The collecting of vinyl records and music tapes in communist Poland was prohibitively expensive, not to mention that official releases of recordings by Western artists hardly existed in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, informal social networks of listeners … Read more
In today's East Central Europe, where former communist states had been successfully transformed into liberal democracies, we see the emergence of populism as a significant political force in the last decade. Hungary has received a special status in this process: … Read more
In September 2018 the European Commission referred Poland to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for violating the principle of judicial independence with the controversial law on appointing Supreme Court judges. At the same time, the judges … Read more
Since 1990 there has been a sharp rise in the Slovak higher education sector. The number of students has increased fourfold, the number of universities has doubled, and new universities have been established in smaller towns. Despite this trend, Slovakia … Read more
Although Stalinist ideologues and artists highlighted the idea of “new socialist man” in the 1950s, and reform communist scholars critically explored the issues of consumerism and leisure under socialism in the 60s, it was a “consolidated” sociology after 1968 that … Read more
The Polish-Jewish writer Julian Stryjkowski (1905-1996) is mostly and justly famous for his “Galician Tetralogy,” a sequence of four novels depicting the life in Jewish shtetl right before and at the very beginning of the World War I. The description … Read more
This talk will address the east-central European origins of development concepts that came to dominate the postwar world. Treating social science as a situated phenomenon, shaped by the twentieth century’s violent politics, Dr. Mazurek aims to explain why and how … Read more
Join us for a presentation and discussion of Andrea Bohlman's monograph "Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland" (Oxford University Press, 2020). Participants: Anna Krakus (University of Southern California), Donald Reid (History, UNC) and the author Andrea … Read more
Contrary to the general assumptions – corroborated mainly by rapidly circulating images of “the fall” of the Berlin Wall – in many countries of Eastern Europe the transition from socialism to capitalism lacked strong performances of defacing, disgracing and toppling … Read more
Pawel Kowal is a Polish politician, political scientist and historian. Currently a professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences and a member of the Polish Parliament (Sejm), he was a secretary of state in Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006-2007), … Read more
