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Public administration (PA) as a discipline and public governance as a closely related concept have been developing constantly and rather rapidly in recent years. A particularly lively progress is characteristic of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), owing to its post-communist legacy and subsequent transition. This paper outlines the mainstream topics of PA development within The NISPAcee Journal, which covers the CEE region and beyond. The principal objective of the paper is to systematically and quantitatively codify a series of text documents that comprises 142 articles published between 2008 and 2016 in The NISPAcee Journal, in order to identify the characteristics of PA development in the region. The paper investigates three hypotheses: first, whether the quality of the articles changed throughout 2008 - 2016; second, whether The NISPAcee Journal attests a multidisciplinary orientation in terms of scientific contributions from different disciplines, and third, whether The NISPAcee Journal reflects the West-East knowledge transfer among PA academia. The three hypotheses were tested against seven analytical dimensions. The research findings reveal that governance is the prevailing cognitive paradigmatic approach of The NISPAcee Journal. Europeanisation is the common thread of almost all articles, with a particular emphasis on the ideological elements of the Neo-Weberian and New Public Management doctrines. Qualitative methodology is still the prevailing research method, and the occurrence of mixed methodology is rare. The topical orientation of the analysed manuscripts is very diverse. A considerable emphasis is placed on the analysis and development of PA as a discipline. The majority of researchers originate from CEE countries and focus their studies on Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Scientific partnership between the Eastern and the Western academic worlds is still scarce. Given the low level of exchange of best academic practices between Western and Eastern Europe, research results indicate the need for an increased internationalisation of the NISPAcee Journal and a more holistic approach to tackle the future challenges of global and regional PA and public governance more adequately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the general societal and political change in November 1989 in Czechoslovakia, the subject "History of Psychology" became the stable component of curriculum of studying psychology at the Department of Psychology of Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. The author of this paper has taught "History of Psychology" in Czech since 1998 for more than 20 years all students of psychology and he is teaching this subject the students of ERASMUS+ program from whole Europe, studying at Charles University in Prague, now. Indivisible part of the curriculum is represented by the history of Czechoslovak and Czech psychology. In References, the most important publications in the field of history of Czechoslovak and Czech psychology are presented., (© 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

This introduction provides some insights on this special issue of Mortality, entitled Dying and Death in Former Communist European Countries, setting the issue against the general background of death studies and, more specifically, of death studies in eastern European countries. Some relevant references to the Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe International Conference, organised in Romania, at the '1 Decembrie 1918ʹ University of Alba Iulia, Romania, between 2007 and 2019, are also made. The rationale and also the limitations of this special issue are brought into attention. The papers that form this issue are briefly presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparative Economic Research is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The idea of modern cremation was much more than a notion of a more hygienic, ecological and aesthetically acceptable method for the disposal of human remains. From its inception at the end of the 18th century, all the way into the second half of the 20th century, it was tied to various political, national and cultural ideologies, with the common factor throughout being anticlericalism and secularisation. In this paper, I will explore the development and status of the idea and practice of cremation in countries which found themselves behind the Iron Curtain after the Second World War. Did modern cremation serve in the interest of socialist social order and communist ideology, and if so, in what way? What was the fate of the idea in relation to the specificities of different communist regimes and what factors affected its adoption or rejection? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research considers cross-national diffusion of international human resource management (IHRM) ideas and practices by applying an emergent frame of sociological conceptualisation – ‘social institutionalism’ (SI). We look at cultural filters to patterns of diffusion, assimilation and adoption of IHRM, using Romania as a case study. The paper considers the former Communist system of employment relations, suggesting that through institutionalisation former ways of thinking have a residual influence on definitions and practice of people management in post-Communist Eastern Europe. The paper provides a new perspective on HRM by discussing the value of SI as a general model for understanding cross-cultural receptivity to HR ideas, sensitising the HR practitioner and academic to institutionalised culture as a historical legacy influencing absorption of international management ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1954 the football association of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) became one of UEFA's founding members. With Germany divided, and Cold War tensions at their peak, football provided one of the few cultural outlets that consistently breached the Iron Curtain. East German clubs participated regularly in UEFA competitions. The national team entered the inaugural European Championship in 1960. GDR administrators and referees became respected figures within the European game. This paper examines the history of early East German involvement in European football competitions, and the tensions that surrounded the GDR's dialogue with the European football