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Do long-term propaganda and indoctrination undermine media trust? Building on studies of communist legacies, I examine whether trust in media in post-communist countries can be explained by past or contemporaneous experiences. I find that trust in media is lower in post-communist countries, but this trust deficit is more likely a consequence of the post-communist period. It is higher among authoritarian regimes, which suggests that contemporaneous experiences matter; citizens with longer exposure to communism trust the media more; finally, the deficit grows as the communist past becomes more distant. These findings have implications for institutional development in the post-communist world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese Kurisu Kei (1910–2009) and the Bulgarian Nikola Aleksiev (1909–2002) never met. They were devoted to communism (for which they were imprisoned several times) and at the same time enthused about Esperanto. In 1933–34, Kurisu received a coded warning from a Soviet citizen (a veteran Communist and Esperantist) against Stalin's terror regime. Kurisu put this experience aside for a long time. In the 1930s, he used Esperanto to spread Georgi Dimitrov's plea for an anti-fascist popular front in Japan. He became a renowned translator from Czech literature and maintained a worldwide correspondence. It was not until 1951 that he left the Japanese Communist Party. His Esperanto involvement contributed significantly to the departure from communist beliefs. In 1992, after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, he got in touch with Aleksiev, who had been a leading figure for the party in Bulgaria and for the Esperanto movement as well. Kurisu accused him of having unswervingly defended the imperialist policy of the Soviet Union. Aleksiev exercised some self-criticism. He admitted that communist rule had not been brought down by the class enemy , but by its own mistakes and crimes , and recalled an old taboo: the murder of Soviet Esperantists under Stalin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to the debate on the rise of independents in local politics and the underlying factors driving this trend in Europe by investigating the situation in Czechia, a post-communist country with a highly fragmented local government system. This study uses statistical analyses of electoral data from the 2010, 2014 and 2018 local elections to test the relevance of supply-side and demand-side explanations of the rise of independents. The analysis results show that the political strength of independents in Czech local elections has steadily increased during the last decade. Both tested theoretical models are valid but the effects of supply-side and demand-side factors are highly conditioned by municipalities' population sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How effective was Soviet secularization and what is its long-term legacy? This paper investigates the lasting effects of Khrushchev's Virgin Lands Campaign (1950s) on the current level of Orthodox religiosity in eastern Russia using an original district (raion)-level dataset that combines historical and contemporary evidence. By employing various matching techniques and an instrumental variable approach, I identify significant effects of the Virgin Lands cultivation on diminishing the role of religion even 60 years later. Moreover, I demonstrate that the resettlement of Communist Youth League (Komsomol) members and the destruction of traditional social relations may have worked as key mechanisms that contributed to the legacy effects. This study offers one of the first micro-level empirical investigations into the impact of Communism-driven secularization, and contributes to the emerging inquiry into the historical legacy of communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Critique of Gotha Programme, Karl Marx famously argues that a communist society will be characterised by the principle, 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!' I take up a question about this principle that was originally posed by G.A. Cohen, namely: what makes communism (so conceived) possible for Marx? In reply to this question, Cohen interprets Marx as saying that communism is possible because of limitless abundance, a view that Cohen takes to be implausible for ecological reasons. I develop a new interpretation of Marx's position. On this interpretation, people in communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. Coupled with a reasonably high (but not immense) development of productive power, self-realisation generates conditions in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. I defend this view as an interpretation of Marx and I argue that it represents a more plausible account of what makes communism possible than Cohen's interpretation in which technological advance and limitless abundance play the predominant role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1974, Iraqi-born Ghāʾib Ṭuʿmah Farmān (1927–1990) published his novel al-Makhāḍ (Labor Pains. Baghdad: Maktabat al-Taḥrīr, 1974). Farmān had subscribed to Communist ideas since his youth, a leaning for which he was also arrested, yet in this novel, he bluntly expresses