Estonia is perhaps the only country in Europe that lacks a comprehensive history of its Jewish minority. Spanning over 150 years of Estonian Jewish history, On the Margins is a truly unique book. Rebuilding a life beyond so-called Pale of Jewish Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Jewish cultural autonomy in interwar Estonia, and the trauma of Soviet occupation of 1940–41 are among the issues...

The collection of well-researched essays assesses the uses and misuses of history 25 years after the collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. As opposed to the revival of national histories that seemed to be the prevailing historiographical approach of the 1990s, the last decade has seen a particular set of narratives equating Nazism and Communism. This provides opportunities to exonerate...

This book presents pieces of evidence, which – taken together – lead to an argument that goes against the grain of the established Cold War narrative. The argument is that a “long détente” existed between East and West from the 1950s to the 1980s, that it existed and lasted for good (economic, national security, societal) reasons, and that it had a profound impact on the outcome of the conflict...

This volume offers an analysis of the relationship between public health and the biopolitical dimensions of state- and nation building in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. It challenges the idea of diverging paths towards modernity of Europe’s western and eastern countries. It not only identifies ideas, discourses and practices of ‘solving’ public health issues that were shared among...

This book is about long-term changes to class and inequality in Poland. Drawing upon major social surveys, the team of authors from the Polish Academy of Sciences offer the rare comprehensive study of important changes to the social structure from the communist era to the present. The core argument is that, even during extreme societal transformations, key features of social life have...

Academic freedom—the institutional autonomy of scientific, research and teaching institutions, and the freedom of individual scholars and researchers to pursue controversial research and publish controversial opinions—is a cornerstone of any free society.  Today this freedom is under attack from the state in many countries—Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, Hungary, China—but it is also under question...

This gem of Slovak naturalism was written in 1940. The story takes the reader to a mountain village. The protagonist narrates the vicissitudes, suffering, and success he experiences as he pursues a love affair, resulting in the triumph of pure love. Peter has been in love with a girl—Magdalena—since childhood and asks her to marry him. But he is too late, because a rich man, Jano Zapoto?ný, has...

This book presents texts which have been abridged or adapted for the teaching of Russian as a foreign language to students at level A1-A2 of CEFR. The main characteristics of the texts are their focus on vocabulary and grammar as well their rich informational content. The texts develop students' skills in all types of speech activity, as well as reading and writing. They also help students to...

American historian David Hoffmann does not agree with historians who view the USSR as an anomaly of historical development. The book represents the history of the Soviet state in the context of ideas and practices peculiar to many states of the modern period. The study shows that it is impossible to attribute all aspects of Soviet intervention in the life of society to the account of the...