Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist ...era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past.
An encyclopedic guide to 20th-century communism around the worldThe first book of its kind to appear since the end of the Cold War, this indispensable reference provides encyclopedic coverage of ...communism and its impact throughout the world in the 20th century. With the opening of archives in former communist states, scholars have found new material that has expanded and sometimes altered the understanding of communism as an ideological and political force. A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism brings this scholarship to students, teachers, and scholars in related fields. In more than 400 concise entries, the book explains what communism was, the forms it took, and the enormous role it played in world history from the Russian Revolution through the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond.Examines the political, intellectual, and social influences of communism around the globeFeatures contributions from an international team of 160 scholarsIncludes more than 400 entries on major topics, such as:Figures: Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, GorbachevEvents: Cold War, Prague Spring, Cultural Revolution, Sandinista RevolutionIdeas and concepts: Marxism-Leninism, cult of personality, laborOrganizations and movements: KGB, Comintern, Gulag, Khmer RougeRelated topics: totalitarianism, nationalism, antifascism, anticommunism, McCarthyismGuides readers to further research through bibliographies, cross-references, and an index
The collection of well researched chapters assesses the uses and misuses of history 25 years after the collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. As opposed to the emphasis on the recovery of ...memory or revival of national histories that seemed to be the prevelant historiographical approaches of the 1990s, the last decade has seen a particular set of narratives equating Nazism and communism and so providing opportunities to exonerate wartime collaboration, cast the nation as victim even when its government was allied with Germany, and acknowledge the Jewish Holocaust while obfuscating its meaning and significance. In their comparative analysis the authors are also interested in new practices of performing ‘Europeanness’. Therefore their presentations of Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian post-communist memory politics move beyond the common national myths in order to provide a new insight into transnational interactions and exchanges in Europe in general. The juxtaposition of these politics, the processes in other parts of Europe, the modes of remembering shaped by displacement and the transnational memory practices enable a close encounter with the divergences and assess the potential of the formation of common, European memory practices.
The Emergence of Global Maoism examines the spread of Mao Zedong's writings, ideology, and institutions when they traveled outside of China. Matthew Galway links Chinese Communist Party efforts to ...globalize Maoism to the dialectical engagement of exported Maoism by Cambodian Maoist intellectuals. How do ideas manifest outside of their place of origin? Galway analyzes how universal ideological systems became localized, both in Mao's indigenization of Marxism-Leninism and in the Communist Party of Kampuchea's indigenization of Maoism into its own revolutionary ideology. By examining the intellectual journeys of CPK leaders who, during their studies in Paris in the 1950s, became progressive activist-intellectuals and full-fledged Communists, he shows that they responded to political and socioeconomic crises by speaking back to Maoism—adapting it through practice, without abandoning its universality. Among Mao's greatest achievements, the Sinification of Marxism enabled the CCP to canonize Mao's thought and export it to a progressive audience of international intellectuals. These intellectuals would come to embrace the ideology as they set a course for social change. The Emergence of Global Maoism illuminates the process through which China moved its goal from class revolution to a larger anticolonial project that sought to cast out European and American imperialism from Asia.
Post-Soviet social Collier, Stephen J
2011., 20110808, 2011, 2011-08-08
eBook
The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across ...a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. In Post-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state.
An encyclopedic guide to 20th-century communism around
the world The first book of its kind to appear since the
end of the Cold War, this indispensable reference provides
encyclopedic coverage of ...communism and its impact throughout the
world in the 20th century. With the opening of archives in former
communist states, scholars have found new material that has
expanded and sometimes altered the understanding of communism as an
ideological and political force. A Dictionary of 20th-Century
Communism brings this scholarship to students, teachers, and
scholars in related fields. In more than 400 concise entries, the
book explains what communism was, the forms it took, and the
enormous role it played in world history from the Russian
Revolution through the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond.
Examines the political, intellectual, and social influences of
communism around the globe
Features contributions from an international team of 160
scholars
Includes more than 400 entries on major topics, such as:
Figures: Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro,
Gorbachev
Events: Cold War, Prague Spring, Cultural Revolution,
Sandinista Revolution
Ideas and concepts: Marxism-Leninism, cult of personality,
labor
Organizations and movements: KGB, Comintern, Gulag, Khmer
Rouge
Related topics: totalitarianism, nationalism, antifascism,
anticommunism, McCarthyism
Guides readers to further research through bibliographies,
cross-references, and an index
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.