his disappointment with the 1958 Iraqi revolution's consequences and his doubts about the concept of revolution itself. In this study, Farmān's novel will be placed within the broader historical and cultural context in which Leftist Arab intellectuals became critical of the Iraqi revolutions of 1958, 1963 and 1968 alike. A close reading of the novel, published six years after the Baʿth revolution of 1968 and the rise of Saddam Hussein to power, reveals admonitions on possible future turns of events. To wit, the concentration of power in the hands of the state and the regime, persecution of political rivals, favoring regime allies, economic disparities, as well as the discord between the noble goals of the revolution and its contradictions in the preservation of the post-revolutionary order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies a specific historiographical gap obfuscating communist women, namely, a 'double blind spot' rooted in the combined effect of the scant consideration of women in histories of communism and of communist activists in accounts of the women's movement. It traces this pattern of invisibilisation back to the paradigm of communist women's 'instrumentalisation' and to the resulting paradox of an 'activism without agency'. The article then provides a critique of this received image; first, through an analysis of emerging scholarship on the female communist experience; second, through recourse to actors' own perspective on the rapport between communism and feminism and the possibilities of 'double militancy', drawn from sources of the post‐1968 Italian context. It closes with an argument for relocating communist women as an unexpectedly transgressive subject of twentieth‐century history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total control over all processes was one of the most distinctive features of state cultural policies in theatre during the communist era. This control was most systematically and carefully exercised with regard to theatre texts and the repertoire. The requirement for the prioritized presence of contemporary Bulgarian plays in the repertoire was valid throughout the entire period. The text outlines the policies towards Bulgarian dramaturgy, tracing which of these policies were consistent throughout the entire period and how they were nuanced over the different years. It also examines the results and consequences of these policies on the development of Bulgarian drama during that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite his influence on those interested by leisure, Marx's own conception of leisure is rarely discussed. Insofar as it is, he is generally either thought to see leisure as free time or as indistinct from necessary labour in communist society. In this article, I suggest that by reading Capital and the Grundrisse through an Aristotelian lens, we can find a third potential conception of leisure in Marx, which shares three features in common with Aristotle's. Leisure is distinct from free time simpliciter, it is a "state-condition" people are in when they perform ends in themselves, and it is constitutive of the final end. I conclude that adopting a conception of leisure grounded in this Marxian conception could have implications for contemporary debates around free time and the value of leisure goods like arts and culture. Résumé: Malgré l'influence exercée sur ceux qui portent intérêt au loisir, la conception qu'en avait Marx est rarement abordée. Dans la mesure où elle l'est, on pense généralement qu'il considère le loisir comme du temps libre, indiscernable du travail nécessaire dans la société communiste. Dans cet article, je suggère qu'en lisant le Capital et les Grundrisse à travers un prisme aristotélicien, nous pouvons entrevoir une troisième conception potentielle du loisir chez Marx qui partage trois caractéristiques communes avec celle d'Aristote. Le loisir se distingue du temps libre simpliciter , c'est un « état-d'être » dans lequel se trouvent les gens lorsqu'ils réalisent des fins en soi, et il est constitutif de la finalité. Je conclus que l'adoption d'une conception de loisir fondée sur cette conception marxienne pourrait avoir des implications pour les débats contemporains sur le temps libre et la valeur des biens de loisirs tels que les arts et la culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Historical Studies (1818-0345) is the property of Association of Arab Universities 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 article examines the postwar cultural sphere of the Dutch communist movement. Drawing on a series of interviews with 27 Dutch cradle communists born between 1935 and 1955, communist archives, and a wide range of other sources, it explores respondents' cultural upbringing and family leisure time in the period 1945–1965. It challenges the notion that Dutch communists all lived in a closed sectarian milieu or ideological bubble and instead argues that Dutch communists had a close yet complex relationship with the 'bourgeois' (non-communist) world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WHEN HE was a young social worker in St. Louis, Roger Baldwin was briefly engaged to Anna Louise Strong, who later published more books in defense of the Russian Bolsheviks [...]

