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This paper seeks to outline recent trends in historical research on disability during state socialism in Eastern Europe. In doing so, it explores how an emerging generation of historians have investigated various aspects of disability in Eastern Europe before 1989 and raises the question of whether there was a distinct experience of disability under state socialism. Drawing on studies published in English and German, the paper traces both Soviet discourses and practices after 1917 and Central and Eastern European trajectories after 1945. It argues that disability policies and expert discourses were informed by a productivist logic as a governing strategy to increase work capacity and to integrate the disabled into socialist society. The paper concludes by discussing the need for a transnational, comparative approach for conceptualising how disability was construed during communism in Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a case for analyzing the way in which the novel of Communism is approached by Mihai Iovănel in his History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020. This is a topic that was intensely discussed by Romanian literary criticism in Post-communism and represents the weakness of Romanian literature, either by it not being able to give a sufficiently convincing novel, or by not being able to agree upon how this novel should look. Accordingly, the critics had difficulties in labeling any novel that had been published after ‘89s as “the novel of communism.” The first part of the article is a panning of recent discussions about this term in relation to the analysis made by Iovănel in his History. The second part aims to trace out a network of this type of novel in the literatures of Central and Eastern Europe and to try to identify its particularities through a comparative analysis. The last part consists of a study case of the novels Acasă, pe câmpia Armaghedonului [At home, on the Field of Armageddon] by Marta Petreu and Bureți de Fag [Oyster Mushrooms] by Mihai Duțescu. The latter has been published after the History and both novels are analyzed from the perspective of the novel of communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of the former Eastern Bloc and China's ways of dealing with the social implications of rock music as an alien cultural import from the West reveals significant analogies. The paper traces the process of politicisation of rock music and compares the two different cultural spaces by mapping each space's state ideology, aesthetic traditions and identities, and discriminative political and economic tools used to marginalise rock. Here the term politicisation refers mainly to the polarisation between the communist regimes' restrictive policies, and the attempts of the rock scenes to sustain their discriminating characteristics and relationship to protest. While in European communist states rock played a relevant subversive role, conversely, in China any 'rocking' of the state has largely been averted. The Chinese rock scene as an off-mainstream urban subculture has received less popular support than its counterpart in Europe and has also proved less politically significant. This comparative case study discusses the relationship between popular music and politics by tracing analogies and differences between the former Czechoslovakia, where the ideologisation and politicisation of rock reached the highest point in the Eastern Bloc, and contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since communism's collapse, Central and Eastern Europe adopted neoliberal reforms for democratization and market integration. However, democratic institutions in many countries have backslid. Scholars debate neoliberalism's impacts and the rise of oligarchs concentrating wealth and distorting democracy. This review analyzes 50 sources from 1990-2020 through meta-analysis. Literature is assessed regarding neoliberalization's mechanisms and effects. Privatization concentrated assets in politically-connected oligarchs, enabling state capture constraining competition. Deregulation empowered economic elites with disproportionate political influence, distorting representation toward oligarchic over public interests. Evidence partially supports the hypothesis that neoliberalism benefiting oligarchs distorted democracy, contributing to backsliding. However, grassroots resistance offers alternatives. Further research could integrate local case studies and frameworks focused on equitable distribution rather than growth alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Post-communist health care reforms and the break-up of Czechoslovakia have been studied from various perspectives, but little research has addressed the impact on health system performance. This paper investigates the quality and performance of the Slovak and Czech health systems before and after 1989, including the year of separation in 1993, using the concept of ‘avoidable’ mortality.Methods Age-standardized mortality rates for mortality from ‘avoidable’ and other (non-avoidable) causes have been calculated through indirect standardization to study national and regional trends between 1971 and 2008.Results The paper shows that ‘avoidable’ mortality in both countries has been continuously decreasing while mortality from other causes has remained unchanged or increased slightly. For some ‘avoidable’ conditions, mortality rates of the two countries converge while for others divergence can be observed, with either the Czech Republic or Slovakia performing better.Conclusion Declines in overall ‘avoidable’ mortality suggest improvements in the health system’s performance and quality of care in both countries, compared with mortality from other causes where factors outside the control of the health care system may be stronger determinants. For conditions where ‘avoidable’ mortality rates stagnate or increase, more in-depth research should be carried out to identify problems in the delivery of timely and effective prevention and treatment, and to establish steps that would reduce the numbers of unnecessary deaths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Political Science Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

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]

