Society and Culture Publications
28. The Risks of Privatization and the Polish Nomenklatura: The New Entrepreneurial Class
Jul 07, 2011This paper examines the market changes which developed in Poland in the late 1950s, where one could observe small-scale, timid changes in the traditional communist view toward free enterprise. One of the results of political liberalization was a drastic reduction in the numbers of secret police, party bureaucrats, and censors. Many former guardians of communist morality, now deprived of their posts and Privileges, succumbed to the temptations of Mammon and established small industrial enterprises, shops, and brokerage agencies themselves. Moreover, it now seems that the Party authorities, silently and discreetly, fully supported these undertakings, treating them as a safe and simple safety valve to release the anger and frustrations of forcIbly retired apparatchiks and as a reward for their faithful service. more
Migration, Homeland, and Belonging in Eurasia
Jul 07, 2011Edited by Cynthia J. Buckley and Blair A. Ruble, with Erin Trouth Hofmann more
160. The Roma of Eastern Europe Since 1989: Communities In Crisis
Jul 07, 2011May 1998 - The Roma, or Gypsies, have lived in Eastern Europe, particularly the Balkans, since the Middle Ages. Originally a warrior class in India, they were driven out as victims of war by the invading Muslims. Modern Gypsies prefer to be called Roma, which is a Romani (the language of the Roma) word meaning husband or man. "Gypsy" comes from "Egyptian," which medieval Eastern Europeans mistakenly called the Roma. Gypsy, cigány, and other European derivatives of Byzantine terms, such as Atsínganoi (meaning itinerant musician or soothsayer) and Adsincani are laden with prejudicial stereotypes and meanings. more
21. The Ideology of Illiberalism in the Professions: Leftist and Rightist Radicalism among Hungarian Doctors, Lawyers, and Engineers,1918-45
Jul 07, 2011In the period between the two world wars, Hungary's professions were transformed from a politically liberal and professionally oriented elite into an illiberal pressure group attracted to radical politics. This metamorphosis of the professions contradicted the expectations of many analysts of modernization who viewed the professions as the most secure element of Western liberal culture. The professional elites of Eastern and Central Europe defied this kind of sociological optimism. They increasingly turned from being allies of the liberal state into the partners of illiberal movements and governments. Already in the 1930s, this transformation gave birth to a new, more pessimistic school of thought on the professions. more
3. Religion and Nationalism in Eastern Europe
Jul 07, 2011Because of the endeavors to bring in the churches as associates for the building up of a real socialist society, anti-church policies and an aggressive atheist propaganda have been abandoned in some countries. Fundamentally, a similar tendency can be observed at work in the Soviet Union. The existence of the church is more or less accepted or tolerated and the fight against religion is, in some publications,presented as a fight against those social roots from which religion arises. more
159. The Politics of Language Reform In The Yugoslav Successor States
Jul 07, 2011April 1998 - This presentation is devoted to the current status of the language and politics interface among the Yugoslav successor states and entities. By perusing the recently published dictionaries, grammars, orthographic manuals, and polemical articles on the successor languages to Serbo-Croatian, one can examine the viability of the new languages and the prospects for ethnic reconciliation, given the deepening linguistic divide. Since the Serbo-Croatian linguistic union was agreed upon in 1850, language controversies have reflected broader ethnic/political tensions or, in some instances, may have served to spark a worsening of ethnic relations. more
19. Myth-Making in European Family History: The Zadruga Revisited
Jul 07, 2011In this paper the author aims to demonstrate how and why myths are created and what political, ethical, or other ideological purposes they can be made to serve. In her overall project, "Demographic patterns and Family structure in Nineteenth-century Bulgaria" (which is outlined in detail in Appendix 1), she aims at empirical research whose ultimate and modest value would be to attempt to fill in some of the blank spots of the social history of this specific region. more
17. National Identity and Cultural Politics under Ceausescu: An Example from Philosophy
Jul 07, 2011This author's objective is to investigate how intellectual activity in Romania under Ceausescu contributed to reproducing an ideology in which "the nation" had pride of place. Much as had occurred in the period between the two World Wars, Romanian intellectuals debating with one another helped to strengthen a national ideology; their actions, and not simply Ceausescu's much-invoked "manipulation of nationalism to promote legitimacy" contributed to fortifying the idea of the nation and undermining the discourse of Marxism-Leninism on which Romania's socialist system supposedly rested. more
147. The Politics of Language In Romania and Moldova
Jul 07, 2011December 1997 - Since the early 1990s, much of Romania's cultural politics has revolved around two crucial questions that have divided political and cultural elites in the region for much of this century. First, what does it mean to be Romanian in an ethnic or national sense? And second, how do non-Romanians fit into the politics of a country that is defined in the first sentence of its constitution as a "national and unitary" state? In other words, how does "Romanianness" relate to the boundaries of the Romanian state? Nowhere are these issues as strikingly revealed as in the politics of language. Many of these questions have equal importance in the "other" Romanian state, the Republic of Moldova, although the Moldovan case provides some instructive contrasts. more
