Reform and Revolution in the Soviet Union and East-Central Europe

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-67
Author(s):  
David S. Mason
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Soviet Union

scholarly journals Piotr Piotrowski Awangarda w cieniu Jałty. Sztuka w Europie środkowo-wschodniej w latach 1945–89 (Avant-Garde in the Shadow of Yalta. Art in East-Central Europe, 1945–1989) 2005.

Nordlit ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 293
Author(s):  
Piotr Bernatowicz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Research Field ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Virgin Land ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Polish Art ◽  
East Central European

Mieczysław Porębski, a distinguished Polish art historian of the 20th century, once expressed the demand for Polish art history to be researched simultaneously with foreign studies - as parallel fields. "We entered the research field of the old masters' art as partners in, so to say, a ‘furnished household', whereas in the field of contemporary art we are co-explorers, exploring a ‘virgin land'", as Porębski put it. The book by professor Piotr Piotrowski Awangarda w cieniu Jałty. Sztuka w Europie środkowo-wschodniej w latach 1945-89 (The Avant-Garde in the Shadow of Yalta. The Art in East-Central Europe, 1945-1989) fully accomplishes this demanding postulate which nowadays seems to be rather rarely remembered by Polish art historians. The explored area, the East-Central European countries, which emerged, as a result of the Yalta Conference, between the iron curtain and the border of The Soviet Union (including former Yugoslavia) appears at least as an ‘old maiden' land, where scientific penetration still seems to be necessary.

What Comes After Communism?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Shafir
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Past ◽  
Post Communism ◽  
Historical Antecedents

Was it communism or socialism that succumbed in 1989? Was communism dead in 1989, when the ‘Sinatra Doctrine’ (‘each does it his own way’) replaced the Brezhnev Doctrine in East Central Europe? Or did the patient agonise until the official dismemberment of the Soviet Union in 1991? Twenty-seven countries share a communist past in Europe and Asia. Of the surviving five, not all would pass the ‘Leninist test’. Which legacies affect post-communist systems has been an issue under debate since shortly after the fall of the Old Regimes. Claus Offe pointed out that post-communist regimes are faced with a ‘dilemma of simultaneity’, amounting to a ‘triple transition’: the process of having to cope concomitantly with unconsolidated borders, democratisation, and property redistribution. While other authors have often wondered which legacies ‘count’ in post-communism (those of communism itself or the ante-communist heritage), it is Herbert Kitschelt's merit to have pointed out that the modes of communist rule have been in turn influenced by historical antecedents.

The End of Communist Rule in East-Central Europe: A Four-Country Comparison

1991 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Batt
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
Country Comparison ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Systemic Crisis ◽  
East German

This article compares the patterns of breakdown of communist rule and the processes by which power was transferred to new ruling groups in four countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the GDR. In the countries covered in this paper, two paths to systemic crisis and breakdown are identified: the path of failed reform in Hungary and Poland, and the path of intransigent resistance to reform in Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic. The lesson of the Czechoslovak and East German experience was clearly that those regimes which totally rejected reform, because they saw it as incompatible with communist power, faced total and rapid collapse when confronted with the challenge of Gorbachev's perestroika and when deprived of the support of the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’; but the experience of Poland and Hungary suggests that those regimes which embarked on reform were no more successful in preserving communist power — half-way reform turned out in many ways to be even worse than no reform at all, while radical reform, that is, reform which would bring about the intended economic results, in the end could not be achieved without sweeping away communist power. Gorbachev himself now seems to be impaled on the horns of this same dilemma in the Soviet Union.

Prospects for the Consolidation of Democracy in East Central Europe

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEN BERGLUND
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Continuous Flow ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Collapse Of Communism

Few events have drawn as much interest from the academic community as the breakdown of Soviet-style socialism in Central and Eastern Europe and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union itself in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This paper might be classified as yet another in a continuous flow of scientific contributions, inspired by the collapse of communism. And this is indeed the case, but only in an oblique way.

Hopes and Failures: American Policy Toward East Central Europe, 1941–1947

1955 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-485
Author(s):  
Philip E. Mosely
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Decisive Victory ◽  
American Policy ◽  
Second World

When the attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into its second world war, the immediate concern of political leaders and public opinion alike was to train its manpower and to mobilize its industrial resources as the fisrst step in the long up-hill climb from initial defeat to decisive victory, first against Germany, then against Japan. Its prime political aim was to forge and maintain an effective working alliance with its major allies, Britain and the Soviet Union. If either faltered or failed in the joint effort, the road to victory and postwar security would stretch out beyond the horizon. After almost two decades of selfimposed isolation, American power was now to be concerned intimately with decisions, taken or not taken, which would in turn affect all parts of the world. Neither possessing the British tradition of continuity in its diplomacy nor possessed by the ruthless Soviet drive for expansion, impsrovised American policy-making toward many areas, including East Central Europe, sometimes mistook sympathy for policy, hope for action.

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