Envisioning Eastern Europe

Explorations of cultural change in the former Soviet bloc

This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined “East” and “West” in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the Cold War.

The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals “captured and possessed” Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions.

Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence.

Covering all key Eastern European states and their history right up to the collapse of communism, this new edition of is a comprehensive political history of Eastern Europe taking in the whole of the century and the geographical area

While mainly focusing on the modern era - the effects of ethnic nationalism, fascism and communism - this history also offers revisionist coverage of topics such as the Hussite Revolution, and the rise and decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe occurred in a period when Western intellectuals were involved in a confusing discourse on a number of other dramatic endings: the end of modernity, the end of the century, even the possible end of sociology. Against this backdrop, the authors focus on continuities based on the "habits of the heart" of those who threw off communism in Eastern Europe, contrasting them with Western modes of thought. Their cultural explanation draws on theories of Tocqueville, Durkheim, and others to examine positive as well as negative aspects of the nations that survived communism. While focusing on the Balkans, they also make cautious prognoses for the rest of Eastern Europe.

In this textbook students will find a presentation of the historical issues and current challenges shaping one of the world's most volatile regions.

This text covers five topics about journalism: its roots in East/Central Europe and former Soviet Union; its role and effect leading up to the events of 1989; the transition period; the contributions, trials and tribulations from 1989-1996; and the state of journalism education in these regions.