Between East and West : Economies and Societies, Traders, Towns, and
by Traian Stoianovich
Sobchak, as mayor of St Petersburg, was in the forefront of resistance to the August 1991 coup. In this book he considers the challenge posed by democracy for the former USSR. He argues that Russians must relegate ideological notions and learn to live according to the rule of law.
No country embodied the turbulence of twentieth century Europe more dramatically than East Prussia. The scene of Stalin's `terrible revenge', it was carved up between Poland and the USSR after World War II - and passed abruptly into history. Many of its refugees are still alive and with astonishing stories to tell. Max Egremont's first travels to the old East Prussia took him to a post-communist desert. But at the turn of the twenty-first century he found a very different land: a Kaliningrad c...
Balkan Legacies of the Great War (St Antony's)
This is a rich yet succinct account of an underexplored story: the consequences of the Great War for the region which ignited it. It offers a fascinating tapestry: the collapse of Empires, the birth of Turkey and Yugoslavia, Greece as both victor and loser, Bulgaria's humiliating defeat; bitter memories, forced migrations, territorial implications and collective national amnesias. The legacies live on. The contributions in this volume significantly enhance the debate about how the Great War is...
The ideological background of the tribunals is studied on the basis of works written by priests and theologians, reflecting the attitude of spiritual authorities towards the devil and witches. The main focus of work, however, is the process of shaping witchcraft accusations. Narratives of the participants of the trials tell stories of bewitchment and help shed light on the situation that led people to state their suspicions and later their accusations of witchcraft. Finally, the micro-history ap...
Building Utopia
Perhaps the most challenging project under Joseph Stalin's first five-year plan was the race to build Europe's largest automobile factory and an adjacent city in eighteen months. The site chosen was Nizhny Novgorod, later named Gorky, near the Volga River, 500 miles east of Moscow. To design and construct both factory and city, Soviet officials approached the premier industrial builder in America, the Austin Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The Austin Company was an innovative designer and builder as...
The Conquest of Constantinople (Mediaeval Academy Reprints for Teaching, v. 36) (Records of Western Civilization)
by Robert of Clari
In His Own Words, Without Partisan Bias or Self-glorification, Robert of Clari recorded his observations of the Fourth Crusade as an eyewitness and participant caught up by events, rather than making them. Recording the events of the journey, as well as the sights, miracles, and people that he saw, the account is an important historical and literary, as well as human document.'Among the many remarkable episodes of the crusading age, perhaps the most astounding was the exploit of those French kni...
The Social Construction of Man, the State, and War is the fist book on conflict in the former Yugoslavia to look seriously at the issue of ethnic identity, rather than treating it as a given, an unquestionable variable. Combining detailed analysis with a close reading of historical narratives, documentary evidence, and first-hand interviews conducted in the former Yugoslavia, Wilmer sheds new light on how ethnic identity is constructed, and what that means for the future of peace and sovereignty...
When President Clinton sent Richard Holbrooke to Bosnia as America's chief negotiator in late 1995, he took a gamble that would eventually redefine his presidency. But there was no saying then, at the height of the war, that Holbrooke's mission would succeed. The odds were strongly against it. As passionate as he was controversial, Holbrooke believed that the only way to bring peace to the Balkans was through a complex blend of American leadership, aggressive and creative diplomacy, and...
What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union - interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war - now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: "Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917", "Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family", "L...
For 1000 years, the geography of Europe's borderlands has dictated their destiny. East of Poland, west of Russia, the region has always been defined by colliding empires. Travelling from Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, from Kalingrad on the Baltic to Odessa on the Black Sea, this book discovers a range of competing cultures, religions and nationalisms. In surprising encounters and characters, the author shows the shaping power of the past through the experiences of the borderlands people.
The fascist Ustasha regime and its militias carried out a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed an estimated half million Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, and ended only with the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. In Visions of Annihilation, Rory Yeomans analyzes the Ustasha movement's use of culture to appeal to radical nationalist sentiments and legitimize its genocidal policies. He shows how the movement attempted to mobilize poets, novelists, filmmakers, visual artists, and inte...
The Baltic States and the End of the Cold War (Tartu Historical Studies, #6)
This book examines the role of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the downfall of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. It includes groundbreaking, archives-based research on important facets of the Soviet collapse like, for example, politics of history, Soviet Atheism, economic reforms, the military and the use of force. The authors place the Baltic struggle for independence in the context of international politics, analyzing interlinkages with the Warsaw Pact countries, the activities of...
The North-Eastern Frontiers of Medieval Europe (The Expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500)
By the mid-twelfth century the lands on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, from Finland to the frontiers of Poland, were Catholic Europe's final frontier: a vast, undeveloped expanse of lowlands, forest and waters, inhabited by peoples belonging to the Finnic and Baltic language groups. In the course of the following three centuries, Finland, Estonia, Livonia and Prussia were incorporated into the Latin world through processes of conquest, Christianisation and settlement, and brought under the...
Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective (European Remembrance and Solidarity)
The book argues that religion is a system of significant meanings that have an impact on other systems and spheres of social life, including cultural memory. The editors call for a postsecular turn in memory studies which would provide a more reflective and meaningful approach to the constant interplay between the religious and the secular. This opens up new perspectives on the intersection of memory and religion and helps memory scholars become more aware of the religious roots of the languag...