Becoming Post-Communist
Becoming Post-Communist

Author: Eli Lederhendler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0197687210

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"Across the landscape that until 1939 housed most of the world's Jewish population, the closing decade of the 20th century witnessed dramatic upheavals: the overturning of the East European communist governments and the fall of the USSR, accompanied by a major Jewish emigration movement. The legacy of the Jewish presence in those countries, as viewed from today's vantage point, and the ways in which it became enmeshed in the quest by people of the region-Jews and non-Jews alike-to secure their prospects for the future, highlighted fundamental issues about the nature and quality of the politics of memory, national identity, and the continuity and relative stability of regimes in the region. If those questions were important even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, understanding their implications now seems even more crucial. In a field fraught with conflicting narratives, the challenges of social and political reconstruction are primary concerns for peoples and governments. The experts contributing to this volume apply interdisciplinary approaches to analyze and interpret a multiplicity of post-communist social realities and aid our understanding of recent events"--

Post-Communist Mafia State
Post-Communist Mafia State

Author: B lint Magyar

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 6155513546

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Having won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections, the Hungarian political party Fidesz removed many of the institutional obstacles of exerting power. Just like the party, the state itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. In a new approach the author characterizes the system as the ?organized over-world?, the ?state employing mafia methods? and the ?adopted political family', applying these categories not as metaphors but elements of a coherent conceptual framework. The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are closely aligned with the interests of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of insiders. While the traditional mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of influence by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The innovative conceptual framework of the book is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules. ÿ

The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes
The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes

Author: Bálint Magyar

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2021-02-20

Total Pages: 834

ISBN-13: 9633863708

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Offering a single, coherent framework of the political, economic, and social phenomena that characterize post-communist regimes, this is the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the study provides a systematic mapping of possible post-communist trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of “relational economy”; an analysis of China as “market-exploiting dictatorship”; the sociology of “clientage society”; and the instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond a cataloguing of phenomena—actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships—Magyar and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist regimes. While being the most definitive book on the topic, the book is nevertheless written in an accessible style suitable for both beginners who wish to understand the logic of post-communism and scholars who are interested in original contributions to comparative regime theory. The book is equipped with QR codes that link to www.postcommunistregimes.com, which contains interactive, 3D supplementary material for teaching.

Media Transformations in the Post-communist World
Media Transformations in the Post-communist World

Author: Peter Gross

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0739174940

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Media Transformations in the Post-Communist World: Eastern Europe's Tortured Path to Change, edited by Peter Gross and Karol Jakubowicz, is a collection of analyses of Eastern European media by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field. This in-depth exploration shows how despite positive changes after the fall of Communism, the transformations of societal institutions, including the mass media, have turned out to be slow, uncertain, and unsatisfying to many when measured against the admittedly ambiguous and overly Panglossian expectations. This collection offers readers a different view of post-Communist media by examining the mass media's evolution in the region from a more holistic perspective. The contributors to this volume respond to essential questions, including: Is the post-Communist transition and transformation over? When can it be considered over? Each chapter contributes to our understanding of these questions by offering theoretical overviews and country-specific studies. This collection serves as an affirmation that the study of mass media is essential to understanding the nature and workings of democracy in the long-suffering nations of Central and Eastern Europe, with international applications. Media Transformations in the Post-Communist World is an indispensable contribution to the study of Eastern Europe after Communism, and the transformations of mass media in the region.

Understanding Post-Communist Transformation
Understanding Post-Communist Transformation

Author: Richard Rose

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-01-21

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1134016697

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The fall of the Berlin Wall launched the transformation of government, economy and society across half of Europe and the former Soviet Union. This text deals with the process of change in former Communist bloc countries, ten of which have become new European Union (EU) democracies while Russia and her neighbours remain burdened by their Soviet legacy. Drawing on more than a hundred public opinion surveys from the New Europe Barometer, the text compares how ordinary people have coped with the stresses and opportunities of transforming Communist societies into post-Communist societies and the resulting differences between peoples in the new EU member states and Russia. Subjects covered by Understanding Post-Communist Transformation include: Stresses and opportunities of economic transformation Social capital and the development of civil society Elections and the complexities of party politics The challenges for the EU of raising standards of democratic governance Differences between Russia’s and the West’s interpretation of political life Written by one of the world's most renowned authorities on this subject, this text is ideal for courses on transition, post-communism, democratization and Russian and Eastern European history and politics.

Poland's First Post-communist Generation
Poland's First Post-communist Generation

Author: Kenneth Roberts

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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This book identifies the immediate winners and losers, and compares the costs and benefits of Poland's transformation. The research was conducted by a team of British and Polish sociologists as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's East-West Programme.

The Post-communist Condition
The Post-communist Condition

Author: Aleksandra Galasi?ska

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 9027206287

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This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on discourses in one national context of post-communist transformation. Proposing a macro-micro approach to discourse analysis and transformation, it examines a spectrum of topics including Polish history, with its 'interpreters'; changes in political bodies and the media, policies of the Catholic Church and the Institute of National Remembrance; xenophobia and anti-Semitism, with the emergence of unemployment and homelessness; experiences of new gender relations and migrations. In effect, drawing upon unique sets of data, the book shows how post-communist transformation can be understood through analyses of the changing public and private discourses. It shows Polish post-communism as a fragile and uneasy transformation, with people and institutions struggling to make sense of it and of life within it. The volume will be of interest to a broad range of social scientists: discourse analysts, sociologists, modern historians and political scientists, as well as to the informed lay public.

Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania
Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania

Author: Lavinia Stan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1107020530

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This is the first volume to overview the complex Romanian transitional justice effort, detail the political negotiations that have led to the adoption and implementation of relevant legislation, and assess these processes in terms of their timing, sequencing, and impact on democratization.

Meandering in Transition
Meandering in Transition

Author: Ostap Kushnir

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-08-19

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 1793650756

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This edited collection addresses the dynamics of the post-Communist transition in Central Eastern Europe. Its contributors present a detailed analysis of the events unfolding during the last three decades in the region, focusing in particular on identity-building processes and reforms in Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The contributors outline reasons why some of these states accomplished a decisive break with the Communist past and became members of European and transatlantic structures, while some opted for pseudo-transition and fostered hybrid political regimes, jeopardizing their genuine integration with the West. A group of states which decided to preserve their Communist legacy is also explained. The collection describes and scrutinizes the formation of geopolitical affiliations and the evolution of discourses of belonging. It also traces the fluctuating dynamics of national decision-making and institution-building, as many of the post-Communist states reconsider and re-elaborate their initial ideas and visions of Europe today. Finally, the collection brings to light the rapidly changing perceptions of the region by the major global actors—the European Union, People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation, and others.