Will the Crisis of Communism Begin in Poland?
Author: Rett R. Ludwikowski
Publisher:
Published: 1983
Total Pages: 28
ISBN-13:
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The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland
Author: Jacqueline Hayden
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-03-23
Total Pages: 194
ISBN-13: 1134208014
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBased on extensive original research, including interviews with key participants, this book investigates the sudden and unforeseen collapse of communist power in Poland in 1989. It sets out the sequence of events, and examines the strategies of the various political groupings prior to the partially free election of June 1989. This volume argues that the specific negotiating strategies adopted by the communist party representatives in the Round Table discussions before the elections was a key factor in communism’s collapse. The book shows that on many occasions, PZPR decision-makers ignored expert advice, and many Round Table bargains went against the party’s best interests. Using in-depth interviews with major party players, including General Jaruzelski, General Kiszczak and Mieczyslaw Rakowski, as well as Solidarity advisors such as Adam Michnik, the text provides a unique source of first-hand accounts of Poland’s revolutionary drama.
Polish Migrants in European Film 1918–2017
Author: Kris Van Heuckelom
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2019-04-23
Total Pages: 294
ISBN-13: 3030042189
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis study explores the representation of international migration on screen and how it has gained prominence and salience in European filmmaking over the past 100 years. Using Polish migration as a key example due to its long-standing cultural resonance across the continent, this book moves beyond a director-oriented approach and beyond the dominant focus on postcolonial migrant cinemas. It succeeds in being both transnational and longitudinal by including a diverse corpus of more than 150 films from some twenty different countries, of which Roman Polański’s The Tenant, Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion and Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Trois couleurs: Blanc are the best-known examples. Engaging with contemporary debates on modernisation and Europeanisation, the author proposes the notion of “close Otherness” to delineate the liminal position of fictional characters with a Polish background. Polish Migrants in European Film 1918-2017 takes the reader through a wide range of genres, from interwar musicals to Cold War defection films; from communist-era exile right up to the contemporary moment. It is suitable for scholars interested in European or Slavic studies, as well as anyone who is interested in topics such as identity construction, ethnic representation, East-West cultural exchanges and transnationalism.
Communism: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Leslie Holmes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-08-27
Total Pages: 177
ISBN-13: 0199551545
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe collapse of communism was one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. This Very Short Introduction examines the history behind the political, economic, and social structures of communism as an ideology.
Reassessing Communism
Author: Katarzyna Chmielewska
Publisher: Central European University Press
Published: 2021-04-30
Total Pages: 440
ISBN-13: 9633863791
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe 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.
The Cold War in the Classroom
Author: Barbara Christophe
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2019-10-23
Total Pages: 471
ISBN-13: 3030119998
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores how the socially disputed period of the Cold War is remembered in today’s history classroom. Applying a diverse set of methodological strategies, the authors map the dividing lines in and between memory cultures across the globe, paying special attention to the impact the crisis-driven age of our present has on images of the past. Authors analysing educational media point to ambivalence, vagueness and contradictions in textbook narratives understood to be echoes of societal and academic controversies. Others focus on teachers and the history classroom, showing how unresolved political issues create tensions in history education. They render visible how teachers struggle to handle these challenges by pretending that what they do is ‘just history’. The contributions to this book unveil how teachers, backgrounding the political inherent in all memory practices, often nourish the illusion that the history in which they are engaged is all about addressing the past with a reflexive and disciplined approach.
Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 1980-1989
Author: Andrzej Paczkowski
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 405
ISBN-13: 1580465366
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExamines the 1980 Solidarity revolution in Poland, the government's subsequent establishment of martial law in response, in 1981, and the eventual transition to democracy in 1989.
The Generation
Author: Jaff Schatz
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2021-05-28
Total Pages: 420
ISBN-13: 0520370600
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.
Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution
Author: Jack M. Bloom
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 428
ISBN-13: 9789004231801
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJack M. Bloom presents a moving account of how an opposition developed and triumphed in communist Poland, showing the perspectives and experiences of the participants, while often letting them recount their own stories and explain their thinking.
Poland's Memory Wars
Author: Jo Harper
Publisher: Central European University Press
Published: 2018-10-20
Total Pages: 294
ISBN-13: 9637326553
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume of essays and interviews by Polish, British, and American academics and journalists provides an overview of current Polish politics for both informed and non-specialist readers. The essays consider why and how PiS, Law and Justice, the party of Jarosław Kaczynski, returned to power, and the why and how of its policies while in power. They help to make sense of how “history” plays a key role in Polish public life and politics. The descriptions of PiS in Western media tend to rework old stereotypes about Eastern Europe that had lain dormant for some time. The book addresses the underlying question whether PiS was simply successful in understanding its electorate, and just helped Poland to revert to its normal state. This new Normal seems quite similar to the old one: insular, conservative, xenophobic, and statist. The book looks at the current struggle between one ‘Poland’ and another; between a Western-looking Poland and an inward-looking Poland, the former more interested in opening to the world, competing in open markets, and working within the EU, and the latter more concerned with holding onto tradition. The question of illiberalism has gone from an ‘Eastern’ problem (Russia, Turkey, Hungary, etc.) to a global one (Brexit and the U.S. elections). This makes the very specific analysis of Poland’s illiberalism applicable on a broader scale.
