Results by title

447 books match the query 'Eastern' and 9 start with d

Sort by

Debating the Past

Modern Bulgarian Historiography—From Stambolov to Zhivkov

Roumen Daskalov

Central European University Press, 2011

The book is comprised of the four major debates on modern Bulgarian history from Independence in 1878 to the fall of communism in 1989. The debates are on the Bulgarian–Russian/Soviet relations, on the relations between Agrarians and Communists, on Bulgarian Fascism, and on Communism. They are associated with the rule of key political personalities in Bulgarian history: Stambolov (1887–1894), Stamboliiski (1919–1923), Tsar Boris III (1918–1943), and the communist leaders Georgi Dimitrov and Todor Zhivkov (1956–1989). The debates are traced through their various articulations and dramatic turns from their beginnings to the present day.

[more]

Deficit and Debt in Transition

The Political Economy of Public Finances in Central and Eastern Europe

Istvan Benczes

Central European University Press, 2014

The adjustment problems of public finance in countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are often misunderstood and misinterpreted by western scholars. This book contributes to the bridging of the gap between what is being thought by external observers and what the actual public finance reality is, as described by competent local scholars. Popular political economy research has remained biased towards advanced countries and has neglected developing and transition economies. Publications on CEE countries' public finances seem to be reluctant to apply the conceptual framework of standard political economy to these countries because of the assumption that CEE economies are different from their Western peers. But is this really the case? Are CEE economies so much different that none of the well-known "Western" political economy concepts or models can be applied to the analysis of fiscal performance in the region? Benczes demonstrates that they can be safely applied in the context of CEE economies as well. He sees no need to develop a separate or unique theory designed for the study and understanding of (one-time) transition economies.

[more]

Democracy Fatigue

An East European Epidemy

Carlos García-Rivero

Central European University Press, 2023

Over the early 21st century, democracy worldwide has deteriorated significantly. At the same time, new populist forces have appeared that challenge democracies through legal reforms. The stark contrast between Eastern and Western Europe in this respect is the focus of this collection of essays.

The authors consider the 2008-2012 economic crisis to be at the root of the success of the populist parties and the rise of cultural backlash against liberal values. In turn, European governments’ responses to the crisis—mainly austerity measures demanded by IMF and the EU— help explain desenchantment with the European Union. These policies made the wider public feel that they were being left out of politics, and populist parties promised to return power to them.

The contributors argue that polarization of the electorate can set in motion a radicalization that strengthens authoritarians at the expense of democrats. They also demonstrate that Eastern and Western Europe differ in their attitudes to the decline in quality of democracy. The studies consider how satisfied people are with the political changes they witness, and argue that seemingly more authoritarian attitudes in the East explain why people feel more satisfied with a defective democracy that empowers the populist-authoritarian political actors that they support.

[more]

Diaries by Jewish and Christian Adolescents

Reconstructing the Social Reality of Pre- and Post-Holocaust Hungary

Gergely Kunt

Central European University Press, 2027

Based on twenty published and manuscript diaries written by Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents during wartime Hungary, this book provides an unprecedented microhistorical perspective on how young people observed, interpreted, and internalized the profound social and political upheavals of the late 1930s through the 1950s. These diaries—often discovered by chance and preserved against all odds—reveal not only personal struggles with identity, belief and belonging, but also troubling reflections of prevailing social attitudes, including complicity, silence and, at times, approval toward the persecution of their peers. Through intimate narrative details and marginalia—from doodles to worn pages—the text reconstructs the emotional and intellectual worlds of teenagers who witnessed history unfolding around them. An unsettling yet essential contribution to Holocaust studies, social history and memory research, it challenges contemporary readers to confront the disquieting mirror held up by youth living through one of Hungary’s darkest eras.

[more]

Diaries by Jewish and Christian Adolescents

Reconstructing the Social Reality of Pre- and Post-Holocaust Hungary

Gergely Kunt

Central European University Press, 2027

[more]

Discover Romanian

An Introduction to the Language and Culture

Rodica Bo?oman

The Ohio State University Press, 1995

Discover Romanian's thorough treatment of both language and culture makes it an effective learning tool in classroom and individualized settings.

This comprehensive introduction to Romanian for English-speaking students emphasizes communication with a complete treatment of grammar, an extensive vocabulary, and a focus on the four major language skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Cultural information, an integral part of the textbook, is presented both formally, in sections on culture and civilization, and informally, as the setting for dialogues and exercises. Tables of verb conjugations and a glossary round out the book's primary materials.

Straightforward and accessible, Discover Romanian is an essential textbook for all those teaching and learning the language and provides important information for those seeking to understand Romanian culture.

[more]

Dostoevsky and the Affirmation of Life

Predrag Cicovacki

St. Augustine's Press, 2008

[more]

Dostoevsky's Dialectics and the Problem of Sin

Ksana Blank

Northwestern University Press, 2019

In Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin, Ksana Blank borrows from ancient Greek, Chinese, and Christian dialectical traditions to formulate a dynamic image of Dostoevsky’s dialectics—distinct from Hegelian dialectics—as a philosophy of “compatible contradictions.” Expanding on the classical triad of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, Blank guides us through Dostoevsky’s most difficult paradoxes: goodness that begets evil, beautiful personalities that bring about grief, and criminality that brings about salvation.

Dostoevsky’s philosophy of contradictions, this book demonstrates, contributes to the development of antinomian thought in the writings of early twentieth-century Russian religious thinkers and to the development of Bakhtin’s dialogism. Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin marks an important and original intervention into the enduring debate over Dostoevsky’s spiritual philosophy.

[more]