This paper provides an event-history analysis of recruitment into the Communist Party between 1945 and 1988 in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech and Slovak Socialist Republics. Despite evidence that gender discrimination in Party recruitment processes eased in some of these countries, women remained significantly less likely than men to enter the political arena via the Communist Party across the region. The findings also indicate that class background and parents' political affiliation figured less prominently in Party recruitment processes in Eastern Europe over time. Prior incumbency in a position of authority, including that of supervisor, not only had a positive effect on the odds' of joining the Party but was greater than the effect of prior professional status, indicating that professionals were not especially likely to join the Party in Eastern Europe despite open efforts to recruit technically trained personnel. Education, however, had a large and stable effect on Party recruitment, with the absence of change in the coefficients for education across time suggesting that communist authorities imposed educational criteria on new recruits from their first years in power. Overall, the findings indicate the existence of two paths of entry into the Communist Parties of Eastern Europe, one through educational institutions and the other up the vertical chain of command within the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the American Cold-War imaginary, the representation of Eastern Europe was strongly influenced by male intellectuals and writers from the region, whose works were celebrated in the US not only for their artistic merits but most of all for their political import. As prominent émigrés like Czesław Miłosz explained the region to the Western intellectual public, native-born authors like Philip Roth contributed to shaping the Eastern European literary canon in the US by promoting Kafka, Konwicki, Kundera and other undeniably great if predominantly male authors. In this essay, I take a closer look at the imaginative geographies of the European East in the texts by John Updike, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Patricia Hampl, and Eva Hoffman. I argue that while these imaginative geographies are indeed typified by a male figure, which frequently oscillates between the opposite poles of dissidence and conformism, the female figures should not be overlooked. The portrayal of women in the texts under study uncovers (and at times challenges) the fantasies, fears and concerns driving the East-West encounters which these texts dramatize, while at the same time providing interesting insights into gender and social dynamics behind and beyond the Iron Curtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a paper on economic reform in post-communist countries analysing what factors determined which enterprises and which sectors received subsidized credit.

DEMOCRATIZATION TERM IS USED IN SOCIOLOGY IN A VAGUE SENSE, IGNIFYING THE PASSAGE OF A STATE AWAY FROM NON-DEMOCRATIC REGIME TO A DEMOCRATIC ONE. IN THE PRESENT PAPER WE WANT TO PRESENT MEANING OF THE WORD DEMOCRATIZATION, STARTING FROM ITS ORIGINS AND REACHING MEANING OF THE TERM TODAY. OUR SCIENTIFIC APPROACH FOCUSES ON THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM AND THE TRANSITION COUNTRIES OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE TO DEMOCRACY. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at a conference held May 11-12, 2012 at the Center for Historical Studies and Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary, titled "East Central Europe in the Twentieth Century. Roundtable on the State of the Art of Historical Studies," is presented. Topics include regional intellectual history, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and communism in East Central Europe.

In 1996, an paper by Gerhard Lenski appeared in the Czech Sociological Review entitled, "Ecological-Evolutionary Theory and Societal Transformation in Post-Communist Europe". This article is a critical response to it and what the author sees as Lenski's changing and flawed interpretation of social reality, as can be followed in his work dating hack to 1978. The author criticises Lenski's theoretical perspectives, and also the scientific methods by which he arrives at his "Ecological-Evolutionary Theory". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on global social policy actors and the shaping of East European welfare. With the collapse of the Cold War and the historic defeat of a particular statist and command economy version of socialism, the world has entered a new phase. On the one hand, there are possibilities of the emergence of numerous national rivalries, or regional trade wars, and of the growth of racism and liberalism. On the other hand, there is now the opportunity for the emergence of an effective global politics that will not be so much concerned with the protection of national sovereignties, but rather with intervention in the global economic system to improve the well-being of the world's population. Beyond the crippling ossification of the claims and counterclaims of existing capitalism and existing socialism that have marked the past seventy years, there is now a chance for the search for global and social justice and for the meeting of more of the human needs of more of the world's population. Factors other than the collapse of the Cold War impel this development. An increasing global concern with sustainable growth that no longer threatens the environment and the future is one important factor.

