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The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

Gale Stokes' The Walls Came Tumbling Down offered one of the most respected interpretations of the East European revolutions of 1989 for many years. It provides a sweeping yet vivid narrative of the two decades of developments that led from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the collapse of communism in 1989. Highlights of that narrative include, among other things, discussions of Solidarity and civil society in Poland, Charter 77 and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the bizarre regime of Romania's Nikolae Ceauescu and his violent downfall.

Swans of the Kremlin: Ballet and Power in Soviet Russia

A fascinating glimpse at the collision of art and politics during the first fifty years of the Soviet period. Ezrahi shows how the producers and performers of Russia’s two major ballet troupes quietly but effectively resisted Soviet cultural hegemony during this period.

Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends

This historical survey of Central Europe covers a region that encompasses contemporary Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. Author Lonnie R. Johnson illuminates the competing religious, cultural, economic, national, and ideological interests that have driven the history of Central Europe in the past millennium. Each chapter is thematically organized around issues or events that are key to developing an appreciation for the historical and political dynamics of the region, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Fathers and Sons

When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith." Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when it was published in 1862 and continues today to seem as fresh and outspoken as it did to those who first encountered its nihilistic hero.

Translated from Russian

Wings

Prose and Poetry

The Workers' State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary, 1944-1958

A groundbreaking study of the complexities of the Hungarian working class, its relationship to the Communist Party, and its major political role during the foundational period of socialism (1944–1958).

Fascination and Enmity: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914-1945

 

An original transnational history of Russia and Germany during the critical era of the world wars. By examining the mutual perceptions and misperceptions within each country, the contributors reveal the psyche of the Russian-German dynamic and its use as a powerful political and cultural tool.

 

Chapter 1. Introduction: Entangled Histories in the Age of Extremes
Michael David-Fox

 

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