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The first book in English to blend history and archaeology for a period of history currently receiving much scholarly attention, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages examines key problems of the early medieval history of Eastern Europe, with particular reference to society, state, and the conversion to Christianity, and the diverse ways in which these aspects have been approached in the historiography of the region. The included essays examine the documentary and archaeological evidence of early medieval Europe in an attempt to assess its importance in understanding the construction of cultural identity and the process of political mobilization for the rise of the states. The book addresses an audience of historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and linguists with an interest in the history of Eastern Europe.

The countries included in this study on the regulations and practices relating environmental assessment are Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine. Each country study has been prepared by specialists from within the country concerned. This study will be of interest to EA practitioners in public administration; development and consultant organizations; training and educational and research institutes; and international and bilateral aid agencies. Project level EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) and, to a lesser extent, SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) for planning and other strategic-level actions have been, or are being, introduced in the great majority of countries in transition (CIT). As yet, however, most of the countries have only limited experience in formulating "state of the art" EIA regulations and applying them satisfactorily. Furthermore, such experiences in CITs that do exist are not yet sufficiently well documented and widely disseminated. This report should be of considerable value in helping strengthen EA regulation and practice in the region.

How does one envision the sequel to communist rule in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? In this volume of postcommunist cultural studies, artists, activists, and experts capture the complexity of ideological transformations and identities in formation in this region. The contributors reach beyond the discourses of civil society and nationalism, which usually structure our imagination of alternatives, to consider how the utopia, memory, and monuments of socialism might be transformed after the death of their communist master; how the Yugoslav War is shaped by the creation, and destruction, of fantasy; the range of alternative nationalisms in Eastern Europe; and how the civil society project is threatened, and how it might be reconstructed. By challenging the simple identities of citizen, consumer, and capitalist embedded in the discussion of political options with more complex images, this volume opens up the analysis of "transition" and encourages a new theoretical imagination that draws on interdisciplinary engagements among literary studies, history, political theory, psychoanalysis, and sociology.Contributors are Andrew Arato, Nicolae Harsanyi, Michael D. Kennedy, Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid, Ina Merkel, Edmund Mokrzycki, Mykola Ryabchuk, Renata Salecl, Vladimir Tismaneanu, and Konrad Weiss.

In Europe’s Steppe Frontier, acclaimed historian William H. McNeill analyzes the process whereby the thinly occupied grasslands of southeastern Europe were incorporated into the bodies-social of three great empires: the Ottoman, the Austrian, and the Russian. McNeill benefits from a New World detachment from the bitter nationality quarrels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century which inspired but also blinded most of the historians of the region. Moreover, the unique institutional adjustments southeastern Europeans made to the frontier challenge cast indirect light upon the peculiarities of the North American frontier experience.

The shift to a market economy in post-communist Eastern Europe has had a profound impact on science and scientists across the region, leading to reforms in research management practices and to drastic cuts in funding levels everywhere. Many countries are moving to a system of competitive research grants awarded on the basis of peer review. The introduction of peer review is not simply a technical matter. It signifies a fundamental change in the social structure of science, enhancing profession-al autonomy and giving working scientists a voice in the allocation of resources. This book combines first-hand accounts of the reform process with analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of both peer review and quantitative indicators.

This monograph is about an exciting episode in the intellectual history of Europe: the vigorous debate among leading Polish historians on the sources of the economic development and non-development, including the origins of economic divisions within Europe. The work covers nearly fifty years of this debate between the publication of two pivotal works in 1947 and 1994. Anna Sosnowska provides an insightful interpretation of how local and generational experience shaped the notions of post-1945 Polish historians about Eastern European backwardness, and how their debate influenced Western historical sociology, social theories of development and dependency in peripheral areas, and the image of Eastern Europe in Western, Marxist-inspired social science. Although created under the adverse conditions of state socialism and censorship, this body of scholarship had an important repercussion in international social science of the post-war period, contributing an emphasis on international comparisons, as well as a stress on social theory and explanations. Sosnowska's analysis also helps to understand current differences that lead to conflicts between Europe’s richest and economically most developed core and its southern and eastern peripheries. The historians she studies also investigated analogies between paths in Eastern Europe and regions of West Africa, Latin America and East Asia.