We analyze the long-term effects of communism on both policies and preferences in Eastern Europe in four areas in which the communist and capitalist doctrines fundamentally differ: government intervention in markets, political freedom, and inequality in incomes and across genders. Macroeconomic indicators related to these areas show convergence of the East to the West. However, residents in the East express less support for democracy and a stronger desire for redistribution, in line with the communist doctrine. Their preferences for the market economy are on average similar to the ones in the West, and their support of female labor force participation is even lower. To establish an effect of communism on preferences, we recur to cohort differences. In all four areas, older cohorts in the East who have lived under communism for a longer time show preferences more in line with communism than younger cohorts, compared to the same cohort gradient in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses ways in which difficult changes in Eastern Europe have allowed Japan to become an economic power. Eastern Europe's financial crises have arisen due to troubles transitioning to free markets and capitalism. American policy makers who have acknowledged the financial problems of countries such as the Soviet Union or Germany have also realized they can implant Japanese money in the place of European money. In the same time that communism is on the verge of extinction as a viable species of government, Japan has undergone changes nearly as significant to international relations as those of the Soviet bloc. Advantages to Japan's economic involvement in Western markets are discussed.

This article discusses the effects of communist industrial pollution in Eastern Europe. A nightmarish panorama spreads out from the hillock near Bilina, Czechoslovakia. A gigantic black pit, the Gorky strip coal mine, runs on the left all the way to the horizon. Faced with such economic uncertainties, leaders intensely debate how to balance economic reforms with environmental cleanup and protection. Whether the revolutions in Central Europe ultimately succeed or fail is a matter of global concern. Regional stability depends on these governments establishing their legitimacy, says Frank Loy, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and for eight years president of the Environmental Defense Fund -- and that legitimacy depends on solving environmental problems. Loy speaks of success as "clinching the Cold War." INSET: From dissident to deputy.

We develop a simple model to study the effect of age structure on the interactions between the state and dissidents. Younger populations are more prone to protest. As the population grows younger, states that can discriminately target repression to different groups, but cannot concede discriminately, decrease repression. In contrast, states that can target concession, but not repression, increase repression. We test these results in nonmilitary single-party regimes and military regimes without political parties. Moreover, we study state response to dissent in East European communist regimes in the late 1980s, showing that state response was more repressive in countries with younger populations. ( JEL D74) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collapse of communism in Central and Southeastern Europe has given rise to various myths and debates. This article undertakes to examine and debunk two myths and to summarise and assess four debates. The two myths are, first, that no one foresaw the collapse of communism or offered any clear prediction of that eventuality in the decade preceding 1989, and, second, that what occurred in the region between 1989 and 1991 could not be described as a revolution since, allegedly, it was masterminded by the communist authorities themselves; this article refutes these two myths. The four debates concern whether to describe the processes of change since 1989 as a transition or a transformation, what to count as democratic consolidation, and what to understand as the reasons for differences in paths of transition (or transformation), and as reasons for differences in the level of success with democratisation. The article includes some comparative measures of regional progress since 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is some ambiguity in approaching the concept of democracy wave, especially when we talk about the period of the third wave and the beginning of a possible fourth one. We will try to underline the main views related to the extent of the third wave of democracy and the possibility of the occurrence of a fourth one which, although it does not comply with the classical theory of the waves, must be evaluated separately because of some special features, distinct from those of democracies included in the previous wave. We consider it is necessary to refer to the fourth wave, as represented by the countries from the Central and Eastern Europe that have followed a common line of action during the transition and which, with inherent peculiarities, have established some very important goals: building democracy, restoration the freedom of the citizens, the adoption of a market economy and the integration into the European and global structures.As we have shown, there are enough arguments to hold up this view. There are also some counter-arguments, which could challenge the assumption that the fourth wave was triggered by the transitions of the Warsaw Pact countries. The main problem is that there wasn't clearly defined an opposite wave able to show a regression in the democratization of the third wave [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The museum stands for a social and cultural testimonial deposit of history, which is greatly influenced by the State policy of the country. During communism, throughout many countries of Eastern Europe, museums played an ideological part, enforcing the Marxist-Leninist dogma and the socialist lifestyle into the people's minds. Nowadays, Bulgaria does not possess a socialism-profiled museum; however there are institutions, museums and temporary exhibitions, both State-owned and private, which display communist artifacts. The article herein sets off to describe them both in a few words and resorting to a few pictures. It also aims at emphasizing their role, which is to analytically and critically point to the past ideologies and events, to the past culture and civilization, in order to synthesize and build a glorious future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the state’s role in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Among the countries, Poland is perceived as the leader because it was the first economy to emerge from the decline following the transition, as well the only EU member state to survive the crisis without a recession. This success is often attributed to the high quality of government. However, we show that this popular perception is false and that state malfunctions on numerous fronts may soon impede Polish growth prospects. In Poland, the only bright spot is the quality of the financial supervision, which should serve as a role model for other countries. We attribute the malfunctions to the EU accession period that resulted in an unchecked growth of the government and contributed to the weakening of political and legal institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the downfall of the Soviet Union and the Communist regimes in 1989 in Eastern European satellite states. The author argues that this collapse and the subsequent end of the Cold War mainly came about because of foreign policy reforms instituted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as opposed to increased public opposition to Communist rule in these countries. The relationship between policy, protest, and a lack of dedication among Communist leaders within the Warsaw Pact countries is explored.

