The year 1989, marked by the fall of the communist regimes in East Central Europe, has meanwhile become a new lieu de mémoire. But it does not work for the whole of Eastern Europe.

German unification has produced the best of all Germanies historically, but the worst of all the possible outcomes envisaged by the main western protagonists in 1990

The fall of communist regimes had the unintended consequence of forcing Western societies to confront their own divisions and internally generated problems

"The west is the best / Get here, and we’ll do the rest." - J. Morrison, “The End”

Death is the great equalizer. Like the bones of the dead, layers of history intermingle in Antakalnis Cemetery. The cemetery’s incongruous monuments and grave markers reflect varying points of reference—religious, political, cultural, ideological—as they have played out here in Lithuania over centuries of humanity. “Antakalnis” in Lithuanian means “on top of the hill.” Here, from…

The period after 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe seemed particularly attractive for socially engaged cinema. Themes were there to be picked up. Under socially engaged cinema I understand realistic, non-genre films presenting “ordinary people” confronted with economic and social transformations and with (usually inadequate) workings of institutions. The themes were really there to be…

Piotr zychowicz, Pakt RibbentropBeck czyli jak Polacy mogli u boku III Rzeszy pokonać Związek Sowiecki [The RibbentropBeck Pact, or how Poles could have defeated the Soviet Union alongside the Third Reich], Dom Wydawniczy REBIS, Poznań 2012

Rigels Halili, Naród i jego pieśni. Rzecz o oralności, piśmienności i epice ludowej wśród Albańczyków i Serbów [A nation and its songs. About orality, literacy and popular epic poetry among Albanians and Serbs], Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warszawa 2012 Michał łuczewski, Odwieczny naród. Polak i katolik w Żmiącej [An eternal nation. A Pole and a Catholic…

Jiří Suk, Politics as the Theatre of the Absurd: Václav Havel 1975–1989. Paseka 2013

Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery. Translated by Richard Dixon. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011

The ranks of the precariat were swollen by the shock of 2008, both directly and as a result of policies adopted by governments in its aftermath. The precariat is a class-in-the-making and is a threat to the established order in ways that mainstream public opinion has yet to appreciate. The precariat must be understood as…

Over the last century, there has been a significant amount of continuity (rather than diversity and change) in patterns of Polish labor migrations to the U.S., and more generally –there has been lots of continuity in East Central European labor migrations to the economic centers in the West.

Can Hungary further exploit its hydrocarbon potential, or is oil and gas import dependency an inescapable fate just the same as for the Central Eastern European region?

Since 1989 the Republic of Poland and the Czech Republic have been pursuing a sort of race. For each of them, the respective neighbor serves as a reference point against which they evaluate their own successes and failures.

An interview with Martin Wolf by Maciej NowickiThe austerity policy, instead of limiting the crisis, only exacerbated it—says Martin Wolf in conversation with Maciej Nowicki

Lithuania will continue to carry out austerity policies and be among the best-performing European economies. But more detailed examination reveals that export- driven Lithuanian economy is growing not “because of,” but “regardless of” implemented austerity policies.

It is often said that the integration of the Muslim diaspora will be of crucial importance for the internal stability of Europe. For the countries of Central Europe the basic and much more important challenge will be overcoming the exclusion of the numerous Gypsy community About 12 million people of Gypsy origin are now living…

A new and more European Ukraine may be expected if positions of power start to be occupied by the generation of the “peers of Ukrainian independence.”This is going to happen if the most active from this generation do not emigrate and do not allow themselves to be corrupted.