Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe. Edited by Vladimir Tismaneanu.Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009. Pp. viii+444. $45.00 (cloth); $27.95 (paper).
The Enlightenment seems out of kilter. Until fairly recently, its trajectories were beguilingly simple and straightforward. Devised by Western metropolitan masterminds, the Enlightenment was piously appropriated by their latter-day apprentices in Central and Eastern Europe. This process of benign percolation made modern science, political liberty, and religious toleration trickle down to East-Central Europe. The self-orientalizing of nineteenth-century Central European intellectuals reinforced this impression, making concepts that were ostensibly authentic and pristine at their “Western” sources seem garbled and skewed once appropriated in their region.
The paper contributes to the welfare state regime literature by assessing the existence of the East-Central European welfare state regime. The article empirically tests whether East-Central European countries constitute a distinct welfare regime or they can be classified into existing regimes by using hierarchical cluster analysis. The paper defines clusters for two distinct time periods, in order to shed light on the changes over time. The research provides two substantive contributions. First, welfare states in East-Central Europe constitute a distinct welfare state regime only for the period of 2014-2016, and they might be subdivided into two groups: (1) Visegrad countries and (2) Balkan and Baltic countries together. Second, countries within the East-Central European welfare regime has become more similar over time.
This article explores the controversial issue of concepts defining the East-Central European Romanian and Hungarian identities (nem, neam, popor, nép). It specifically focuses on the translation and adaptation of the German concept of nation by examining the inclusive or exclusive meanings this concept acquired in these two languages and political cultures during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Abstract
This opening chapter introduces the subject matter and objectives of the book. It first explains central terms and provides an overview of the different illiberal trends in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It then sketches recent conflicts between EU actors and the four East Central European states and explains why these conflicts are of a new quality. Next, it summarises the state of research on illiberal backsliding and on the EU’s tools against it and identifies shortcomings and gaps in the literature. Finally, it outlines the aims as well as the overall structure of the book and provides an overview of the contributions.
Twilight of Empire: The Brest-Litovsk Conference and the Remaking of East-Central Europe, 1917–1918. By Borislav Chernev. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. xx, 301 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $75.00, hard bound. - Britain and Interwar Danubian Europe: Foreign Policy and Security Challenges, 1919–1936. By Dragan Bakić. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. xviii, 264 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. Maps. $114.00, hard bound. - Great Expectations and Interwar Realities: Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy, 1918–1941. By Zsolt Nagy. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2017. xviii, 341 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Plates. $65.00, hard bound.