In 1989, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was going through a period of transition. The fall of the Berlin Wall posed an enormous challenge to Marxist beliefs and the communist political project. In this situation, party secretary Achille Occhetto and his close collaborators planned to embark on a new social-democratic path, as a significant part of the elderly leaders and rank-and-file members feared the abandonment of communist ideals. 'We are a different party ... and I continue to believe it,' a Milanese communist militant shouted while Nanni Moretti was shooting La Cosa (1990), a documentary about the last days of the PCI, crystallising the perceived sense of uniqueness and diversity that pervaded Italian communism despite the complete loss of meaning for the communist movement worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the previously neglected cases of the Yugoslav republics to revisit the question of how electoral systems were formed for the first elections during the transition from communism in 1989–1990. By exploring archival and other sources created contemporaneously by the relevant decision-makers, we build on Rokkanian interpretations of electoral system design. Unlike Rokkan, however, we do not see parties as unitary or united actors. Our analysis instead focuses on the leadership and the dominant wings of the ruling parties and shows that their preferences regarding electoral rules served their intra-party ambitions and reflected their intra-party power capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why were homosexuality and Communism so closely knit together in the discursive logic of the Cold War? This article explores the convergence of sexuality and ideology in scholarly and popular conversations about the Cuban Revolution. These included a transnational panic over the purported links between homosexuality and Communism, psychiatric efforts in Cuba and the Cuban exile community to link homosexuality to suspicious ideological affiliations (Communist or anti-Communist), and a shared concern with rooting out covert political threats on both sides of the Florida Straits. Situating Cuba in hemispheric perspective, I propose that secrecy itself was at issue in the widespread and conjoined preoccupation with ideology and sexuality. This turned the closet, on the one hand, and coming out, on the other, into all-purpose, politically charged signifiers in Cuban culture writ large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ethos (0860-8024) is the property of John Paul II Institute, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin 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.)

Communist rule left a strong imprint on the development of Eastern European countries, but the precise mechanisms and directions of this legacy effect are subject to debate. This article looks at the legacies of giant infrastructural projects, which played an important role in the ideology and policy practice of communist regimes. Using the natural experiment of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), we investigate the influence of this project on post-communist voting behavior. We show that the BAM legacy reduces the share of votes for United Russia, the party of power of Putin's regime, and leads to a larger share of votes for the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). While the BAM legacy could be associated with a multitude of channels, we provide empirical evidence for at least one of them—the persistence of human capital, showing that BAM settlements are characterized by better educational outcomes than the control group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the urban communist politics of everyday life among local politicians in Graz, Austria, suggesting it as a potential model for the broader left. Topics include the success of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) in Graz under Mayor Elke Kahr, contrasting with the decline of the left in many other European cities.

The article offers information on the rise and fall of Eurocommunism, a short-lived phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s that aimed to renew the communist camp in Western Europe. Topics include its emergence in Italy, Spain, and France as a response to questions about socialism and its means of achievement, its promotion of democratic revolution and social transformation, and the criticism and decline it faced due to failed policies.

The article offers information on Gaspar Llamazares, a former national coordinator of Izquierda Unida, discussing the legacy of Eurocommunism and his political career. Topics include Llamazares' role in founding Izquierda Abierta to build a larger progressive coalition, his departure from Izquierda Unida in 2019, and his views on the political situation and ideological debate within the Communist Party during the 1980s.

The article offers information on the resurgence of Eurocommunism through parties like Podemos and Sumar, exploring the challenges of creating a majoritarian left without resorting to reformism. Topics include the political beliefs of former Spanish Communist Party leader Santiago Carrillo, who identified as Eurocommunist and advocated for a new left-wing party in Spain.

