Pegida as a European Far-Right Populist Movement

Historian Geoff Eley argues that the idea of Europe has contracted from the ideal of a pluralistic community with the potential to integrate cultural “Others” to a “narrowly understood market-defined geopolitical drive for the purposes of competitive globalization.” Global deregulation, he states, has produced streams of labor migrants and the tightening of Europe’s external borders, while the economic expansion of Europe to more member countries since 1992 has opened up new divisions and inequalities among them. Aftereffects from the break-up of the East bloc can be felt in the escalation of antiminority violence in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as “the smouldering slow burn of the legacies of colonialism” in Western Europe. These diverse pressures and anxieties coalesce on the spectral figure of the Islamic fundamentalist at Europe’s gates.

Indonesian Relations with the Eastern Europe, Soviet Union and China before 1965: Systemic and Domestic Factors

<p>This article discusses the Indonesian relations with Eastern Europe Communist states, Soviet Union and China Communists before 1965 and how the systemic and domestic factors influenced Indonesian decision. Indonesian foreign relation was closer to communist state after President Sukarno’s official visits to Moscow and Beijing in 1956. Why President Sukarno foreign relations closer to communist states? What was the international political situation that influenced Sukarno to lean to East bloc? What was the domestic situation that influenced Sukarno to do so? Why Indonesian closer relation with the communist not began earlier than 1956? Among the main discussions in this article are: the Indonesian-Soviet Union relations, Indonesian-China relations, Communist ideology and Indonesian relations with Eastern European Communists states. Indonesian relations with Communists state changed dramatically after the Indonesian Coup of September 1965 and the collapsed of President Sukarno and the formation of “new order” regime under Suharto in Indonesia. The changes of domestic politics in Indonesia after September 1965 strongly influenced the Indonesian relations with the Communists states.</p>

America and Human Capital Formation in Communist Europe Aspirations, Reactions and Results

This paper analyses the Ford Foundation’s 1957 to 1961 intellectual exchange program in Poland. Emerging in the novel context of Washington’s emphasis on cultural diplomacy and Warsaw’s exceptional position in the East Bloc following October 1956, the Foundation’s program was the earliest complex scholarly initiative by a US organization aimed at Europeans under Communist rule. Consequently, for a brief window of time, the Foundation was able to operate an unprecedentedly open exchange under uniquely liberal terms. The program’s genesis and operations will be explained, as well as the reasons for its abrupt suspension and its long-term implications. In particular, I will argue that through the program, the Foundation played a significant role in rebuilding and shaping the social sciences in post-Stalinist Poland.

Bulgaria's Communist-Era Landscape

This essay discusses the various architectural and design elements that helped define the communist-era landscape of Bulgaria. The conclusions presented here are based on observations made by the author while living in Bulgaria and research into the literature on communist architecture and design in the East Bloc. Bulgaria was the member of the East Bloc that most closely followed the architectural and design model established by the Soviet Union and exported to its satellite states following the Second World War. This didactic model was intended to present a certain image of communism and its achievements. Despite physical changes that came with the end of communism in Bulgaria, the country has retained a significant communist-era landscape. Bulgaria, therefore, presents an opportunity to examine many of the architectural and design elements typical of the East Bloc, both how the communists intended them to be interpreted and how these buildings and monuments made the transition to the postcommunist era.

CMEA's International Investment Bank and the Crisis of Developed Socialism

In 1971 the Soviet bloc's Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) created the International Investment Bank (IIB). The IIB was part of a broader effort to adopt market-based reforms in all the East-bloc economies. The bank was designed to promote competition for loans and rigorous vetting of projects, ostensibly resulting in greater CMEA integration and production that met world standards of quality. But this scenario ultimately did not pan out. Instead, the IIB became a mere conduit for Western finance, focusing not on high technology but on natural resource extraction, particularly the construction of the Soyuz natural gas pipeline. More fundamentally, the IIB could not function properly without market-determined prices and convertible currencies. Although economic authorities in the Soviet bloc fully recognized the constraints on the IIB, they were unwilling to abandon fundamental principles of the Soviet economic system.

Revolutionaries and Revivalists: Pentecostal Eschatology, Politics and the Nicaraguan Revolution

In 1979 Nicaragua's Sandinista guerrillas seized power with the help of revolutionary Christians. Yet by virtue of their eschatology and worldview, classical Pentecostals in Nicaragua were less enthusiastic. Premillennialism, otherworldliness and a focus on evangelism generated an apoliticism that was wholly unacceptable to a collectivist, this-worldly regime keen to co-opt the Church to help establish its vision of heaven on earth. Meanwhile, Sandinista antipathy towards Israel, close links with the East Bloc (traditionally associated with biblical Gog and Magog), and the sometimes brutal repression of evangelicals all contributed to a dispensational perception of an apocalyptic, dualistic struggle between good and evil. Thus, eschatology played an important role in shaping the nature of Pentecostal-Sandinista relations.