community. Analysing the experiences of players and spectators, it focuses on the East German game as a multi-layered site of cultural transfer. Allied to the Soviet Union, GDR football primarily looked east for inspiration and opponents. At the same time, it sought contacts with the West, home of Europe's best football teams, in order to raise standards and deepen socialist influence in ‘bourgeois’ international sports organisations. There were deep ambiguities to the GDR's position at the geographic centre of European football. These ambiguities reflected competing local, national, and international identities that persistently undercut East German communism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the extinction of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the vacuum left behind by them, states have entered a stage of political crisis and establishing future trajectories in terms of governance. In this paper we propose to discusses several aspects concerning different trajectories of post-communist states and the factors that influenced their journey [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artistic representations of the Holocaust (be they literary, visual, or cinematic) have, more often than not, stirred up controversies and provoked heated debates in the academic and non-academic circles alike. Of these kinds of representations, the cinematic ones - by virtue of the medium's undeniable popularity - have often been at the forefront of such discussions, in which their content and mode or representation have been analyzed and scrutinized for authenticity, appropriateness, and historical accuracy. The aim of my paper is not so much that of doing a content analysis of films about the Holocaust, but rather to investigate the social and historical context in which they were made, by looking at three case studies of Central- and East-European countries: Poland, Hungary, and Romania. All three countries share similarities (the fact that they were all part of the Soviet bloc until 1989), but also notable differences: while in Poland and Hungary, popular dissent with the communist regime was more vocal and visible in the latter half of the ninth decade, the national-communist Romanian regime tried to stifle completely any form of political opposition. The legacy of the Holocaust was also dealt with differently in all three cases, a factor that undoubtedly influenced both the number, and the content of films directly or indirectly representing it. My intention, therefore, is to make a comparative analysis of Holocaust representations in Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian cinema by focus - ing on films made both before, and after 1989, from Andrzej's Wajda's Samson to István Szabó's Sunshine and from Péter Forgács' Free Fall to Radu Gabrea's Gruber's Journey, with the aim of discovering whether the social and political context in which these films were made had any impact on their representation of the Holocaust and, if so, to what extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical cultural practices that no longer exist can have modern day effects. Because communism has been linked with distrust of government, it was hypothesized that (a) historical communism would be negatively associated with COVID-19 vaccination rates, and (b) trust in government would mediate the association. Two studies assessed these hypotheses. Study 1 tested the hypotheses among European, Asian, and African countries, while Study 2 focused on East and West Germany within Europe. All samples except Africa found support for an association between historical communism and lower COVID-19 vaccination rates. However, trust in government did not mediate the association in Study 1, though a significant indirect effect did emerge within Germany in Study 2. Associations held controlling for GDP and age of population. Together, the studies suggest that historical communism in Europe and Asia is associated with real-world behavior today, and that trust in government might be partly responsible for the effect within Germany but less likely within Europe as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The volume Nowe dwudziestolecie (1989–2009): Rozpoznania, hierarchie, perspektywy [The New Twenties (1989–2009): Recognitions, Hierarchies, Perspectives] reflects on the twenty years of Polish literature and literary change between 1989 and 2009, and compares and contrasts this period with the twenty years between the two world wars. The two twentyyear periods are linked by the fact that their starting point is associated with a date of immense importance for Polish history: 1918 is the year when Poland was returned on the map of Europe, and 1989 is also the year of the change of regime in Poland. The period between the two world wars is also regarded as a separate period in Polish literary history, while the second twenty years covered in this volume are questionable as a literary unit, a question which the essays in this book seek to answer. The volume is divided into three large sections, the first focusing primarily on theory, the second on Polish characteristics and themes that characterised Polish literature after 1989, and the third large section on the genre characteristics that have characterised Polish literature since the fall of communism to this day but were also important between the two world wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the period of transition after the fall of communism in the late 1980s, cities in the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) encountered a range of processes that have reshaped their structure and functions. Regeneration effort was a major approach considered as a suitable tool to overcome burdens of the communist urbanistic model, which was typical of high population density, extent public spaces, and resulting in a weak interlink between urban design and the needs of local communities. In this paper, we use the best practice approach and analyse 56 urban regeneration projects carried our between 1989 and 2011 in 12 of the CEECs in order to identify the key issues addressed by regeneration effort and to evaluate the success with which the regeneration projects involved local communities. In addition, the case study based on a questionnaire survey (Neštěmice, Northern Czechia) is presented, illustrating the level of public participation within the regeneration project and