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THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE BELIEVES THAT EUROPEANS HAVE LIVED FOR SO LONG IN THE WARM COCOON OF THE COMMUNITY SYSTEM THAT THEY HAVE ALMOST FORGOTTEN WHAT ITS HISTORY WAS LIKE BEFORE THE ASTONISHING BURST OF INSTITUTIONAL INVENTIVENESS THAT CULMINATED IN THE ROME TREATY A GENERATION AGO. IF PRESENT TRENDS ARE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE WE MAY BE BRUTALLY REMINDED, WITH CONSEQUENCES WE CANNOT NOW IMAGINE. THE DEMONS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY CHAUVINISM, XENOPHOBIA, IRREDENTISM, RACISM AND SCAPEGOAT-HUNTING - ARE ON THE MARCH ALL OVER THE FORMER SOVIET BLOC. THIS ARTICLE SPECIFICALLY DISCUSSES THE CURRENT TREND IN THE NEW EUROPEAN UNION INAUGURATED BY THE MAASTRICH TREATY TOWARDS A TWO SPEED EUROPE, A "STRONG" CURRENCY CORE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY AND THE "WEAK" WEAK PERIPHERY.

A historian is a prophet of the past, not of the future, and a question about the future is not a historian's favorite one. With all these reservations, a historian is often compelled to trace past and present patterns in order to foresee the most likely arrangements of future events. The reflections presented below (in Part I) do not stem from the intention of the author to speculate about the prospects of Communism or discuss the alternative scenarios for the future of the Soviet bloc. They are limited to a few conclusions which can be drawn from the logical progression of recent events. The reflections in Part II address some current legal aspects of fighting international terrorism.

One of the most difficult and frustrating challenges to US foreign policy in the post-World War II period has been coping with third world revolutions, particularly those in the Caribbean Basin. Whether the revolution has been in Cuba, Nicaragua, or Grenada, relations with the US have always deteriorated, and the revolutionary governments have moved closer to the Soviet bloc and toward a Communist political model. Both the deteriorating relationship and the increasingly belligerent posture of the US have conformed to a regular pattern; so too have the interpretations of the causes and consequences of the confrontation.US government officials and a few policy analysts tend to view the hostile attitudes and policies of the revolutionary governments as the cause of the problem.

Its operation in the Congo has developed into a crucial test of the United Nationsframework for international collaboration. Under the authority of a Security Council mandate the United Nations has assumed an unprecedented range of military and civil responsibilities. To discharge these responsibilities, an executive agent (United Nations Organization in the Congo, ONUC) has been created under the direct supervision of the Secretary General. Within a month of its initiation, the Congo operation became the focus of a virulent stream of criticism from the Soviet bloc and other Member governments; it was soon evident that not only ONUC was under attack, but also the concept of a United Nations executive agent, the independence of the Secretariat, and die institution of die Secretary-General.

Drawing on recently declassified Albanian, Soviet, East German, and Western archival sources, as well as a rich historiography on Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech and the Hungarian revolution of 1956, this article investigates the little-known events of 1956 in Albania. Rejecting de-Stalinization, the Albanian Communist leader Enver Hoxha was able to vindicate his position against Yugoslavia's brand of socialism abroad, fortify his rule at home, and claim more aid from Moscow, Beijing, and the Soviet bloc. This article discusses the Tirana Party Conference of April 1956, treating the Albanian Party of Labor (the Communist party) as an "information society." The article assesses deliberations over security and ideology at the highest levels and demonstrates how tiny Albania came to embody, in exaggerated form, both the promises and the perils of socialist exchange, in addition to mirroring the profound inconsistencies of Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign.

This is the introduction to a cluster ofSlavic Reviewarticles that argue for retaining and expanding the analytic rubric of postsocialism beyond the era of "transition" and beyond the conventional borders of the former Soviet bloc. With primary attention to recent developments in anthropology, Douglas Rogers outlines and evaluates three strategies for unbinding postsocialisms: exploring connections and circulations that lead outward from the formerly socialist world; embarking on new kinds of critical projects that call categories of western social science into question; and developing new varieties and vectors of comparison, especially among socialist and postsocialist contexts around the world. Each of these strategies builds upon and extends the work of the first two decades of research on eastern European and former Soviet postsocialisms. Each also points to significant areas of recent scholarship that new research on postsocialisms is primed to join.

