Legitimation from the Top to Civil Society: Politico-Cultural Change in Eastern Europe

1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Di Palma
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Universal Theory ◽  
East European ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Proper Weight ◽  
Political Adversary

Communism has collapsed in Eastern Europe because the regimes, no ionger justified by their Soviet hegemon, lost confidence in their “mandate from heaven.” Domestically and internationally discredited, East European regimes had traditionally shielded themselves behind a principle of legitimation from the top that saw communism as the global fulfillment of a universal theory of history. Once the theory became utterly indefensible, a crippling legitimacy vacuum ensued. Reacting against that theory, East European dissent, and a civil society of sorts, survived under communism not just as an underground political adversary but as a visible cultural and existential counterimage of communism. This fact must be given proper weight when assessing the capacity of civil society to rebound in postcommunist Eastern Europe.

Shaping the Web of Civic Participation: Civil Society Websites in Eastern Europe

2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
LÁSZLÓ BRUSZT ◽  
BALÁZS VEDRES ◽  
DAVID STARK
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
Civic Associations ◽  
East European ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
The Web

To study technologies of political participation in the era of internet we examine how civic associations in Eastern Europe create socio-technical platforms of civic participation. The creation of socio-technical platforms combines specific technological features with actors and types of acts. Based on data we collected on 1,585 East European civil society websites we identify five emergent genres of online platforms of civic participation: newsletters, interactive platforms, multilingual solicitations, directories, and brochures. In contrast to the utopistic image of a de-territorialized, participatory global civil society shaped by the new technology, our examination of civil society websites finds that the transnational are not inclined to be participatory and the participatory are less likely to be transnational.

Looking at European Sports from an Eastern European Perspective: Football in the Multi-ethnic Polish Territories

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-610
Author(s):  
Anke Hilbrenner ◽  
Britta Lenz
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Initial Phase ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
European Perspective ◽  
Sports History ◽  
East European ◽  
Slow Diffusion ◽  
Sporting Culture ◽  
New Research

Until recently, sports history has largely neglected Eastern Europe. Yet new research has shown that historians need to embrace a perspective from the periphery towards the centre, and reach beyond the paradigms of modernization, Sovietization, and the nation-state if Europe's sporting culture is to be fully understood. Focusing primarily on Poland, this article outlines three features peculiar to the region. First, it stresses the importance of trans-national spaces and networks as well as European sub-regions. Missing out on the initial phase of sport's internationalization due to lack of independence, the development of Polish sport was regionally distinct. Sports flourished in Habsburg-ruled Galicia (in Cracow and Lodz especially) under relatively liberal political authorities, but developed more slowly and under different influences elsewhere. Second, the prominence of rural Galicia, inhabited by traditional groups such as Ukrainian peasants or Chassidic Jews, shows that Polish sport did not evolve in line with modernization and industrialization. The relatively slow diffusion of sport in industrial centres such as Warsaw or Silesia contradicts the paradigm of modernization and the notion of East European backwardness. Third, sport history sheds light on phenomena such as multi-ethnicity, migration, integration or disintegration.

Going West

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara Zahra
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
European History ◽  
East European ◽  
European Context ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

“Going West” explores the potential of integrating East European History into broader histories of Europe and the world. Placing the history of Eastern Europe in a European context, I argue, may enable us to challenge the tropes of backwardness, pathology, and violence that still dominate the field. I also suggest that historians explore the extent to which conceptions of minority rights, development, and humanitarianism first developed in Eastern Europe radiated beyond the region in the twentieth century.

A major study on Ottoman architecture in Hungary

1982 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-73
Author(s):  
Géza Fehérvári
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
East European ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The World ◽  
Ottoman Architecture ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Art And Architecture

Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in Turkish art and architecture, an interest that embraces not only the monuments in Turkey proper but also those which were erected in south-eastern Europe during the Ottoman occupation. Thus a few years ago, when in conjunction with the World of Islam Festival a symposium was held in Edinburgh dedicated to Islam in the Balkans, the participants dealt with Islamic monuments in Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece and Yugoslavia. The Ottoman monuments of Hungary are admittedly not as numerous as those of these south-east European countries; nevertheless,they represent the achievements of a period which is justifiably called the ‘classical’ period in Ottoman art.

Economic Opportunities and Some Pilgrims' Progress: Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe in the U.S., 1890–1914

1978 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 235-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arcadius Kahan
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
East European ◽  
Economic Opportunities ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Proper Perspective ◽  
Original Habitat ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
The U.S

The purpose of the following essay is to evaluate the existing economic opportunities for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and to indicate the pace of their economic progress during the period 1890–1914. This purpose can best be achieved by viewing the mass migration of these European Jews in the proper perspective, that is, in terms of the dynamics of their situation at the places of original habitat; second, by differentiating successive cohorts of immigrants in terms of their skill composition, literacy, and degree of experienced urbanization, all elements important for the adaptability to and utilization of existing economic opportunities; third, by analyzing the structure of the U.S. industries that provided employment opportunities to the East European Jewish immigrants; fourth, by assuming the income level and standard of living of the native-born labor force as the yardstick for measuring the economic progress of the immigrants. Such an approach may broaden our understanding of the mechanism of adjustment that enabled the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe both to take advantage of existing economic opportunities and to create new ones.

scholarly journals Discourse Beyond Borders: Periodicals, Dissidents, and European Cultural Spaces

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Reijnen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Spatial Perspective ◽  
Central European ◽  
East European ◽  
European Public ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
The Cold War

Émigré periodicals in Cold War Europe have long been considered isolated islands of Central and East European communities with limited relevance. In the second half of the Cold War, some of these periodicals functioned as crucial intersections of communication between dissidents, emigrants and Western European intellectuals. These periodicals were the greenhouses for the development of new definitions of Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Europe at large. This article studies Cold War émigré periodicals from a spatial perspective and argues that they can be analysed as European cultural spaces. In this approach, European cultural spaces are seen as insular components of a European public sphere. The particular settings (spaces) within which the periodicals developed have contributed greatly to the ideas that they expressed. The specific limits and functions of periodicals such as Kultura or Svědectví [Testimony] have triggered perceptions of Central European and European solidarity. The originally Russian periodical Kontinent promoted an eventually less successful East European-Russian solidarity.  

scholarly journals The earliest evidence for dwelling construction in the Upper Palaeolithic of Eastern Europe: a 30,000-year-old surface structure from Mira layer I

Vita Antiqua ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
V.N. Stepanchuk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Surface Structure ◽  
Steppe Zone ◽  
East European Plain ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Interior Space ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
East European ◽  
Surface Dwelling ◽  
Layer I

The purpose of this article is to present data on the surface structure identified in the upper layer of the Mira site in the Dnieper valley. The occupation of layer I, based on a set of consistent data, constitutes the remains of a seasonal winter camp of Pleistocene horse hunters. Ten available radiocarbon dates place the calibrated age of layer I between 31,000 to 28,000 cal BP. The rapid albeit gentle overlapping of the settlement remains with alluvial sediments ensured that the original settlement and dwelling patterns and their elements survived well. Thanks to this, it is possible to reconstruct some significant aspects of the construction process, as well as details of the arrangement of the dwelling’s interior space. A 30,000-year-old, permanent skeleton cylindrical yaranga type surface construction from Mira layer I is currently representing the oldest dwelling known in the Upper Palaeolithic of Ukraine and a broader context of the steppe zone of the East European plain. Keywords: Upper Palaeolithic, surface dwelling, Eastern Europe

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