Mikhail Gorbachev: The Decay of Socialism and the Renaissance of Eastern Europe (From the Perspective of an Insider)

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceslav Ciobanu
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Market Reforms ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Soviet Leader ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Distinguished Leaders

This article provides an insider’s view of Gorbachev’s policy “perestroika and glasnost” as it related to the former Central and Eastern European socialist countries. The author describes Gorbachev’s relations with the leaders of communist parties of the Warsaw Treaty. A participant in many of Gorbachev’s meetings with his counterparts, the author analyzes the emergence of democracy and market reforms in these countries. He observed two distinct groups of socialist leaders, one relatively progressive and reform oriented and the other consisting of hardliners with traditional views opposed to any political and economic change. The author describes their attitude toward Gorbachev’s reforms. Based on his personal experience with the Soviet leader, the author also identifies some of the characteristics that made Mikhail Gorbachev one of the most distinguished leaders of the twentieth century, based on his personal experience with the Soviet leader. The author’s description highlights lesser-known aspects of Gorbachev’s performance that complete a portrait of this complex person.

“Are you Hungarian or Romanian?” On the Study of National and Ethnic Identity in Central and Eastern Europe

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Curticapean
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Topical Issue ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
The University

A personal note frames this essay. In recent years I have travelled with my Finnish colleagues from the University of Tampere to a number of international seminars and conferences organized in various European locations. While socializing with the other participants, my self-identification as Romanian has, on several occasions, prompted the question “are you Hungarian or Romanian …?“ No other options were ever offered, even though Romania has a quite sizeable Roma minority and a number of Saxons, though ever declining, still live in the country. At the same time, the ethnicity of my Finnish colleagues has never been questioned. True, Finns describe their country as a homogeneous place, yet Finland is a country with two official languages—Finnish and Swedish—ever praised for the treatment of its Swedish-speaking minority. And some other ethnicities—for instance, Roma and Sami—also live in Finland. Nobody interested? Or maybe there is more to it than simply a question of curiosity (or a lack of it). That the ethnicity of the Finnish participants was deemed irrelevant, whereas my ethnic identity seemed a topical issue for informal discussions during coffee breaks or conference lunches elicited my interest in the issue of national and ethnic identity. I have started to ask how collective identities, and especially national and ethnic identities, have been conceptualized and how those theoretical concepts have been deployed in the study of Central and Eastern European identities. Are there any differences in how Central and Eastern European identities are studied compared with Western identities?

Hyperrealizing “Borat” with the Map of the European “Other”

Slavic Review ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dickie Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Balkan Region ◽  
Cultural Connections

Sacha Baron Cohen maps a cultural background for his “Borat” character by creating a hyperreal Kazakhstan that is based, nonetheless, on gradations of a “real,” yet Orientalized, eastern Europe and Balkan region. Having no cultural connections to its actual Central Asian namesake, “Borat's Kazakhstan” is a Baudrillardian simulacrum because, for a western filmgoer, it essentially replaces the original. Scratching beneath the surface, however, we see that Baron Cohen composes his clown-journalist using exotic, yet familiar, “realities” from the “Other” in Europe's backyard. Using Edward Said's Orientalism (along with Milica Bakić-Hayden's and Maria Todorova's modifications of the idea), Dickie Wallace describes how this discursive bricolage of eastern European and Balkan music, language, folkloristic rituals, and archetypes, as well as continual tabu violations and commonsensical acceptance of violence, gives the character the sharp parodic elements that have had western audiences laughing even while wincing as they recognize themselves in this “Other.“

A game of mirrors: Western/Eastern European crime series and the struggle for recognition

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caius Dobrescu ◽  
Roxana Eichel ◽  
Dorottya Molnár-Kovács ◽  
Sándor Kálai ◽  
Anna Keszeg
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Struggle For Recognition ◽  
Correct Image

Our article focuses on a corpus of crime television series reflecting upon differences between western and eastern Europe – a phenomenon that we will address as the ‘West–East slope’. The series figure as instances of the struggle for recognition at the level of the social imaginary, between western and eastern Europe. Addressing the double logic of the western narrative on eastern Europe and the eastern narrative of western Europe, one of our main findings is that the recognition aesthetics of eastern Europe produced a multi-layered representation of the West varying from country to country. On the other hand in western productions, there is still a bias towards a more politically correct image of easternness, a state of affairs that is questioned by eastern European attempts to produce their original contents.

