The Legacies Of Communism In Eastern Europe

The political scientists Zoltan Barany and Ivan Volgyes bring together a distinguished group of contributors to examine the legacies of communism in Eastern Europe. The authors identify what is distinctive and lasting about the influence of the Communist period and the extent to which this Communist experience may have left unsolvable problems. The volume pays special attention to the impact of the Communist legacies on four areas: politics, society, the economy, and the environment. Contributors are Zoltan Barany, Ivan Volgyes, Thomas A. Baylis, Elez Biberaj, Jane L. Curry, Barbara Jancar-Webster, Andrzej Korbonski, Bennett Kovrig, Daniel N. Nelson, Robin Alison Remington, Luan Troxel, and Sharon L. Wolchik.

This book takes stock of arguments about the historical legacies of communism that have become common within the study of Russia and East Europe more than two decades after communism's demise and elaborates an empirical approach to the study of historical legacies revolving around relationships and mechanisms rather than correlation and outward similarities. Eleven essays by a distinguished group of scholars assess whether post-communist developments in specific areas continue to be shaped by the experience of communism or, alternatively, by fundamental divergences produced before or after communism. Chapters deal with the variable impact of the communist experience on post-communist societies in such areas as regime trajectories and democratic political values; patterns of regional and sectoral economic development; property ownership within the energy sector; the functioning of the executive branch of government, the police, and courts; the relationship of religion to the state; government language policies; and informal relationships and practices.

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.

Communism in Eastern Europe is a ground-breaking new survey of the history of Eastern Europe since 1945. It examines how Communist governments came to Eastern Europe, how they changed their societies and the legacies that persisted after their fall. Written from the perspective of the 21st century, this book shows how Eastern Europe’s trajectory since 1989 fits into the longer history of its Communist past. Rather than focusing on high politics, Communism in Eastern Europe concentrates on the politics of daily life, melding political history with social, cultural and gender history. It tells the history of this complicated era through the voices and experiences of ordinary people. By focusing on the complex interactions of everyday life, Communism in Eastern Europe illuminates the world Communism made in Eastern Europe, its politics and culture, values and dreams, successes and failures. This book is an engaging introduction to the history of Communist Eastern Europe for any reader. It is ideal for adoption in a wide array of undergraduate and graduate courses in 20th century European history.

This work observes how the political ideologies, social values, and theoretical paradigms of Eastern European scholars and politicians changed throughout the period of transformation following the 1989 political revolutions in Eastern Europe. The authors try to reinterpret the institutions, movements, and ideologies that allegedly contributed to the erosion of the old regimes in Eastern Europe, asking whether these--alternative--legacies of communism support the transition to capitalism.

This book analyzes the social impact of the transition from communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Marking the 50th anniversary of events in 1956, that were a major turning point in the history of communist-ruled Eastern Europe, this book contains a selection of some of the most recent research on those momentous events and their memory and legacy. The book contains edited contributions from historians and social scientists from Hungary, Poland the UK and the USA. Their contributions are the fruit of research which has only been possible since 1989. In the years since the fall of the communist regimes the state archives have been opened to researchers and it has been possible to collect the testimony of eye-witnesses without fear of repression and censorship. The outcome of 1956 led to Poland embarking on its own distinctive version of communist rule. Meanwhile 1956 in Hungary saw the first society-wide attempt to overthrow a ruling communist regime – only to be put down by Soviet military intervention. In both countries the events of 1956 had lasting repercussions for society and its relationship with the communist regime. In retrospect they can be seen as paving the way for the eventual fall of the communist regimes in East Central Europe in 1989.

Reveals how the legacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union affects modern politics, society and economic development in post-Communist Russia.