perception of project results by the local community. Our results suggest that although there exist important territorial differences among the CEECs, the involvement of local communities in planning and designing the regeneration projects is still generally low. It is also shown that the regeneration projects in post-communist cities are not resolved comprehensively, i.e. that the structures, which are subject to regeneration, are addressed individually with weak relation to community needs and to the surrounding areas of a city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study provides a comprehensive data analysis on total fertility rates, birth rates, life expectancy, percentage share of over 65 year olds, infant mortality rates and adolescent-specific fertility rates, in Russia and Serbia, two decades after the fall of communism and compares it with general values in Europe. The main problems in the demography of Russia and Serbia are connected with economic process, caused by economy transition, from planned economy to the free market, as one of the consequences of the fall. Finally, the authors concluded that the Russian demographic situation is characterized by depopulation processes just like in Serbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following research on transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and having been motivated by arguments pertaining to the business systems approach, the authors propose that the existence of a communist heritage decreases the likelihood that employees will be consulted during organizational change processes. Results based on 23,876 firms across 27 of the European Union (EU-27) countries support this proposition. Moreover, the likelihood of direct consultation decreases with the existence of formal employee representation and an increasing share of foreign ownership in firms located in CEE countries. The authors discuss these findings in the context of organizational democracy research and the recent literature on transition economies and contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of participative decision-making processes in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brawny male workers vs. bulging bourgeois men. Working-class mothers burdened by the hardship of poverty and childcare vs. elegant upper-class women enjoying a lifestyle of privilege. Such juxtaposed images of workers and the rich were prevalent in the visual culture of communism throughout the twentieth century, appearing on posters, illustrations, and other genres of political propaganda across countries and continents. Although these didactic propaganda images have rarely been considered in histories of modernism and the avant-garde, this article argues that they were among the key visual inventions of twentieth-century communist visual culture given their highly innovative aesthetics and juxtaposed structure that provided them a potential to become dialectical. Drawing on examples from interwar Europe and Soviet Russia, this article examines how didactic juxtapositions could become dialectical images, triggering political transformations while also making revolutionary class consciousness visible for the viewer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communism substantially shaped the values and beliefs of those who grew up under its regime. We argue that, after the Soviet Union's collapse and the rapid transition to democracy and capitalism, many older people in post-communist countries continued to abide by an "ethos of equality" that was part of their socialization. These individuals continue to believe that it is the government's responsibility to establish social equality; hence, they should evaluate social and political institutions based on the level of inequality that exists in their country. Using the 2016 European Quality of Life Survey, we examined to what extent levels of social inequality moderated the effects of age on social views and personal outcomes in post-communist and non-communist societies. We found that, especially in highly unequal post-communist societies, older individuals were less satisfied with democracy and trusted societal institutions less than their younger counterparts, whereas this was much less likely to be the case in post-communist countries with low inequality. There was no link between age and social views in non-communist societies, regardless of levels of inequality. Other than suggested by some scholars, inequality did not have any implications for evaluations of one's personal life. The discussion focuses on the implications of our findings and their contributions to current research on social inequality and on the legacy of communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Britain's involvement in the Russian Civil War was an attempt by the greatest maritime power in the world to project power decisively against continental-power Russia; to overturn the Bolshevik Revolution and prevent the spread of communism across Europe. This article briefly examines the Royal Navy's Baltic Campaign during the pivotal year of 1919 and especially during October, with counter-revolutionary White General Nikolai Yudenich's final lunge towards Petrograd. Although the existing literature predominantly ascribes a great moral and strategic victory to modern naval deterrence -- the protection of the Baltic States on the one hand and against German-led forces on the other -- the historical evidence suggest a much more nuanced definition of 'victory'. British sea power was not able to destroy the Red Fleet anchored at Kronstadt, nor secure Yudenich's left flank by overpowering the outlying coastal fortress of Krasanaya Gorka. As a result, the entire White offensive was thrown off-balance and ultimately ill-fated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a critical overview of the latest phase of scholarly engagement with Eurocommunism, firstly, by pointing out the resilience of a 'Cold War framing' in many of the new studies of the phenomenon, secondly, by stressing the resulting blind spots in the assessment of its geographical scope (e.g., the lack of attention paid to Spain, scarce contributions on Eurocommunism's ramifications beyond West Europe). It then proposes a de-centred perspective on the phenomenon that is able to encompass its global roots and outreach, especially regarding the Third World; contrary to the prevalent focus on individual