Grooves of Change

Brown J. F. Brown

Description

The Grooves of Change is the culmination of J. F. Brown's esteemed career as an analyst of Eastern Europe. He traces events in this diverse and disruption-riddled region from the communist era to the years of transition after the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present. Brown also provides specific analyses of the development of liberal democratic culture in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe-Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the successor states of Yugoslavia.While acknowledging that the term "Eastern Europe" began to fall into disuse with the end of the cold war, Brown uses it as a framework for discussing the enduring features of the modern history of this region: its basic continuity, the prominence of ethnic and national factors, and its dependence on great powers or combinations of powers outside it. He explains the significance of the growing gulf between East Central Europe and South Eastern Europe, the overall political and economic deprivation and its effect on the people, the urgency of change, and the complex dynamics within Eastern Europe that have defied definitions and generalization. Finally, Brown points to the need for continuing assistance by the United States and the West and suggests what the twenty-first century may bring to this constantly changing part of the world.Those seeking a clear overview of events in Eastern Europe during the recent psat and the state of these nations now will benefit from this incisive study by J. F. Brown.

Sujets

• Histoire
• 21st century
• Eastern Europe
• 20th century
• History of Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 02 avril 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822380115
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Grooves of Change

The Grooves of Change

Eastern Europe at the Turn of the Millennium

J. F. Brown duke university press durham and london 2001

∫2001 Duke University Press

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Typeset in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Portions of chapter 4 previously appeared in articles inTransitions and inBuilding Democracy(Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharp, for the

Open Media Research Institute, Prague, 1996).

Reproduced by permission of the editor,

Transitions.

For Arthur, Roley, and Louis, unlikely musketeers

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘‘Locksley Hall’’

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

List of Maps

Preface

Contents

xiii

xi

Coming into Being

1

Communist Rule: La Longue Durée

Economics 1945–2000: Behemoth

Democracy: Stumbling Forward73

Country Profiles: Facing the Future

28

60

107

The First Yugoslav War: Serbs, Bosnians, Croats

Kosovo: The Clash of Two Nationalisms

Key Minorities and Key Questions

Looking Outward and Inward

The Last Word: Urgency

Notes

Index

245

265

241

215

200

162

144