The normalization of relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1955 was viewed with suspicion in Tirana. Dependent on Soviet economic aid, Albania publicly endorsed the new Soviet foreign policy, maintaining the line of ideological conformity. The secret report delivered by Nikita S. Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union worried decision-makers in Tirana. But again, Enver Hoxha did not protest, publicly supporting the decisions adopted during this congress. The emergence of Sino-Soviet differences during the June 1960 Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties led to a change in Albania's stance within the international communist movement. Thus, unlike the other communist and workers' parties, the Party of Labor of Albania adopted a stance of neutrality towards the Sino-Soviet polemic. Starting with August 1960, Albanian communists openly supported the stance of the Communist Party of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soviet medical science went through a deep and systematic transformation. Initiated in the very early days of the Communist regime, a moment of disrupting and isolating impact uprooted it from its former organizational and epistemic foundations and re-adjusted the expert output and modus operandi to state needs. Professional identities, paradigmatic approaches and everyday practices resulting from these were transformed and forcibly aligned with the expectations of the new powerholders, aligned with the newly formulated party-bound loyalties and secured by the broad array of severe sanctions. This article systematically approaches the dark side of the Soviet interwar transformation in medicine with a special focus on a sample of psychiatric experts. The paper analyses the entanglement between domestic pressures exercised upon scholars by the emerging totalitarianism, forcing them to detach and considerably re-adjust their international ties, while nonetheless trying to remain a part of this cross-border epistemic community. While international contacts did not cease entirely, their expanse, intensity and the very mode of cooperation had to change dramatically so as to fit the new regime´s vision upon medicine. International networks were re-appropriated for the sake of promoting the success of the Communist state, with scholars functioning as involuntary ambassadors of the regime. Though perfectly compatible with the practices and outputs of their fellow experts elsewhere across the globe while exposed to the permanent pressure of political terror at home, Soviet public health and its experts became deeply transformed and detached in manifold ways from their peers and their medical science. Largely overlooked, the early fractures of the interwar period carry on into the Cold War-influenced second half of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Albania, the small country of Balkan has a different and unique history unlike all other Balkans or Eastern European countries. It still has some traces of the 50-year period of the communist regime, which was almost cruel. In the history of Albania, year of 1944 has been settled the milestone for deciding the fate of this country, through events that occur in the political, economic and social field. This regime in Albania directly affected the lives of people, depriving the exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Many of the basic human rights such as the rights of speech, freedom of thought, the right to private property, or the right to religious belief were completely forbidden with the communist state. During this regime, this political and economic system created, stimulated, developed and supported human and social anti-value by imposing an ideology that turned people into communist party captives, transforming the identity of individuals. Almost half a century, Albania had been isolated from the outside world and from democratic values and principles, it had instilled and rooted values and attitudes that were not very favorable for the development of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Romania, the list of „enemies" of the Communist totalitarian regimes included church representatives, and those who had connections with the Vatican (thus belonging to the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches) held a special importance. Decree 358 of 1 December 1948 declared the official end of Greek Catholic „cult" activities, and many officials, clergy and simple believers drew the attention of the Communist authorities and the Securitate. Among them was the Greek Catholic priest Ștefan Tătaru. In 1950, he accepted the position of clandestine Greek Catholic vicar general in Bucharest for Oltenia, Muntenia, Moldova and Dobrudja. For this, on 30 January 1951, he was arrested and sentenced to hard labour for life for the „the crime of high treason"/„high treason to the nation in favour of the Vatican". He served his sentence in some of the toughest prisons in the Communist prison system and was released on 3 August 1964. After his release, he remained under the surveillance of the Securitate until the fall of the Communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes a comparative approach to examine the situation of the Catholic Church in Romania and Hungary during the communist dictatorship, looking at the specific style of the local churches from the point of view of their differences. This history cannot be adequately described in terms of the usual model of oppression-resistance to communist rule, but requires an approach that also takes into account the interaction between the ruling classes and their "subjects". The possibility or impossibility of cooperating with secular power was shaped not only by religious beliefs but also by social, ethnic and denominational interconnections and traditions, and action against the churches was differentiated by the complexity of ethno-religious relations. This is why the dictatorships that emerged east of the Iron Curtain are different versions of the Soviet model and of each other. The adaptation of the pattern has been shaped by different internal conditions and external constraints in each country, with external influences being incorporated into local contexts through a dual process of reception and mutation. The ambition was essentially the same, the means used were, however, extremely varied and the result even more mosaic. This has resulted in substantial differences, and in any case point to the specific differences between the societies concerned. To understand all this, therefore, it is essential to take account of the conditions, the characteristics of local societies across political eras, and to be aware of continuous factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, the Cuban government authorized banks to start offering loan credit to the country's growing number of small businesses for the first time since the beginning of the revolution. Yet in the following years, citizens have largely circumvented these services. This article draws on twenty months of fieldwork among market traders in Havana to examine why so few Cubans rely on the formal banking system to secure capital. It analyzes alternative methods people employ to organize their financial futures, by leveraging kinship ties, partnerships, friendships, property, and loan sharks, and by participating in rotating savings and credit associations. To understand the advantages these approaches offer to mobilize capital, it is crucial to grasp how people navigate their economic lives in ways that are influenced but not dictated by short‐term considerations of net profit. Nonmonetary concerns about access, time frame, and visibility lead people to raise and store wealth outside the formal banking system, constituting a domain I call infrabanking: banking practices that are too far removed from the established assumptions about banking to be perceived as part of the same phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Darbai ir Dienos is the property of Vytautas Magnus 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.)