Copyright of Politologija is the property of Vilnius University 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 essay on the Czech experimental theater project called Bílé Divadlo, or White Theatre, is presented, focusing on the period 1970 to 1976. It examines the actors' resistance to the Soviet communist regime, exploring rhetorical and inventional practices and the construction of reality. The author examines the effects of the Prague Spring movement and the role of Czech leader Alexander Dubček. He also comments on project members František Hrdlička and Zdena Bratršovská.

In this two-part conversation between two former dissidents and key political thinkers of the 1970s–80s democratic opposition in the region, conducted nearly 20 years after the end of communism, Michnik prompts Havel to revisit the momentous events of the Prague Spring of 1968, the politics of the Kremlin vis-à-vis the region, and the emergence of the human-rights-based initiative known as Charter 77. The situation in Russia under Putin, and the surfacing of a cohesive new authoritarianism called by Michnik Putinism, are discussed, along with the challenges of a young democracy infected by cynicism, compliance, and an addiction to the narrative that emerges from the files produced by the secret police. The second part of the conversation centers around Havel’s recent dramaturgical work that deals with questions of the loss of power and sudden political change. This two-part conversation was conducted on November 16, and November 17, 2008 at the Warsaw offices of Gazeta Wyborcza, before a large audience. The entire text was published in Gazeta Wyborcza on November 18, 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structural changes brought about by the collapse of the communist system also included the reconfiguration of social memory, so that future generations have a more objective imagining of the impact of the communist period on the societies from Central and Eastern Europe. In this view, the depoliticization of recent history is a top priority. The present study aims to highlight the way in which the schoolbooks in Romania bring into the memory of the young generation a strictly secret episode in recent (pre-1990) history: anti-communist dissent. Two categories of methods were used: researching the data and information contained in history textbooks and other bibliographic sources on anti-communist dissent in Romania in the overall socio-political context of that era; and assessing—with the help of a set of surveys—the degree of assimilation by young people in Romania of the knowledge about communism conveyed through textbooks. Research points to the conclusion that the Romanian curriculum and textbooks provide an objective picture of the communist period in this country, but young people's perception of communism in general and of Romanian communism in particular tends to be distorted by poor education, poverty and surrounding mentalities rooted in that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in most parts of Central and Eastern Europe, there is a tradition in Hungary of changing street names and memorials in the wake of major political transitions. This article focuses on the change of street names and memorials, i.e. the city-text, in Hungary’s political capital, Budapest, between 1985 and 2001. The city-text in Budapest became a locus of dispute between different political authorities, including the nation state, the metropolitan municipality, and the district, each bearing different political ideals during and after the fall of communism. Discursive changes in the post-communist city-text emerged expressing specific conceptions of national sovereignty, but the direction of the changes were debated. Different levels of administration in Budapest and Hungary had divergent visions of what the new discourse on national sovereignty should be. The changes, therefore, did not express a simple transition to an agreed-upon post-communist value system, but were the result of a symbolic struggle between different levels of administration over what should be commemorated in the city-text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Factors that have made it difficult for post-communist East European societies to integrate the Holocaust into their historical cultures include the communist heritage, which downplayed the specifically Jewish Holocaust; sensitivity to charges that a nation was complicit in the murder of the Jews; the framing of East European histories as national narratives into which it is difficult to incorporate the experience of other nations; the feeling that Jewish suffering is recognized, while that of other East Europeans is not; the positive re-evaluation of the interwar and wartime politics and culture after the collapse of communism; the survival and revival of anti-Semitism, with new inputs from the Middle East and from Western Holocaust deniers; the construction in the West of the Holocaust as a centrepiece of twentieth-century history; the influence of East European diasporas; the embedment of the discourse on the Holocaust in the political divide between nativists and Westernizers; the deployment of accusations of Holocaust collaboration as an instrument of foreign policy; and debate over the restitution of confiscated Jewish property. Often these factors come together into a reinforcing discursive structure. The essay's conclusion suggests how to overcome these obstacles to the integration of the Holocaust into East European histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the diverging realm of Eastern Europe, the Republic of Belarus demonstrates one of the most extreme examples of 'distorted' transition. In addition to preserving numerous elements of the former political, nepotistic and quota-based state-controlled system, the slow process of restructuring of the inherited communist institutions in Belarus is coupled with the state's attempt at conserving the phenomenon of 'Soviet' Belarus. In this context identity positions are more likely to be manifested in terms of the current state ideology, which leads us to consider the possibly anomalous case of business people. The question posed in this article is how officially sanctioned sets of meanings reflected in the official mass media inter-relate with the identity positions adopted by the emerging new societal stratum of entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The household composition matrix is a representation of the demographic structure of households, specific to age groups of household members and household heads. As such, the matrix reflects also the environmental conditions, housing in particular, that mould households' demographic structure. By specifically depicting the presence of children in households, household composition could be viewed as gauging fertility within the context of housing conditions. This stance is examined in an application to Czech census data for the year 1991, at the commencement of an intense process of socioeconomic transformation that accompanied the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe. Within this process, housing had an inadvertent impact upon the structure of households in general, and upon fertility decline in particular. By using the standard matrix representation of household composition, correspondence between trajectories of age-specific fertility and household composition emerge throughout the Czech Republic. This correspondence illustrates the potential household composition analysis carries for fertility measurement and estimation in rapidly changing economic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the plight of the Gypsies or the Roma, the largest minority group in Europe. Information on the European arrival of the Roma from India; Actions taken by European and international institutions to address Roma problems; Impact of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe on the living conditions for the Roma.

