Suchergebnisse

Abstract
The article is a reassessment of the aftermaths of the events of 1989 in (South-) Eastern Europe. It supplements the well-worn debate pitting civil vs. uncivil society with examinations of the role nationalism has played in the formerly socialist bloc and of the (self-) identification practices within the region's societies. Here I map the various postcommunist legacies that have affected the region's countries. Grand explanations of the upheaval of 1989 tend to obscure and simplify the continuities that have extended beyond this threshold year. Common trends within the region, which often remain hidden in the long shadow of 1989, may explain contemporary tensions between the revival of civic mobilization and the rise of populism. I conclude that only by clearing history's debris — from before and after 1989 — will we understand the nature and identity of the 'we' who claim, contest, or (increasingly seldom) celebrate this annus mirabilis.

Economic growth over the past three decades in China has captured the interest of the whole world. Many nations, governments, business and science look admiringly to "Chinese miracle". The performance of this country is the more remarkable as it includes, besides the effort to go beyond a developing country and the transition from a communist economy to the market economy. "Chinese development model", whereof spoken more and more in this period is unclear due to some nuances not really classical approach to development paradigm, which focuses on promoting democracy, human rights privatization, liberalization and the fight against corruption. Through the new model, some authors, starting from high authority of the state over property and finances, assigns to it a key role in economic growth. From their point of view, the strong boom of the private sector in China is the result of the opening provided by the state and not as a prerequisite for development. This perception is unpopular but other authors who argue that "the Chinese success had as basic ingredients exactly private entrepreneurship, private property, financial and even political reforms, though not always apparent at first glance." This study made a brief foray into Chinese entrepreneurship development, opening new possibilities of deepening towards understanding how it managed to contribute to the development and growth of the country.

The situation in Ukraine is the subject of an intense discussion in the public sphere and the media across Europe. But what do we know about how our neighbouring countries are reflecting on the crisis, its historical background and its meaning for the relationship between our countries, Ukraine, Russia and the European Union? During 2014 and 2015 the Cultures of History Forum asked historians and sociologists from more than 15 European countries, the US, Israel and Turkey to reflect on the media coverage and public debates regarding the Ukrainian crisis in their countries. This article focuses on Romania.

This article presents a comprehensive review of the transnational perspective in the study of communism and the implications of this methodological turn for the transformation of the field itself. While advancing new topics and interpretative standpoints with a view to expanding the scope of such an initiative in current scholarship, the author argues that the transnational approach is important on several levels. First, it helps to de-localize and de-parochialize national historiographies. Second, it can provide the background to for the Europeanization of the history of the communist period in former Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Third, and most importantly, the transnational approach can reconstruct the international dimension of the communist experience, with its multiple geographies, spaces of entanglement and transfer, and clustered, cross-cultural identity-building processes. The article concludes that the advent of transnationalism in the study of communism allows for the discovery of various forms of historical contiguousness either among state socialisms or beyond the Iron Curtain. In other words, researchers might have a tool to not only know more about less, but also to resituate that "less" in the continuum of the history of communism and in the context of modernity. The transnational approach can generate a fundamental shift in our vantage point on the communist phenomenon in the twentieth century. It can reveal that a world long perceived as mostly turned inward was in fact imbricate in wider contexts of action and imagination and not particularly limited by the ideological segregationism of the Cold War.