Poland's First Post-communist Generation

Poland's First Post-communist Generation PDF

Author: Kenneth Roberts

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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This book identifies the immediate winners and losers, and compares the costs and benefits of Poland's transformation. The research was conducted by a team of British and Polish sociologists as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's East-West Programme.

The Generation

The Generation PDF

Author: Jaff Schatz

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0520332113

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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

Democracy and Enlargement in Post-Communist Europe

Democracy and Enlargement in Post-Communist Europe PDF

Author: Christian W. Haerpfer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-02

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1134479328

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Democracy and Enlargement in Post-Communist Europe presents the principal findings of a unique in-depth study of the birth of democracy and the market economy in fifteen post-Communist countries. Haerpfer analyses and compares the information collected by the New Democracies Barometer public opinion surveys to provide an overview of the process of democratization across Central and Eastern Europe. This is an extremely valuable resource and will be useful for all those interested in the European Union, comparative politics and democracy and the Communist legacy. It contains data from Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania the Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Solidarity's Secret

Solidarity's Secret PDF

Author: Shana Penn

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9780472031962

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The first book to document women's crucial role in the fall of Poland's communist regime

Post-communist Nostalgia

Post-communist Nostalgia PDF

Author: Maria Todorova

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0857456431

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Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people's lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.

Europe's Growth Champion

Europe's Growth Champion PDF

Author: Marcin Piatkowski

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0198789343

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What makes countries rich? What makes countries poor? Europe's Growth Champion: Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland seeks to answer these questions, and many more, through a study of one of the biggest, and least heard about, economic success stories. Over the last twenty-five years Poland has transitioned from a perennially backward, poor, and peripheral country to unexpectedly join the ranks of the world's high income countries. Europe's Growth Champion is about the lessons learned from Poland's remarkable experience, the conditions that keep countries poor, and the challenges that countries need to face in order to grow. It defines a new growth model that Poland and its Eastern European peers need to adopt to grow and catch up with their Western counterparts. Poland's economic rise emphasizes the importance of the fundamental sources of growth- institutions, culture, ideas, and leaders- in economic development. It demonstrates that a shift from an extractive society, where the few rule for the benefit of the few, to an inclusive society, where many rule for the benefit of many, can be the key to economic success. *IEurope's Growth Champion asserts that a newly emerged inclusive society will support further convergence of Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe with the West, and help to sustain the region's Golden Age. It also acknowledges the future challenges that Poland faces, and that moving to the core of the European economy will require further reforms and changes in Poland's developmental character.

Communism's Shadow

Communism's Shadow PDF

Author: Grigore Pop-Eleches

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-05-09

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1400887828

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It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.

Post-Communist Mafia State

Post-Communist Mafia State PDF

Author: B lint Magyar

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 6155513546

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Having won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections, the Hungarian political party Fidesz removed many of the institutional obstacles of exerting power. Just like the party, the state itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. In a new approach the author characterizes the system as the ?organized over-world?, the ?state employing mafia methods? and the ?adopted political family', applying these categories not as metaphors but elements of a coherent conceptual framework. The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are closely aligned with the interests of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of insiders. While the traditional mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of influence by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The innovative conceptual framework of the book is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules. ÿ

Spring Will Be Ours

Spring Will Be Ours PDF

Author: Andrzej Paczkowski

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 9780271047539

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The Spring Will Be Ours focuses on the turbulent half century from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which started the chain of events that would lead to the communist takeover of Poland, to 1989, when futile attempts to reform the communist system gave way to its total transformation. Andrzej Paczkowski shows how the communists captured and consolidated power, describes their use of terror and propaganda, and illuminates the changes that took place within the governing elite. He also documents the political opposition to the regime - both inside Poland and abroad - that resulted in upheavals in 1956, 1968, 1970, 1976, and 1980. His narrative makes evident the pressures that the elite felt from above, from Moscow, and from below, from the population and from within the party. The history of Poland and the Poles is of special interest because on numerous occasions in the twentieth century this relatively small country influenced developments on a global scale.

Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context

Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context PDF

Author: Matthias Schwartz

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1137385138

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The demise of state Socialisms caused radical social, cultural and economic changes in Eastern Europe. Since then, young people have been confronted with fundamental disruptions and transformations to their daily environment, while an unsettling, globalized world substantially reshapes local belongings and conventional values. In times of multiple instabilities and uncertainties, this volume argues, young people prefer to try to adjust to given circumstances than to adopt the behaviour of potential rebellious, adolescent role models, dissident counter-cultures or artistic breakings of taboo. Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context takes this situation as a starting point for an examination of generational change, cultural belongings, political activism and everyday practices of young people in different Eastern European countries from an interdisciplinary perspective. It argues that the conditions of global change not only call for a differentiated evaluation of youth cultures, but also for a revision of our understanding of 'youth' itself – in Eastern Europe and beyond.