This article investigates the problem of Anti-politics and the spirit of capitalism, dissidents, monetarists and Czech Republic's transition to capitalism, as of February 1, 2000. The argument is that the type of capitalism to emerge after the fall of communism was determined by struggles and alliances in the late communist field of power. Dissidence is an existential attitude, not a profession. The best way to describe the identity of these individuals is as "internal exile." Monetary policy is not only a technology to govern economic life. These dissidents invited monetarists to join them during the roundtable negotiations between the regime proved highly significant for destinies of both groups and for Czecho-Slovak politics.

After the demise of state socialism, public space became an issue of contention that occupied an important place within societies' efforts to come to terms with the recent past. Extant scholarship documented extensively how postcommunist societies in Central and Eastern Europe have reconfigured the public space by removing the symbolic presence of the former regime (e.g., monuments and statues, but also place- and street names). However, there is a scarcity of research done on exploring the reception of these broad changes brought to the public statuary and urban nomenclature. In this study, we aim to contribute to this nascent strand of literature by investigating the generational differences in social attitudes towards the symbolic transformation of public space in postcommunist Romania. Data collected through a national web-survey conducted in February 2021 (n = 1156) revealed significant intergenerational differences regarding the removal of monuments and the renaming of streets. In particular, higher approval of such memory work was found among the generations born during communism in comparison to the postcommunist generation. Taking stock of these generational differences, as well as the factors underpinning them, contributes to a better understanding of how ordinary people relate to the politics of memory enacted in transforming societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on postcommunist developments in Eastern Europe. The short period of euphoria brought by the years 1989 and 1990 to the countries of Eastern Europe has been followed by a feeling of deep worry concerning their future. It is true that the first analyses by impartial though sympathetic observers pointed to the fact that the transformation of these societies would be a difficult and probably long-lasting process. In this respect, the analysts were of the same opinion as the active participants in the revolutions. It seems that they somehow forgot the specific economic and social heritage of East European and, to a lesser extent, Central European countries. These early analysts naturally concentrated on the opening of the doors to democracy that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet-bloc regimes. The optimistic scenario of the development of postcommunist societies has been realized only in part, at the same time, the whole of Europe is threatened by the simultaneity of integration and disintegration processes.

Suggests that many political groups supported by former communists have been successful in Eastern Europe. Problems highlighted by the success of these political groups; Lack of effective legal systems; Effect of pressures from international economic systems.

Focuses on factors that has influenced decommunization in Central and Eastern Europe. Outline of major characteristics; Efforts to bring to justice former agents of the state security services and communist officials charged with communist activities; History of political repression; Function as a tool in the struggle for political power; Exploitation of communism.