In his latest essay East/West, Egidio Ivetic reflects on the fundamental stages of Eastern European centuries-old history, with particular reference to the tragic events of the Twentieth Century. Ivetic ultimately questions the fate of today's Europe, still very far from assuming a clear and unitary political vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the Cold War was waged in what was then often referred to as the "Third World." The first work reviewed here looks at the victory of the Vietnamese communists in the first Indochina War. Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam did not win against France just because of nationalism. It won due to Sino-Soviet aid and its adoption of communist methods of mobilization. The second book examined looks at the persistent endeavor to build socialism in the Third World over a period of decades and using a variety of tactical approaches. Despite the end of the Cold War, these efforts have left behind a number of Leninist style party states on several different continents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miltiadis Porfyrogenis, a Greek lawyer and communist leader (1903-1958), stood out among the select few high-ranking members of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) who boasted academic credentials, fluency in several foreign languages, adept communication skills, and a social stature that facilitated dialogue with fellow travellers, bourgeois politicians, and figures from diverse national backgrounds. Delving into Porphyrogenis's extensive travels, spanning from the early days of his involvement in communism in the late 1920s to the 1950s, this paper endeavours to underscore the pivotal role of travel as a formative experience that profoundly shaped the communist cadres during the Stalinist era. Moreover, it contends that, in Porphyrogenis's case, these travels encompassed not only political but also social and personal dimensions, and played a significant role in moulding a distinct lifestyle for the party elite, distinct from that of simple party members. By discussing Porfyrogenis's mobility, this paper seeks to situate his trajectory and the Greek communist movement within contemporary historiographical debate, addressing both the experience of communist activism and its broader transnational dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the three journeys undertaken by the Greek writer and intellectual Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) to the Soviet Union during the 1920s. It also investigates his involvement with communism during the interludes between these journeys and his subsequent activities. By scrutinising the conditions under which these journeys were conducted, this paper sheds light on the influence of communism on Nikos Kazantzakis, his receptivity to communist ideology, and its integration into his distinctive worldview. Furthermore, this examination elucidates the communist movement's strategic planning regarding the travels of intellectuals from Western countries, and the incorporation of these journeys into the cultural diplomacy of the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theatre is the modern liminoid equivalent of ritual liminality, according to Victor Turner. It is also, like most arts, a Janus-faced phenomenon: on one hand, it is a way to systematically infect the public with mimetic desire and rivalry (this is the aspect emphasised, quite rightly, by Plato and René Girard); on the other, it also enables the public expression of views about the contemporary state of social and political life that otherwise would be difficult to speak about, or even censored. As an example, this article will turn to the 1970s in Hungary, when the communist regime had become much softened, though at the same time generated the impression, in everyone, that it would last forever. More concretely, it will first shortly present and analyse the quite unique story of the Kaposvár theatre, which during the decade changed, through a peculiar combination of 'liminal' factors, from a boring provincial spectacle to the number one theatrical event of the country, avidly followed by students and intellectuals, especially from the capital. An epilogue is devoted to the masterly article by Elemér Hankiss, the most important and influential intellectual living then in Hungary who became, for a time, the consensus president of the Hungarian Television after the collapse of communism. It exposes the infantilising character of communist power by analysing a series of theatrical performances staged in a leading Budapest theatre in the late 1970s. Infantile adults are evidently caught in a permanent liminality, so Hankiss shows how theatre indeed was a main instrument in diagnosing the worst aspect of life under communist rule, its permanent liminality, reinforcing uncertainty and hopelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the indispensability of religious material culture for identity processes during times of surveillance and persecution under Albania's communist regime, especially after 1967, under conditions of intensified anti-religious frenzy. The significance of materiality in underground spirituality is investigated through two case studies. After outlining the methodological design of this study and its theoretical principles grounded on the Identity Process Theory, we delineate the historical background in which religious communities and individuals found themselves vis-à-vis their religious identities during 1967–1990. Then, we comparatively study two inconspicuous religious artefacts alongside their stories and the people who preserved and used them. Through these two cases, we strive to demonstrate how surveillance and prosecution mobilize identity processes that often act in dissidence to the political establishment by looking at how communication and memories associated with visual, material religious objects emit emotions and affection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the ideological evolution of the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (P.R.C.), the