Redeeming the Communist Past

Redeeming the Communist Past

Author: Anna M. Grzymala-Busse

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-02-18

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780521001465

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This major study examines the regeneration of the former communist parties in East Central Europe after 1989.


Redeeming the Communist Past

Redeeming the Communist Past

Author: Anna Maria Grzymała-Busse

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 9786610419197

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This major study examines one of the most surprising developments in East Central European politics after the democratic transitions of 1989: the completely unexpected regeneration of the former communist parties. After the collapse of the communist regimes in 1989, these ruling communist parties seemed consigned to oblivion. However, confounding scholarly and popular expectations, all of these parties survived. Some have even returned to power. This in-depth, comparative study systematically analyzes the trajectories of four cases: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary (with additional examination of other communist party successors). Relying on extensive, and unprecedented, primary research, this analysis employs a consistent analytical framework that combines the peculiarities of the post-socialist cases with broad theoretical concerns of institutional analysis, democratic transitions and consolidation, and party politics.


Rebuilding Leviathan

Rebuilding Leviathan

Author: Anna Grzymala-Busse

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-04-09

Total Pages: 5

ISBN-13: 1139464922

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Why do some governing parties limit their opportunistic behaviour and constrain the extraction of private gains from the state? This analysis of post-communist state reconstruction provides surprising answers to this fundamental question of party politics. Across the post-communist democracies, governing parties have opportunistically reconstructed the state - simultaneously exploiting it by extracting state resources and building new institutions that further such extraction. They enfeebled or delayed formal state institutions of monitoring and oversight, established new discretionary structures of state administration, and extracted enormous informal profits from the privatization of the communist economy. By examining how post-communist political parties rebuilt the state in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Grzymala-Busse explains how even opportunistic political parties will limit their corrupt behaviour and abuse of state resources when faced with strong political competition.


The Unfinished Revolution

The Unfinished Revolution

Author: James Mark

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300167160

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This book also presents the voices of ordinary people who lived through Communism, and uncovers the variety of ways in which they have come to terms with their choices and experiences. Drawing on a broad range of themes and sources, this is the first work to integrate the study of politics, culture, society and memory across central-eastern Europe. --Book Jacket.


Memory Archipelago of the Communist Past

Memory Archipelago of the Communist Past

Author: Daniela Koleva

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-06-25

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 3031046587

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This book looks at the memory of the communist past in Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Bulgaria: its “official” memory, constructed by institutions, its public memory, molded by media, rituals, books and films and the urban environment, and the everyday or ‘vernacular’ memory. It investigates how the recent past is remembered and the circumstances upon which this memory is conditioned - how is communism/socialism construed as a public recollection? Do these processes differ in the distinct post-communist countries? The book’s first part traces the institutional and political dimensions of coping with the communist past and the second part concentrates on personal reminiscences and vernacular memory. The book will be of interest for researchers and students in the fields of memory studies, Central and East European studies, oral history and contemporary history, as well as for specialists at institutions of memory and memory activists and organisations.


Priests of Our Democracy

Priests of Our Democracy

Author: Marjorie Heins

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2013-02-04

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0814790518

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In the early 1950s, New York City’s teachers and professors became the targets of massive investigations into their political beliefs and associations. Those who refused to cooperate in the questioning were fired. Some had undoubtedly been communists, and the Communist Party-USA certainly made its share of mistakes, but there was never evidence that the accused teachers had abused their trust. Some were among the most brilliant, popular, and dedicated educators in the city. Priests of Our Democracy tells of the teachers and professors who resisted the witch hunt, those who collaborated, and those whose battles led to landmark Supreme Court decisions. It traces the political fortunes of academic freedom beginning in the late 19th century, both on campus and in the courts. Combining political and legal history with wrenching personal stories, the book details how the anti-communist excesses of the 1950s inspired the Supreme Court to recognize the vital role of teachers and professors in American democracy. The crushing of dissent in the 1950s impoverished political discourse in ways that are still being felt, and First Amendment academic freedom, a product of that period, is in peril today. In compelling terms, this book shows why the issue should matter to every American.


It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway

It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway

Author: David Satter

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2011-12-13

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 0300178425

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A veteran writer on Russia and the Soviet Union explains why Russia refuses to draw from the lessons of its past and what this portends for the future Russia today is haunted by deeds that have not been examined and words that have been left unsaid. A serious attempt to understand the meaning of the Communist experience has not been undertaken, and millions of victims of Soviet Communism are all but forgotten. In this book David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and longtime writer on Russia and the Soviet Union, presents a striking new interpretation of Russia's great historical tragedy, locating its source in Russia's failure fully to appreciate the value of the individual in comparison with the objectives of the state. Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights. Through a wide-ranging consideration of attitudes toward the living and the dead, the past and the present, the state and the individual, Satter arrives at a distinctive and important new way of understanding the Russian experience.


Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

Author: Grzegorz Ekiert

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-09-15

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 9780521529853

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This volume presents a shared effort to apply a general historical-institutionalist approach to the problem of assessing institutional change in the wake of communism's collapse in Europe. It brings together a number of leading senior and junior scholars with outstanding reputations as specialists in postcommunism and comparative politics to address central theoretical and empirical issues involved in the study of postcommunism. The authors address such questions as how historical 'legacies' of the communist regime be defined, how their impact can be measured in methodologically rigorous ways, and how the effects of temporal and spatial context can be taken into account in empirical research on the region. Taken as a whole, the volume makes an important contribution to the growing literature by utilizing the comparative historical method to study key problems of world politics.