Writing on Communist History in Central Europe: Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542110495
Author(s):  
Muriel Blaive
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Practices ◽  
Communist Countries

What challenges have we met while writing the history of communist countries before and after 1989? This article introduces a special section devoted to the historiography of the recent past in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. It shows that many of the methodological choices made after 1989 eschewed any critical examination and replicated or denied choices made before 1989 without reflecting on them. The section also reflects upon personal continuities. And it finally shows that history writing has been instrumentalized for political purposes after 1989 just as it had been before 1989. In other words, it acutely raises the question of continuities in historical practices despite the 1989 political rupture.

Introduction

Urban History ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-31
Author(s):  
MARKIAN PROKOPOVYCH
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Europe ◽  
South East Europe ◽  
History Of

Eastern Europe has recently received much attention from scholars irrespective of diverse focus and specialization, and the special section of this distinguished journal is yet another proof that the region remains an extraordinarily interesting place for research and analysis. Scholarly interests have, however, often been related to the emergence, establishment and eventual demise of state socialism in this heterogeneous place, the horrors of World War II and the profound transformations that swept through its many old-new countries during recent decades. The predominance of political, social and intellectual history, as well as sociology and political science, and scholarly interpretations of the condition of modernity in Eastern Europe come therefore as little surprise. This methodological apparatus at hand, significant aspects of the region's development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have sometimes been overlooked, while others appeared teleological. Within the traditions of both Western and Eastern European academia, the region has until recently been perceived as having followed a very distinct, special path to modernity characterized in a variety of ways as arrested development, Sonderweg and backwardness. At the same time, the profound change that occurred in these diverse territories as part of a European and in fact global process of modernization during the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries has often not been given its true significance in relation to its later historical development. An array of recent post-colonialist responses that have fundamentally reshaped the history of the modern ‘Third World’ have touched Eastern Europe only in passing, Hence, an occasional intellectual indecisiveness as to how to analyse the region's development in a greater historical context, as is immediately evident in the diversity of names ascribed to its supposedly different geographical areas – Eastern Europe, East Central Europe, Central Europe, Mitteleuropa and South-East Europe, to name but a few – each with their own political and ideological bias.

scholarly journals ‘Getting’ the Pox: Reflections by an Historian on How to Write the History of Early Modern Disease

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Stein
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
Knowledge And Beliefs ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of Disease ◽  
History Of ◽  
Current Return ◽  
Medical Semiotics

<div>This article reflects upon the recent return to linear history writing in medical history. It takes as its starting point a critique of the current return to constructivist ideas, suggesting the use of other methodological choices and interpretations to the surviving archival and textural sources of the sixteenth century pox. My investigation analyses the diagnostic act as an effort to bring together a study of medical semiotics. Medical semiotics considers how signs speak through the physical body, coached within a particular epistemology. There are no hidden meanings behind the visible sign or symptom - it is tranparent to the calculative and authoritative gaze and language of the doctor. It concerns how diseases came into being, the relationships they have constituted, the power they have secured and the actual knowledge/power they have eclipsed or are eclipsing. From such a perspective, “getting the pox” is not a bad thing. A methodological turn to medical semiotics reminds us that the history of disease should be an inquiry both into the grounds of our current knowledge and beliefs about disease and how they inspire our writing, as well as the analytical categories that establish their inevitability.</div>

Introduction

The Plunder ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Daniel Unowsky
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
World War ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
Anti Jewish

The introduction offers an overview of the geographical and chronological scope of the violence before setting these events within existing scholarship on antisemitism, Habsburg and Polish history, and the history of violence in central Europe around 1900. Although these events have been largely overshadowed by more deadly examples of anti-Jewish violence before and after World War I, the 1898 riots constituted the most extensive anti-Jewish attacks in the Habsburg state in the post-1867 constitutional era. The 1898 Galician violence challenged the image of Austria-Hungary as a Rechtsstaat, a state governed by the rule of law. The introduction includes chapter previews.

The Social History of Bulgaria

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Roumen Daskalov
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Approaches

This article provides an overview of the development of one particular subfield of history writing in Bulgaria, social history. It concentrates on the modern period, and delineated several stages in the evolution of the Bulgarian historiography, namely the National Revival under Ottoman rule, followed by the “bourgeois” epoch from the 1878 liberation to 1944, the communist regime, and the post-communist transformation until today. In the first part, the article presents several pre-communist antecedents of social history, explores the rise of professional historiography initially under Marxist auspices, and then explores attempts at historiographical revisions before and after 1989. In the second part, the article briefly presents the author’s own attempt to write social history along the lines of the German Gesellschaftsgeschichte and alternative approaches on social history and modernization.

Kneeling at the Altar of (Il)-Liberalism: The Politics of Ideas, Job Loss, and Union Weakness in East Central Europe

2008 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Vanhuysse
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of

As East Central Europe is fast approaching the end of its second decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, new studies of postcommunist politics and society can increasingly benefit from a longer historical perspective. We can now replace the “history of the present” lens that was typical of much research in the highly volatile 1990s with accounts that more extensively compare the most fundamental trends emerging from the decades before and after 1989–1990. In this spirit, both books under review make substantive and historically well-informed contributions to our understanding of the politics of work and workers in Central and Eastern Europe. In The Defeat of Solidarity, David Ost develops a gripping account of the progressive and interlinked defeats of labor interests and liberal democratic politics in Poland from the 1980s up to the present day. In Constructing Unemployment, Phineas Baxandall offers a theory of the political meaning of unemployment, applied mainly to the case of Hungary from the late 1940s until the end of the 1990s.