Self-Government in Late 1980s Czechoslovakia: The Slovak Philosopher Miroslav Kusý against the Communist Party1

2021 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-452
Author(s):  
Dirk Mathias Dalberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
State Enterprise ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Soviet Leader ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Public

Self-government is one of the most popular terms in left-wing political thought. In the second half of the twentieth century, it was used and discussed both in Western liberal democracies and in the communist bloc. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev used this notion from the mid-1980s onwards, forming part of his wider policy of perestroika. Although the Czechoslovak leaders were not interested in political reforms and were largely sceptical about economic changes, the Soviet example resonated with the public and impacted on official discussion in Czechoslovakia. In this context, the Czechoslovak parliament adopted the Act on State Enterprise in July 1988, which was preceded by the discussion of the Proposal on the Act on State Enterprise (1987). This article draws attention to Czechoslovak dissident milieus and the response to the parliament’s proposal. It focuses on the Slovak philosopher Miroslav Kusý (1931-2019), who articulated the most substantial critique of the official plans. While accepting the principle of self-government, he argued that the proposal was subject to fundamental misinterpretations. In assessing his arguments, the article traces a particular intervention within the wider debates on state socialism in the 1980s.

The ‘Yidishe Paganini’: Sholem Aleichem's Stempenyu, the Music of Yiddish Theatre and the Character of the Shtetl Fiddler

2014 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Character Type ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish Immigrants

ABSTRACTThis article explores the music of Yiddish theatre in early twentieth-century New York by considering multiple adaptations of Russian Jewish author Sholem Aleichem's 1888 novel Stempenyu, about a klezmer violinist, which was transformed into two theatrical productions in 1907 and 1929, and finally inspired a three-movement recital work for accompanied violin by Joseph Achron. The multiple versions of Stempenyu present the eponymous musician as an allegory for the ambivalent role of the shtetl – the predominantly Jewish small town of Eastern Europe – in defining diasporic Jewish life in Europe and America, and as a medium for the sonic representation of shtetl culture as it was reformulated in the memories of the first generations of Jewish immigrants. The variations in the evocations of Eastern European klezmer in these renderings of Stempenyu indicate complex changes in the ways Jewish immigrants and their children conceived of their connection to Eastern Europe over four decades. The paper concludes by viewing changes in the symbolic character type of the shtetl fiddler in its most famous and recent manifestation, in the stage and screen musical Fiddler on the Roof.

Minor Nation

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Pershái
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Post Colonial

In the twentieth century, nationalism has become an unwritten yet strong hegemonic rule that prescribes and defines cultural configurations of statehood. In the context of post-socialist and post-colonial transformations in “expanding” Eastern Europe, nation building is a complicated and incoherent process: the nation’s canonic attributes may contradict the cultural and historical “circumstances” of the development of a particular nation. This article questions a complicated dynamic between theoretical frameworks of nationalism and their applications in Eastern European states, such as in Belarus. More specifically, it argues against the discursive conceptualization of Belarus as a “nonexistent” or “undeveloped” nation. This article suggests rethinking nation building in Belarus in relation to the notion of major/minor developed by Deleuze and Guattari. The author implies that the unusual mode of Belarusian nationalism is not only a part of a struggle for domination between different intellectual groups in Belarus; it is also an issue of relying on traditional scholarly paradigms of nationalism that may no longer suffice.