main representative of the radical left in Italy in the so-called Second Republic. The focus on the ideological nature of P.R.C. is justified because as a 'purifying party' the debates on the ideological nature of the party have played a crucial role in the process of defining party identity. In this sense, this article differentiates three main phases in the ideological evolution of the party. Finally, this analysis reinforces the notion that the ideological changes that the P.R.C. has undergone, in its constant redefinition of a neo-communist identity, are determined by its position vis-à-vis the political, historical, and cultural heritage of the Italian communist tradition embodied in the P.C.I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the newly available Vatican archival sources from the pontificate of Pius XII as well as other archival sources, the article examines how Pope Pius XII and his Curia faced the challenge of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia and the attitudes of the particular Church in the crucial period between the definitive Communist takeover and the expulsion of the last papal representative from Prague and what strategies they developed in order to protect the Church from persecution and ideological seduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the image of Taiwan (the Republic of China) in the Polish communist press in the mid-1950s. It focuses on the news coverage related to the two Polish cargo ships – the Praca and the Prezydent Gottwald – which were detained by the Taiwanese authorities in 1953 and 1954, respectively. Based on the press narratives and supported by declassified government documents, the paper analyses the impact of the Cold War conflicts and divisions on the detention of Polish ships and its coverage by the Polish communist media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secret police, along with the political apparatus of a ruling party or administration, created the backbone of communist regimes and constituted the main tool of State violence. The state of the art within studies on the Polish security apparatus—albeit extremely rich—is entirely focused on archival documents. What is missing from the research on the secret police in Poland is an oral history approach. This article is a pioneer attempt at revealing the operative methods of the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB) through interviews with former officers. It aims at reconstructing the mechanism that led the officers to victimize dissidents and how they created moral justifications for their deeds. Asking about their career track, successes and failures, relationships with other officers, private life, and details of daily duty, I tried to glean what made the interviewees become perpetrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between political expediency, perception management, and governmental goals. The subject matter forms the research question of “How a tool such as perception management can be used to politically expedite a government’s interests and goals?” It is understood that these ends can be achieved through the usage of perception management by constructing them from a given audience’s interests and values. The concept of perception management is introduced to the reader and illustrated by the example of the United States government’s knowledge of the Katyń Forest Massacre. This article is presented in two parts – the United States’ initial conclusion that the Nazi party was responsible for the massacre and its later reassignment of fault to the Soviet Union. The first instance which involved the reconstruction of truth, was used to politically advance the United States’ cooperation with the Soviet Union in fighting Hitler’s Germany. The second instance also involved the revelation of truth and was used to justify its fight against the North Korean communists. This article should effectively demonstrate how the practice of perception management has been used historically by the United States government to expediate its political goals. The instrumentalization of Katyń is important as it may inspire the reader to consider why certain events take hold of the media’s attention versus others, and how these events specifically may relate to domestic and international political issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers have studied memory for decades, but there is currently a renewed interest in places of postmemory: sites to which memories of a past are connected, that engage those who have no living memory of the past in question. By combining a process-tracing approach to several post-communist surveys with in-depth interviews with members of the younger generation about their postmemories of the communist past, this paper explores places associated with postmemories of communism amongst young people in contemporary Romania, focusing on two types of place: (1) mega-constructions, prisons and deportation sites; and (2) sites connected to everyday life (home, shops, hospitals). The findings suggest that "postmemories in places" are reproduced and co-produced by younger people in a nuanced and complex way. Spatial postmemories of communism are not simply formed by parental or grandparental experiences of communism itself, but are also shaped by experiences of the initial post-communist period. Younger people's complex range of "postmemories in places" toward the communist past are politically multivalent: postmemory of specific sites related to the cultural welfare of the communist past did not necessarily indicate a political commitment to its restoration amongst interviewees; and postmemories of political violence associated with particular sites did not preclude unilateral pride in national achievements prior to 1989. Furthermore, "postmemory in place" is not a passive process, but one that is shaped by both a critical attitude to the responses of older generations toward particular places, and the challenges of the capitalist present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]