national cases of Eurocommunism, the article calls for a framing of Eurocommunist coordination as a transnational formation, so that both the leading role of Italian communists and the cross-border exchanges that shaped it can factor into a revised scholarly engagement with the topic. From this vantage point, Eurocommunism emerges as a strategy of transition for the global conjuncture of multiple crises that the 1970s represented, one that nevertheless failed to present a viable alternative to neoliberalism, another product of the decade in question. The article concludes by approaching the little explored gender dimension of Eurocommunism, visible in its entanglement with the second-wave feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twentieth century became known as the era of genocides. However, historians do not yet agree on the use of the category of genocide for all mass killings in the twentieth century and still are debating their place in European civilization. My article focuses on the European lieux de mémoire of the genocides within the associative framework of the fundamental question about the material evidence of crime. This framework helps highlight the limits of universalization in European memory politics. In understanding them as a dynamically developing social phenomenon, this article analyses it in two dimensions: the emergence of the memory of the Holocaust as an archetype of genocide, and the crimes of Communism as a rival memory framework in Eastern Europe. In closing, I will return to the incessant search for the material evidence of genocide. This article challenges the general concept of the European lieux de mémoire of the genocide from this point of view as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of the special cluster titled Social practices of remembering and forgetting of the communist past in Central and Eastern Europe, guest edited by Malgorzata Glowacka-GrajperControversies over social memory form an important aspect of reality in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe. On the one hand, there are debates about coming to terms with the communist past and the Second World War that preceded it (because important parts of the memory of the war were “frozen” during the communist era), and, on the other hand, and intimately connected to that, are discussions about the constant influence of communism on the current situation. This article presents some of the main trends in research on collective memory in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and reveals similarities and differences in the process of memorialization of communism in the countries of the region. Although there are works devoted to a comparative analysis of memory usage and its various interpretations in the political sphere in the countries of Eastern Europe, there are still many issues concerning daily practices (economic, religious, and cultural) associated with varying interpretations of the war and the communist past which needs further elaboration and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the fall of communism far-left parties have begun a long process of change, which has transformed their position in the European political systems. Indeed, far-left parties are now important actors in most of the E.U. However, they present different characteristics than in the past. Communist parties have almost disappeared from parliamentary arenas, and, in many countries, new forms of far-left parties have emerged (i.e. social-populist and populistsocialist parties). The aim of this article is to describe the ideological framework of far-left parties in Europe. More specifically, it aims to examine both the demand-side and supplyside factors on which scholars focused in the attempt to explain the birth of these parties and the interactions that led to the development of specific forms of far-left parties. This article concludes with an analysis of three national cases, namely Spain, Portugal and Italy. The three countries belong to a similar context characterised by a profound economic crisis. However, despite many common features, in the three cases different forms of far-left parties have developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Vatican II was convened as an ecumenical council, most Orthodox autocephalous churches initially refused to send observers without full voting rights. For non-theological reasons, Russia was the exception that sent observers to the first session. Other Orthodox churches followed suit at later sessions. Despite their inability to vote or speak at plenaries, Orthodox delegates contributed to the Council’s documents, ecumenical openness, attitude towards communism, and from a humanitarian perspective. By granting Orthodox observers a prominent role, Vatican II represents a model of ecumenical integration in the conciliar process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socialist cities have most often been studied as manifestations of the socialist system itself, linked to the political fate of the Communist Parties in power during their design, construction, and expansion. This article revisits the socialist city and argues for the validity of the concept historically and in the present. Looking qualitatively at this distinct paradigm in Europe, two analytical frameworks are offered, infrastructural thinking and the socialist scaffold. The analysis shows that the universal aspiration for socialist cities was their continuous operation as synchronized instruments of economic production and social transformation in physical space. Distinct from capitalist cities, they had an ideological role in an economic model that instrumentalized cities as nodes in an integrated system, described using Stephen Kotkin’s term, “single entity.” The agency of the socialist scaffold has continued into the era of neoliberalism, shown here to have previously unexplored roots in socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the constitutions of European post-communist countries with regard to religious references as of July 2017 and ethno-symbolism. Topics include the 1990 meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on post-communist constitutionalism and religious freedom, the differences in the constitutions, and religious history of the European countries. Also discussed are the theory of entho-symbolism and the factors that affected the adoption of the constitutions.