Marc B. Shapiro. Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884–1966. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999. 283 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-177
Author(s):  
Gershon Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Orthodox Judaism ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
The World

Jehiel Jacob Weinberg was, and remains, one of the outstanding figures of Modern Orthodoxy, along with David Zvi Hoffmann, Isaac Herzog, and Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Shapiro's exemplary biography marks the onset of a new stage in biographical scholarship about leading Orthodox personalities, moving beyond the hagiographies (which brought the figures to attention while affirming the Orthodox community) and the pioneer studies of Aharon Sorasky and Aharon Rakeffet-Rothkoff, and is a mandate for Judaic scholars to study the other greats (including the Hofets Hayim, Hayim Hirschensohn, Meir Shapiro of Lublin, Nathan Birnbaum, Hayim Ozer Grodzensky and Jakob Rosenheim). This book tells us what it takes to be a pathfinder in the world of twentieth-century Orthodox Judaism: the courage to carry a Hegelian-like dialectic about religious options to conclusion in a world of societal turmoil and historical trauma. As Weinberg moved from Slobodka to Pilwishki (Lithuania), to Giessen, Berlin, and then through the Warsaw ghetto, detention camp in Wülzburg, and finally to Montreux, he existentialized the struggle between the isolated talmudic culture of Eastern Europe and the Talmud cum secular culture of the West and its synthetic conclusion.

Trust, Reassurance, and Cooperation

2000 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kydd
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Soviet Leader ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Mutual Cooperation ◽  
Central Result ◽  
Costly Signals ◽  
The Cold War

Many scholars have argued that mistrust can prevent cooperation. These arguments often fail to adequately address the possibility that states can take steps to reassure each other, build trust, and thereby avoid conflict. I present a rational choice theory of reassurance focusing on costly signals and identify the conditions under which players can use costly signals to reassure the other side. The central result is that reassurance will be possible between trustworthy players in equilibrium if trustworthy actors are more willing to take risks to attain mutual cooperation than untrustworthy actors. I discuss the implications of the model in the context of the reassurance strategies pursued by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War.

scholarly journals WITOLD PŁOTKA, PATRICK ELDRIDGE (EDS.) EARLY PHENOMENOLOGY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE. MAIN FIGURES, IDEAS, AND PROBLEMS. Contributions to Phenomenology. Vol. 113 Springer, 2020 ISBN 978-3-030-39622-0

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 320-327
Author(s):  
JAROSLAVA VYDROVÁ ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Local Traditions

The collective volume Early Phenomenology in Central and Eastern Europe: Main Figures, Ideas, and Problems, edited by Witold Płotka and Patrick Eldridge, enriches the ongoing and highly topical research of the history of phenomenology with the thematization of a specific period and localization of phenomenology. The authors of eleven chapters explore the emergence of phenomenology in local traditions outside the Germanophone area, its appropriation and development, describing the unique forms it acquired in individual environments. The book clarifies the characteristics of the early wave of phenomenology and provides a list of Central and Eastern European phenomenologists who participated in it. On the one hand, the volume is a contribution to historiography, enriching the study of the history of phenomenology thematically and thus contributing to the development of phenomenology itself; on the other hand, it introduces its own set of philosophical problems. These concern methodology and the issue of the Central and Eastern European identity, which is examined through the prism of the development of local traditions of phenomenology. When exploring the latter it is useful to introduce the concept of the marginocentric. This concept, which originated in comparative literature, facilitates an understanding of the unique cultural configuration of a concrete tradition in its communication with internal and external environments.

Searching for Alternatives in Eastern Europe

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Tamás Krausz ◽  
Róbert Nárai
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Many ◽  
European Situation ◽  
Gyorgy Lukacs ◽  
Political Lessons

In the 1960s, György Lukács—under the slogan Back to Marx!—called for a "renaissance" of Marxism within Eastern Europe. To understand the nature of this renaissance, we have to understand the many important questions that the Hungarian uprising of 1956 raised for the anti-Stalinist left inside Hungary and Eastern Europe more broadly. This interview goes into the attempts to rethink the future of socialism from the Eastern European situation in the second half of the twentieth century, including the political lessons of 1968, the internal fight within the Hungarian Socialist Party, and the continued relevance of V. I. Lenin's Marxism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document