, military, economic or cultural engagement of France, Germany, Russia, Britain, Italy and Japan in this highly volatile region, and critically damaging the fragile post-Versailles political arrangement. The editors, in naming this region as "Middle Europe" seek to revive the symbolic geography of the time and accentuate its position, situated between Big Powers and two World Wars. The ten case studies in this book combine traditional diplomatic history with a broader emphasis on the geopolitical aspects of Big-Power rivalry to understand the interwar period. The essays claim that the European Big Powers played a key role in regional affairs by keeping the local conflicts and national movements under control and by exploiting the region's natural resources and military dependencies, while at the same time strengthening their prestige through cultural penetration and the cultivation of client networks. The authors, however, want to avoid the simplistic view that the Big Powers fully dominated the lesser players on the European stage. The relationship was indeed hierarchical, but the essays also reveal how the "small states" manipulated Big-Power disagreements, highlighting the limits of the latters' leverage throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.

Transatlantic Central Europe
Transatlantic Central Europe

Author: Jessie Labov

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2019-04-10

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 6155053146

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While there are still occasional uses of it today, the term "Central Europe" carries little of the charge that it did in the 1980s and early 1990s, and as a political and intellectual project it has receded from the horizon. Proponents of a distinct cultural profile of these countries—all involved now in the process of Transatlantic integration—used "Central European", as a contestation with the geo-political label of Eastern Europe. This book discusses the transnational set of practices connecting journals with other media in the mid-1980s, disseminating the idea of Central Europe simultaneously in East and West. A range of new methodologies, including GIS-mapping visualization, is used, repositing the political-cultural journal as one central node of a much larger cultural system. What has happened to the liberal humanist philosophy that "Central Europe" once evoked? In the early years of the transition era, the liberal humanist perspective shared by Havel, Konrád, Kundera, and Michnik was quickly replaced by an economic liberalism that evolved into neoliberal policies and practices. The author follows the trajectories of the concept into the present day, reading its material and intellectual traces in the postcommunist landscape. She explores how the current use of transnational, web-based media follows the logic and practice of an earlier, 'dissident' generation of writers.

Austerities and Aspirations
Austerities and Aspirations

Author: Béla Tomka

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 963386352X

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This monograph provides an analysis of the economic performance and living standard in Czechoslovakia and its successor states, Hungary, and Poland since 1945. The novelty of the book lies in its broad comparative perspective: it places East Central Europe in a wider European framework that underlines the themes of regional disparities and European commonalities. Going beyond the traditional growth paradigm, the author systematically studies the historical patterns of consumption, leisure, and quality of life—aspects that Tomka argues can best be considered in relation to one other. By adopting this “triple approach,” he undertakes a truly interdisciplinary research drawing from history, economics, sociology, and demography. As a result of Tomka’s three-pillar comparative analysis, the book makes a major contribution to the debates on the dynamics of economic growth in communist and postcommunist East Central Europe, on the socialist consumer culture along with its transformation after 1990, and on how the accounts on East Central Europe can be integrated into the emerging field of historical quality of life research.

The European Parliament Election of 2019 in East-Central Europe
The European Parliament Election of 2019 in East-Central Europe

Author: Vít Hloušek

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-06-03

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 3030408582

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This book provides an analysis of the European Parliament elections 2019 with a focus on East-Central European countries. The authors offer conceptual insights into Euroscepticism and discuss traditionally familiar concepts in a new light, pairing East-Central European Euroscepticism with visions of illiberal democracy, on the one hand, and showing the increasing Europeanisation of Eurosceptic parties in the region, on the other. The book combines a fresh and innovative conceptual treatment with rich and accurate empirical evidence in order to highlight the dynamics of Euroscepticism in "new" EU member states. Students and experts interested in EU politics, within academia and beyond, will find this volume particularly informative.

The Politics of a Disillusioned Europe
The Politics of a Disillusioned Europe

Author: André Liebich

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 3030839931

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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.

Italy and Europe's Eastern Border (1204-1669)
Italy and Europe's Eastern Border (1204-1669)

Author: Iulian Mihai Damian

Publisher: Eastern and Central European Studies

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783631618578

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This volume unites a wide range of papers given at the international conference «Italy and Europe's Eastern Border. 1204-1669» in Rome in November 2010. Its content reflects the manifold research topics of a European scholarly community united in the joint endeavor to shape new aspects and to promote innovative fields of Mediterranean Studies. Therefore, various approaches to the overall topic can be found in this volume, be it from the viewpoint of war and religion, frontier and border studies, the union of churches, diplomacy, theology, economic history, humanism, diplomatics, historiography, prosopography, or genealogy. This is the first volume of the series «Eastern and Central European Studies» and at the same time an incentive for volumes to follow, which will guide the reader on his journey through space and time to hitherto unknown shores of Eastern European and Mediterranean Studies.