Research on informal aspects of the post-communist economy and political institutions has developed rapidly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While there is no lack in research on informal practices in Russia and other Eastern European countries, comprehensive empirical investigations of informality in peripheral regions of the former Soviet Union—such as the Caucasus and Central Asia—are still rare. This article aims to fill this gap by providing an evidence-based empirical account of informal practices in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Drawing its empirical data from a two-decade-long ethnographic participant observation carried out in various locales of Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, this study offers nuanced insights into the hitherto unexplored informal practice oftapsh. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introduction scrutinizes the numerous studies that deal with the memory of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and it identifies two major fault lines. The first concerns the level of analysis. A large body of work favours top-down approaches and focuses on the institutions and policies that govern the communist past. Conversely, another set of studies opts for bottom-up approaches that address the social representations and practices related to that past. The second fault line concerns the conception of the presence of the communist past, regarded either as a permanent legacy from the past (primordialist perspective) or as an instrument mobilized for political aims (instrumentalist perspective). In order to bridge these divides, the authors advocate approaching memories through the public policy instruments that are designed and implemented to deal with the past. Adhering to the notion that policy instruments are not purely technical and neutral devices but in fact carry interpretations of the ‘problem’ to be solved, this approach offers insights into what constrains social practices linked to the communist past, and how individuals put up with these constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article creates a conceptual and methodological framework for reading case studies. First, it conceptualizes life story and oral history as medium of memory of the twentieth century. Second, it demonstrates how individual, social, and political formats and dimensions of memory intersect in remembering the Baltic socialism. Third, it shows how in a common attempt to remember the socialist past, groups and individuals encounter considerable differences of temporal horizon as well as differences in attributing importance to experiences and events. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The EU is facing its biggest threat yet-a crisis of European identity. As member states fall into the hands of Eurosceptic and nationalist regimes, for many the future of the Union seems hopeless. People are disillusioned, failing to see the added value in the community of nations they once voted to join. Institutions are struggling, unable to regain their citizens' trust, or even to reach them at all. This new crisis requires a new way of thinking-instead of supporting the institutional machine, the EU must support the people. It needs to place trust in the awakening civil society, endorsing and funding grass-roots movements such as the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, which in a matter of days managed to ignite the biggest mass protests in Poland since the fall of Communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the rise of Poland's Law and Justice party (PiS), focusing on the contemporary authoritarian populism in the country. Topics include a movement to protest infringement of democratic norms, the use of the Syrian refugee crisis for criticism of British government and European Commission, and the aftermath of communism's failure in 1898.

This article posits four key challenges to address the question as to why logistics reform in Communist-legacy defense institutions has been so slow. First, what is the conceptual foundation for logistics in these countries? Second, what is the general state of national logistics capabilities in these countries? Third, why has the reform of logistics in these post-Communist legacy defense institutions been so slow and superficial? Fourth, in an attempt to understand the problem better, what do legacy defense institutions need to do themselves in order to be able to adopt modern Western logistics concepts? Conversely, what do donor nations need to understand about these legacy logistics organizations the better to enable them to understand the immense gap that divides Communist from Western logistics concepts? In addressing these questions, the author will argue two points. First, logistics reform has been impeded to date by a lack of appreciation on the part of particularly Western officials that legacy logistics concepts could not be more antithetical to their Western counterparts. Second, reform of legacy logistics organizations will not follow from attention and resources directed at tactical-level formations and importing the expeditionary logistics concept. Rather, the causation of the continued inability to adopt Western logistics concepts can be found in nationallevel policy, financing, laws, and regulations that continue to enable the operation of legacy concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the collapse of communism, political radicalism has been an important part of the political scene in Europe. The 2008 financial crisis furthered this trend, giving rise to new waves of radicalization. Albania appears to be a curious exception to this trend. Unlike most other countries in Eastern Europe, there have been no successful radical parties in Albania since the collapse of communism in 1991. In the same fashion, social protests in Albania in recent years have been fleeting and far less radical than other protest movements in other countries in the region (Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey). This article argues that the relative lack of political radicalization in Albania is due to its traumatic communist past combined with a high level of bipolarization. The bitter experience with national–communism reduced the attractiveness of both far right and far left discourses in Albania. The high levels of political bipolarization, on the other hand, divided the Albanian political sphere into two antagonistic camps. Such a deep division subsumed other possible cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including religion and politics in Europe, legacy of the post-communist states and Buddhism in Mongolia.