Study of Diabetic Mellitus and Knowledge of Lotion Foot Care on the Community

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hariyadi DM ◽  
Athiyah U ◽  
Hendradi E ◽  
Rosita N ◽  
Erawati T ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Glucose ◽  
T Test ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Scale Production ◽  
Foot Care ◽  
Diabetic Mellitus ◽  
Glucose Levels ◽  
Blood Glucose Levels ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of

The prevention of Diabetic Mellitus (DM) and its complications is the main aim of this study, in addition to the training of lotion foot care application and the development of small scale industry. The research team delivered knowledge in the form of training on Diabetic Mellitus, healthy food, treatment and prevention of complications, and small-scale production of cosmetic products. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between training on diabetic and lotion foot care application as preventive measures against diabetic complications on the patient's blood glucose levels in the community of residents in Banyuurip Jaya, Surabaya. It was expected from this training that the knowledge of the residents increases and people living with diabetic undergo lifestyle changes and therefore blood sugar levels can be controlled. The parameters measured in this research were blood glucose levels, the anti diabetic drug types consumed, and compliance on diabetics. This study used the data taken from 60 patients with DM over a period of one month. Questionnaires and log books was used to retrieve data and changes in blood glucose levels in diabetic patients. The results showed the demographic data of patients with type 2 diabetic of 85% female and 15% male, with the range of patients aged of 61-70 years of 46.67% and had history of diabetic (90%). The history of drugs consumed by respondents was anti diabetic drugs such as metformin (40%), glimepiride (33.37%) and insulin (6.67%). In addition, the increased knowledge of DM patients after being given the training compared to before training was shown in several questions in the questionnaire. A statistical analysis using t-test analyzed a correlation between training provided in order to enhance understanding of the patient, as well as correlation with blood glucose levels. A paired T-test showed that there was a relationship between the knowledge of trainees before and after training (p less than 0.05). An interesting result was that there was no relationship between blood glucose levels before and after training provided (p> 0.05).

The Challenges in Dealing with Organized Crime and its Consequences in Modern Societies in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia – the Balkan Peninsula

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Bashkim Selmani ◽  
Bekim Maksuti
Keyword(s):  
Organized Crime ◽  
Balkan Peninsula ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Standards ◽  
Organized Crime Groups ◽  
Further Development

The profound changes within the Albanian society, including Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, before and after they proclaimed independence (in exception of Albania), with the establishment of the parliamentary system resulted in mass spread social negative consequences such as crime, drugs, prostitution, child beggars on the street etc. As a result of these occurred circumstances emerged a substantial need for changes within the legal system in order to meet and achieve the European standards or behaviors and the need for adoption of many laws imported from abroad, but without actually reading the factual situation of the psycho-economic position of the citizens and the consequences of the peoples’ occupations without proper compensation, as a remedy for the victims of war or peace in these countries. The sad truth is that the perpetrators not only weren’t sanctioned, but these regions remained an untouched haven for further development of criminal activities, be it from the public state officials through property privatization or in the private field. The organized crime groups, almost in all cases, are perceived by the human mind as “Mafia” and it is a fact that this cannot be denied easily. The widely spread term “Mafia” is mostly known around the world to define criminal organizations.The Balkan Peninsula is highly involved in these illegal groups of organized crime whose practice of criminal activities is largely extended through the Balkan countries such as Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, etc. Many factors contributed to these strategic countries to be part of these types of activities. In general, some of the countries have been affected more specifically, but in all of the abovementioned countries organized crime has affected all areas of life, leaving a black mark in the history of these states.

“Sou Inglesa! Sou Inglesa!”: Memórias de uma Menina Anglo-Portuguesa (1907-1930)

2017 ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Miguel Alarcão
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social History ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times

Textualizing the memory(ies) of physical and cultural encounter(s) between Self and Other, travel literature/writing often combines subjectivity with documental information which may prove relevant to better assess mentalities, everyday life and the social history of any given ‘timeplace’. That is the case with Growing up English. Memories of Portugal 1907-1930, by D. J. Baylis (née Bucknall), prefaced by Peter Mollet as “(…) a remarkably vivid and well written observation of the times expressed with humour and not little ‘carinho’. In all they make excellent reading especially for those of us interested in the recent past.” (Baylis: 2)

The Invention of Papal History

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
Commissioned Works ◽  
The One ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
The Church

How was the history of post-classical Rome and of the Church written in the Catholic Reformation? Historical texts composed in Rome at this time have been considered secondary to the city’s significance for the history of art. The Invention of Papal History corrects this distorting emphasis and shows how history-writing became part of a comprehensive formation of the image and self-perception of the papacy. By presenting and fully contextualizing the path-breaking works of the Augustinian historian Onofrio Panvinio (1530–68), this book shows what type of historical research was possible in the late Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. Historiography in this period by no means consisted entirely of commissioned works written for patrons; rather, a creative interplay existed between, on the one hand, the endeavours of authors to explore the past and, on the other hand, the constraints of patronage and ideology placed on them. This book sheds new light on the changing priorities, mentalities, and cultural standards that flourished in the transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic Reformation.

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