The Soviet Union And Eastern Europe

Introduction -- Women's experiences of 1937 : everyday legacies of the purges and the great terror in the Soviet Union -- Victims and collective trauma : surviving mass repression and living through the Soviet period -- Women's experiences of repression in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1968 -- Women's experiences of 1956 : student protesters and partisans in Romania.

This volume brings together a series of recent analyses spanning the whole period of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. The essays - by Western, Russian, and East European experts - present a wide and varied picture of the period. The authors use newly available materials to investigate different aspects of Soviet-East European relations - party affairs, military and political coordination, cultural and mass media policies, as well as the crises and conflicts emerging from the relationship itself.

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.

The author discusses the traditional system of management of the economy as it existed in the early 1950s in the USSR and goes on to deal with the reforms of the 1960s and of the 1980s, country by country. He shows that the focus of the reforms is on finding a proper combination of planning and the market mechanism, and their success will be judged by their ability to solve acute economic problems.

Contains basic information on each country as well as essays on political, economic and social issues affecting individual countries and the region as a whole.

Intended to aid librarians in small- and medium-sized libraries and media centers, this annotated bibliography lists 1,555 books focusing on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The book is divided into four parts: (1) "General and Interrelated Themes--Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics and Eastern European Countries"; (2) "Russian Empire Prior to 1917 and the USSR"; (3) "USSR--Non-Russian Republics, Jews, Other Peoples"; and (4) "Eastern European Countries." Each part is arranged by subject, with priority given to general studies, followed by special studies sections where appropriate. Titles in Part 1 focus on economics; government and law; political theory and communism; international relations; history; language and literature; dissent, nationalism, and religion; sociology and social conditions; and military affairs. Titles in Part 2 deal with anthropology and folklore; the arts, fine arts, and architecture; economics; education and culture; geography, demography, and population; government, state, and politics; diplomacy and foreign relations; history; military affairs; Russian language; Russian literature; philosophy and political theory; psychology and psychiatry; religion; science and research; and sociology. Part 3 presents titles related to the Baltic Republics; Belorussia; Ukraine; Caucasian Republics and peoples; Central Asian Republics and peoples; Jews; Moldavians; Germans and Tartars; and the peoples of Siberia and the Volga Basin. The last part focuses on Albania; Bulgaria; Czechoslovakia; Hungary; Poland; Romania; Yugoslavia; National minorities and dissent; and language and literature. (LH)

The book examines the role of Western broadcasting to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War, with a focus on Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. It includes chapters by radio veterans and by scholars who have conducted research on the subject in once-secret Soviet bloc archives and in Western records. It also contains a selection of translated documents from formerly secret Soviet and East European archives, most of them published here for the first time.

Describes the geographical, cultural, sociopolitical, and economic aspects of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.