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of military reform in Albania from the fall of communism until its NATO accession in 2009. It argues that to account for Albania’s military reform trajectory, it is crucial to retrace the interest formation process of its post-authoritarian elites. By examining parliamentary debates and newspaper coverage, the article demonstrates that elite interests in military reform were shaped by their framing of Albania’s authoritarian past and transition crises. Specifically, the framing of the military during communism as politicized in conjunction with the interpretation of the 1997 crisis and 1999 Kosovo war as military failures caused by politicization enabled elites to view military reform as crucial to democracy and pave the way for its consolidation. Besides explaining Albania’s military reform, this article establishes a new research venue bridging security, democratization and transition studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the struggle for survival of Muslims and Islam in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under the country's communist leader Josip Broz Tito from the 1950s through the 1970s. An overview of Yugoslavian religious policies, including in regard to the religious diversity in the country, is provided.

This study uses comparative data from the European Social Survey to investigate the influence of selftranscendence and conservation values on public support for the welfare state. The results firstly show that these value dimensions are strongly related to welfare state support in the majority of the countries investigated. The main contribution of this study, however, is that it evidences striking differences between countries regarding which values drive welfare attitudes, and the strength of the association between values and attitudes. Moreover, we show that the between-country variation in value effects is systematically related to contextual factors. Self-transcendence values are found to be a strong predictor of welfare state support in countries with high levels of social expenditure. In the less generous welfare states of Eastern Europe, the effects of self-transcendence values are weaker or absent. In Eastern European countries, conservation rather than self-transcendence values drive attitudes to the welfare state. Outspoken cohort differences in value effects in Eastern European countries as well as persisting differences between East and West Germany confirm our interpretation that the particular Eastern European pattern can be ascribed to the unique experiences of 'authoritarian egalitarianism' under communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Finland was invaded by the USSR in 1939, it was a 'quiet corner' of Europe little known to most British socialists. Amidst the mass of publicity and polemic that the ensuing Winter War provoked, this article focuses on the delegation sent to Finland by the National Council of Labour in January-February 1940. In particular it focuses on the TUC general secretary Walter Citrine and his book My Finnish Diary, published as a Penguin Special. In these and other contemporary texts, Finland was depicted as a model democracy in a conception that was antagonistic to communism internationally and could justify the suppression of communist activities domestically. The moment was not to last and with the Anglo-Soviet alliance of the later war years Finland, now an ally of Nazi Germany, was once more largely forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the exceptionalism of housing during the early communist period in Romania, in particular the extent to which the regime's ambivalent policies regarding housing undermined the overall political and ideological goal of dismantling private property. Focusing on appropriations, restitutions and new construction in the city of Timi¸oara and the surrounding region, the article emphasises conflicting and inconsistent policies regarding housing and the consequences of these policies. Housing's double meaning as home and asset further complicated the overall ideological mission of denaturalising bourgeois private property, and provided a basis for the continuing relevance of pre-communist legal ideologies and consciousness of property rights during this period. The article is based on documentary and archival research conducted in the city of Timi¸oara, Romania, in 2007–2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Sino-Soviet dispute had considerably weakened Moscow's supremacy in world communism, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was keen on restoring control and unity. But he soon discovered that his meaning of unity did not exactly coincide with what others had in mind. West European communists were striving to accommodate social principles to domestic conditions so, as to be able to accede to government. They advocated for each party's right to make their own decisions independently and alsofor an enlargement of world communism beyond its initial sectarianism. Their cause was vulnerable though as internationalism was still an important part of their political identity, apart from the fact that Moscow did subsidize most of them. In the second half of the 1960s though, a new voice joined those asking for reform in world communism: Nicolae Ceau?escu, a leader of the Romanian Communist Party. Interested to promote his country's autonomy in the Soviet bloc, Ceaujescu had no reason to support Moscow's efforts to regain control. Instead, Ceau$escu developed close relations with West European Communist parties and assumed some of their ideological tenets, trying tofend off Soviet domination. This way, although he never was a Eurocommunist, Ceau$escu did play an important part in the ideological debates that were later