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The article uses the socio-cultural methodology and comparative studies to examine the results of the transformation of national higher school systems in the former USSR on the eve of the post-Soviet thirtieth anniversary. It is established that over the past decades of the post–Soviet transformation, the higher school of 15 States of the former USSR has gone through two main stages: the first was primarily a stage of structural changes, and the second was integration into the European higher education space. A classification of the realities of organizational orientation of higher education systems is proposed, dividing them into westernized (the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan), systems with specific educational balances (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia), and outsider countries (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan). It is shown that during this period unique cases of transformation of national higher schools emerged. They evolved from divergence in the direction of convergence through E-education and global unification. The purpose of the study was to show that in the near future post-Soviet structures of higher education will have to respond primarily to universal post-industrial challenges based on the identification of stages of higher education evolution.

This article invokes a combination of analytical and normative arguments that highlight the leading role of practices in explaining the expansion of security communities. The analytical argument is that collective meanings, on which peaceful change is based, cognitively evolve — i.e. they are established in individuals' expectations and dispositions and they are institutionalized in practice — because of communities of practice. By that we mean like-minded groups of practitioners who are bound, both informally and contextually, by a shared interest in learning and applying a common practice. The normative argument is that security communities rest in part on the sharing of rational and moral expectations and dispositions of self-restraint. This thesis is illustrated by the example of the successful expansion of security-community identities from a core of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states to Central and Eastern European countries during the 1990s, which was facilitated by a `cooperative-security' community of practice that, emerging from the Helsinki Process, endowed NATO with the practices necessary for the spread of self-restraint.

Dyson explains the convergence and divergence between British, French and German defence reforms in the post-Cold War era. He engages with cultural and realist theories and develops a neoclassical realist approach to change and stasis in defence policy, bringing new material to bear on the factors which have affected defence reforms

View that most Balkan states have made progress in terms of independent institutions, political contestation, and electoral procedure, but are hampered by low levels of economic development.

This article reviews two recent collections of essays that focus on the role of popular culture in the Cold War. The article sets the phenomenon into a wide international context and shows how American popular culture affected Europe and vice versa. The essays in these two collections, though divergent in many key respects, show that culture is dynamic and that the past as interpreted from the perspective of the present is often reworked with new meanings. Understanding popular culture in its Cold War context is crucial, but seeing how the culture has evolved in the post-Cold War era can illuminate our view of its Cold War roots. Adapted from the source document.

Examines transition to democracy and economic liberalization and privatization; legacies of Leninism including restitution to former owners of nationalized assets, new international pressures, and other issues; case studies of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic; 5 articles.