Freedom and democracy

Author(s):  
Andrea Mariuzzo

This chapter explains the importance of the values of freedom and democracy in the Cold War struggle between Italian Communists and anti-Communists. As soon as Cold War tensions broke down the ‘national unity’ of anti-fascist forces, both fronts claimed to be the exclusive representatives of ‘true’ democracy, and compared their competitor with the defeated fascist enemy. The Socialist-Communist alliance acquired the programme of ‘progressive’ (or ‘people’s’) democracy inspired by the experiments in Central-Eastern Europe, and made it the base for its opposition to the supposed Christian-Democratic ‘restoration’ of a new ‘reactionary clerical fascism’, along with the defense of the guarantees for parliamentary opposition established by the republican Constitution of 1948. The anti-Communist front, on its side, found strong unifying motifs in the description of Soviet dictatorship and the ‘sovietization’ of the countries occupied by the Red Army filtered beyond the Iron Curtain, and in their comparison with ‘totalitarian’ experiences lived by Italians in the past years.

Author(s):  
Melissa Feinberg

Histories of the Cold War have often been preoccupied with issues of accountability and intent. Such histories have generally focused on leading political actors and concerned themselves with issues that implicitly or explicitly pitted one camp against another, asking questions such as: Who was responsible for starting the Cold War? Who made key decisions? Who won and who lost? This study has been motivated by a different set of concerns. Rather than setting one side against the other, it has examined the Cold War as a shared political environment and tried to illuminate some of the ways a political culture that relied on moral absolutes affected patterns of thought on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It has tried to expand the question of who knew what and when by shifting the focus to how knowledge about Eastern Europe was produced, showing how some experiences took on the weight of evidence, whereas others seemingly provoked little thought....


2020 ◽  
pp. 181-186
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Eller

Ray and Maggie Bradbury’s winter 1990 stay in Paris began as Bradbury successfully negotiated a fortieth anniversary hardbound edition of The Martian Chronicles from Doubleday. Chapter 26 also narrates how Bradbury discovered that his perennial popularity in Eastern Europe was expanding as the Iron Curtain collapsed, especially in Czechoslovakia, where newly elected President Vaclav Havel proved to be a Bradbury enthusiast. The chapter closes with Bradbury’s unexpected invitation to a May 1990 luncheon for President Gorbachev held at the Russian Embassy in Washington. Bradbury and Isaac Asimov were invited as the favorite writers of the Gorbachev family. Bradbury was also beginning to learn of the scattered and informal Bradbury reading clubs that had existed in Russia throughout much of the Cold War period.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Kenneth Ward Church ◽  
Valia Kordoni

AbstractThere are well-meaning efforts to address ethics that will likely make the world a better place, but care needs to be taken to avoid repeating mistakes of the past. In particular, ACL has recently introduced a new process where there are special reviews of some papers for ethics. We would be more comfortable with the new ethics process if there were more checks and balances, due process and transparency. Otherwise, there is a risk that the process could intimidate authors in ways that are not that dissimilar from the ways that academics were intimidated during the Cold War on both sides of the Iron Curtain.


Author(s):  
Talbot C. Imlay

In examining European socialist responses to the issue of post-war European security, this chapter challenges the image of a continent irremediably divided along Cold War lines. Throughout the 1950s European socialists struggled to devise a stable and peaceful security order in a world of nuclear armaments and superpower rivalries. This struggle initially centred on the European Defence Community (EDC). For many socialists, the EDC offered a possible means not only of avoiding an independent German army but also perhaps of overcoming Cold War divisions. Following the EDC’s demise and West Germany’s integration into NATO, European socialists recentred their hopes on ‘disengagement’—the idea of creating a demilitarized and neutralized region in Central and Eastern Europe encompassing countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Indeed, during the late 1950s, European socialists emerged as the leading organized advocates of disengagement, working assiduously to keep the project in the public eye.


2021 ◽  
pp. 26-106
Author(s):  
M. Derzhaliuk

The article notes that the Trianon Peace Treaty of June 4, 1920 between the Entente countries and Hungary, as a result of the First World War, turned out to be, like all the other six treaties of the Versailles system, mostly unfair. Forcibly the territory of Hungary decreased by 2/3, the population decreased 2,7 times, a third of the Hungarian ethnic group became part of neighboring states. It is noted that during 1920-2020. In Hungary, there were no powerful political forces of various trends and trends that would recognize the Trianon Peace Treaty as just. At the same time, the ruling political elites of the neighboring states of Hungary considered and still consider the conditions of the Trianon fair. Such opposite assessments of the consequences of Versailles engendered antagonism, making it impossible to reach a compromise between the countries of Central-Eastern Europe. Attention is drawn to the fact that during the domination in Europe of the coalition of countries led by Germany of the Versailles Peace Treaty, including the Trianon, were dismantled, a new order was introduced, in which opponents of Versailles – Germany, Italy, Japan, the USSR, Hungary, Bulgaria. played an active role. It is noted that the winners of the World War ІІ restored the borders of the countries of Germany’s allies in Europe, in accordance with their own geopolitical interests, which corresponded by 70% to the borders established by the Entente after the World War І. The Trianon borders were restored over Hungary by the Paris Peace Treaty of February 10, 1947. The USSR, Great Britain, France and the United States acted from a hegemonic position, were guided by the right of the winner and in many respects imposed on the defeated countries the conditions of the Versailles system were discredited, did not draw proper conclusions and did not build international relations on principles close to justice, but preserved the complicated territorial contradictions of the past with the corresponding treaties. It is indicated that the threat of assimilation and disappearance of foreign Hungarians is one of the main reasons for the revitalization of modern Hungary. Measures to overcome the syndrome of the dismemberment of the Hungarian nation in Central-Eastern Europe have been going on for centuries with little results; The rate of decline in the number of Hungarians in neighboring states over the past century is the highest, so Budapest believes that there is no time to delay the introduction of autonomy for foreign Hungarians, because in the next 25 years the very need for it will disappear through their disappearance. It is emphasized that the level of ensuring the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia especially affects the relationship of Hungary with Ukraine. The improvement of relations between Hungary and Ukraine has minimal chances, since the positions of the parties on the procedure for the application of educational and language laws in Transcarpathia do not coincide. Taking into account the decisive activity of Hungary and the Hungarian foreign communities in 2020 (the century of the signing of the Trianon Peace Treaty on June 4, 1920), it is concluded that this problem will not lose its relevance, but will significantly increase.


Author(s):  
Vladimír Naxera

This article examines the patterns of party patronage in both communist and post-communist regimes in Central Eastern Europe. Firstly, the text outlines the theoretical concept of patronage and explains in more detail the linkage between patronage and other related phenomena – i.e. corruption and clientelism. This part focuses on both the differences and similarities between them. In the second part, the article sketches out the principles of the working of patterns of patronage (so-called nomenclature) in communist regimes. In the last part, the paper discusses changes in the patterns of party patronage after the fall of communism and provides an explanation for the varying practices of patronage among post-communist parties, stressing the institutional legacy of the past. The paper thus generally aims to provide theoretical background for further research on party patronage in post-communist countries and also in more specific (i.e. local or regional) contexts


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