to produce Eurocommunism, defending West European arguments in front of Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the 200,000 exiles who fled Chile after the coup, between one third and one half went to Eastern and Western Europe. They arrived in the midst of some of the most turbulent years in Europe since the Second World War, manifest in both street violence and radical intellectual currents. The European milieu, especially through the more moderate political programs offered by Eurocommunism, attracted many of the refugees, traumatized as they were by state violence in their own country, and already questioning the ideals they had held so strongly. We argue that these moderate programs of social reform that the returning exiles brought back with them were highly influential in forming the coalition of centrist partners which supported the center-left Concertación government, and helped maintain a stable and reasonably popular government in Chile for a further 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate morality in relation to the public good in post-socialist Europe. Public good morality is defined as the (non)acceptance of behaviour that contravenes the law and harms society and the greater good of the collective, such as cheating on taxes if one has the chance, paying cash to avoid taxes, not paying one's fare in public transport, and claiming state benefits one is not entitled to. Using data from the European Values Study in 2008 on more than 30,000 respondents in 23 post-socialist states, we find that on average the level of public good morality is quite high: 8.4 on a ten-point scale. However, there are marked differences between individuals and between countries, which we attempt to explain by looking at the legacy of communist rule, processes of democratization and compliance attitudes. We find that individuals living in former Soviet states are more 'lenient' when it comes to actions that harm the collective. However, those who lived under communist rule for a longer time display higher (and not lower) levels of public good morality. The level of democracy in a country does not seem to add any explanatory power, but individuals who hold more democratic values appear to be morally less strict. Finally, compliance attitudes such as interpersonal trust and confidence in government do not seem to mediate the observed relationships between communist rule and democracy on the one hand and public good morality on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past centuries Bulgarian people experienced severe religious and ethnic threats due to which they have developed defense mechanisms and a strong sense of sympathy for persecuted ethnic and social groups. In recent history, this reflex was manifested most clearly in the behavior of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in defense of the Bulgarian Jews. At the same time two other events, however, reveal its controversial image that caused it a severe damage. In recent years, many Bulgarians are seeking the moral dimensions of these phenomena that influence the spirituality and morality of the younger generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the fall of the Communist parties' regimes, the Central/South-East Europe countries have, inter alia, tried to reorganize their local government systems in the manner that would be closer to democratic principles or principles that were accepted in so called Western Europe. A comparative analysis of this article is focused on local government systems which have been introduced in the Czech Republic, FYR of Macedonia, Slovakia and Slovenia and, within this context, especially on positions of the political representatives, who are elected at the local levels in these countries. Due to similar socio-political and economic history of these countries in the 20th century as well as due to their efforts to become members of the European Union, it is possible to assume that they have introduced similar local government systems. However, as stressed in the article, similar ideas and comparable ways of their implementation may produce different outcomes in different environments. Thus, despite the fact that the processes, which should lead to their achievement, were often supported by various international organizations and despite a manifested desire of the selected countries to join the EU, they have introduced significantly different local government systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a sustained examination of how the vicissitudes of the Cold War shaped changing interpretations of the Spanish Civil War in Britain. Considering the perspectives of participants and historians, it focuses on the diverse strands of the Left that frequently drew on the civil war to attack each other and to make wider arguments about the global Cold War. First, with the aim of criticizing Communist take-overs in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, the article analyzes retrospective assaults on Communist party tactics and Soviet foreign policy in Spain. Second, in order to argue that the Soviet Union took a counter-revolutionary line after 1956, it investigates the re-emergence of debates over the Spanish revolution. Third, to express disapproval of the United States, it examines the increasing use of the civil war as an analogy in Cold War international affairs from the 1960s. Fourth, in support of non-Soviet Left-of-Centre collaboration, most notably Eurocommunism in the 1970s and opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the 1980s, it considers the renewed emphasis on the popular front. The trajectories of these debates reveal that, over time, the weight of the Left’s criticism moved from the Soviet Union towards the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]