Why has the national idea played such a powerful role, both positive and negative, in the regime, state, and economic transitions that have taken place in post-communist Eurasia? This article emphasizes the powerful but variable effects of imperial rule in this region, beginning with the Habsburgs and continuing through the more recent experiences of the Soviet bloc and the Yugoslav, Soviet, and Czechoslovak ethnofederations. The national idea, a product of very different experiences in the West, was transformed when moving eastward in the nineteenth century, largely because imperial contexts are not state contexts. The political empowerment of the national idea continued when imperial dynamics returned to the region with the rise of communism. As a result, post-communist Eastern Europe was unusually well situated to privilege nationalism in the struggles over new states and new economic and political regimes.

This paper's core concern is Boris Groys' theory of the total art of Stalinism, which is devoted to rewriting Soviet art history and reinterpreting Socialist Realism from the perspective of the equal rights between political and artistic Art Power. The aim of this article is to decode Groys and the total art of Stalinism, based on answering the following three questions: 1) why did Groys want to rewrite Soviet art history? 2) How did Groys re-narrate Soviet art history? 3) What are the pros and cons of his reordering of the total art of Stalinism? Groys offers an effective paradigm that could rethink two theoretical genres: a) other Socialist Realisms inside or outside the Soviet bloc, during or after the Soviet era; b) the aesthetical rights of political artworks before, during and after the Cold War, and the historical debates about art, especially about art for art's sake, or art for political propaganda. However, Groys' total art of Stalinism and its core theory of the Socialist Realism frame hides some dangers of aestheticizing Stalin and Stalinism.

Circumstances responsible for the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization throughout the post-Soviet period are examined, & the question of whether the Organizations increased membership has perpetuated democratization in current & potential member-states is considered. After contemplating how the USSRs dissolution prompted European nations to reconsider the reinforcement of national & regional security, factors that resulted in the Organizations extension of membership to only three post-Soviet countries in 1997 are explored. Attention is subsequently directed toward examining Organization member-states rationale for further expansion, eg, incorporating nations in the Balkans region would enhance the Organizations deployment & response capabilities in Central & Eastern Europe & neighboring regions. It is demonstrated that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks substantially altered the Organizations criteria for Central & Eastern European countries membership; specifically, it is stressed that the former Soviet Bloc nations were accepted in order to advance the Organizations role in the war against terrorism & effort to preserve international security. In addition, conditions that have heretofore prevented Georgias & Ukraines admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are covered. J. W. Parker

This article examines the evolution of socialist internationalism in the 1950s and 1960s through a case study of cultural relations between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. More broadly, it explores attempts by Soviet and eastern bloc officials to integrate their countries into a cohesive "socialist world" by constructing an extensive network of transnational, cultural, interpersonal, and commercial ties between their citizens. Accounts of Soviet-eastern bloc relations during this period tend to focus on the iconic crises in Poland and Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Yet in the realm of everyday life, the 1950s and 1960s were the apogee of Soviet-eastern European integration. I argue that in the case of Soviet-Czechoslovak relations, the new version of socialist internationalism that developed during these decades was successful in so far as it shaped the lives of ordinary citizens—through participation in friendship societies, pen-pal correspondences, and the consumption of each other's mass media and consumer goods. As these contacts brought the two countries closer, however, they inadvertently highlighted cultural and political discord between them, which ultimately helped undermine the very alliance they were designed to support.

The author revises existing historical accounts of a critical period during the Vietnam War when the North Vietnamese urgently needed economic aid from their Communist allies in order to prepare for the ambitious Tet Offensive in January 1968, and to help the DRV economy survive President Lyndon B. Johnson's bombardment of North Vietnam under Operation Rolling Thunder. Using new evidence from the archives in Hanoi, this article shows that China-not the Soviet Union-was the biggest donor of economic aid to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, or North Vietnam) in 1967 and 1968. The new evidence suggests that American intelligence estimates of Communist bloc economic aid to the DRV were incorrect. Misled by inaccurate data, U.S. officials failed to understand the remarkable resilience of the DRV economy to survive U.S. bombardment. An accurate understanding of Communist bloc aid arrangements might have strengthened the arguments of those American officials advocating early peace negotiations with the DRV. Adapted from the source document.