Bøger udgivet af Central European University Press

"Beginning in 1961, when Albanian King Zog I died in a Paris hospital after 22 years in exile, this book tells the story of this Balkan country's first and only monarch. The road to becoming Europe's youngest president in 1925 and king of Albania in 1928 was paved with feuds and assassinations, a political career-path common in the region. Zog retained his power until his "friend" Mussolini ousted him in 1939. Robert Austin holds that Zog left Albania almost as he found it, with almost no roads or trains, thoroughly uneducated and utterly impoverished. On the surface a Westernizer, the king banned the veil but achieved little else.Zog may have regretted sending a young Enver Hoxha to France on a state scholarship, where Hoxha learned some basic communist principles later used against the king. But one thing Hoxha did learn from Zog: it makes sense to have your rivals murdered. The book also describes the decades during which Hoxha practiced this lesson. The collapse of communist rule and the chaotic years of regime change saw, among other things, the miserable attempts of Zog's son Leka to revindicate his royal power.In his book, Robert Austin combines Zog's adventurous life story with a studious analysis of Albania's political history from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the threshold of Euro-Atlantic integration"--

Pioneering studies reveal interesting trends and patterns that point to the growing importance of the mostly intellectual property-based intangible capital in relation to the level of GDP.

Ukrainian Witchcraft Trials is an analysis of early modern witchcraft trials and legal procedures in Ukrainian lands, along with an examination of quantitative data drawn from the different trials. Kateryna Dysa first describes the ideological background of the tribunals based on works written by priests and theologians that reflect attitudes towards the devil and witches. The main focus of her work, however, is the process leading to witchcraft accusations. From the stories of participants of the trials she shows what led people to enunciate first suspicions then accusations of witchcraft. Finally, she presents a microhistory from one Volhynian village, comparing attitudes towards two "e;female crimes"e; in the Ukrainian courts. The study is based on archival research together with previously published witch trials transcripts. Dysa approaches the trials as indications of belief and practice, attempting to understand the actors involved rather than dismiss or condemn them. She takes care to situate Ukrainian witchcraft and its accompanying trials in a broader European context, with comparisons to some African cases as well.

The volume examines the documentary practices of film, theatre, and literature from the 1960s to the 2020s in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and the Baltic states. Methodologically innovative case studies consider contemporary 'witness art' - for example verbatim theatre based on interviews with people participating in political protest and war. The contributions expand on the political, medial, and aesthetic developments that shaped Soviet attitudes towards the arts and show how these concepts still influence contemporary practices. The essays are written for scholars and students of literature, culture, sociology, film, theatre, and trauma studies, but also for general readers interested in the documentary arts. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has reinforced a dynamic that had already gained traction due to the political transformations post-1991 and the Euro-Maidan. Ukrainian documentary art has become a tool to witness rapid change and to counteract media warfare. Artists have reacted by creating works that address traumatizing experiences by keeping records and analyzing the ongoing events at the same time. The essays reflect on documentary approaches that are proving to be collaborative artistic tools in violent times.

The large member states of the European Union have clear priorities when it comes to EU-level decisions, while the small member states hold veto power when decisions need to be taken unanimously. This book focuses on the potential of middle powers in EU decision-making using the example of Romania's relations with Central Asia. The author examines how Romania's diplomatic activities as a medium-sized member state - and as a newer member - can affect EU foreign policy. Ana-Maria-Andreea Anghelescu conducted a quantitative study of three hard power indices, as well as the soft presence dimension of the Elcano Index of Global Presence. The latter includes tourism, sport, culture, science, education, information, and migration. The statistical results were complemented by qualitative field research in Kyrgyzstan involving all five Central Asian countries. The volume's analysis concludes that Romania underperforms in using its robust hard faculties to benefit the country's soft capabilities. Central Asia is a region where the EU must work hard to maintain its influence. By strengthening their presence in the region beyond bilateral partnerships, the EU's middle powers can play a key role in asserting Europe's pragmatic and normative interests.T

The notion of academic freedom dates back to the creation of universities and has long been understood to be central to their vocation. This freedom has come under attack by different actors throughout its history. In the current context, rising threats to democracy and human liberties, the corporatization of research, concerns about diversity and increased societal polarization, are putting a considerable pressure on its exercise. However, academic freedom is also a concept that suffers from persistent ambiguities associated with the general notion of freedom as well as debates about the function of universities. This edited collection addresses the question of academic freedom by situating it in its broader global context. More conceptual treatments contribute to an understanding of academic freedom as distinct and separate from, although related to, freedom of expression, or student rights. These conceptual treatments are combined with studies of actual struggles over the scope of academic freedom in specific universities. The contributions come from a broad variety of sites seek to deprovincialize the conversation beyond North America or the English-speaking world.

Where Currents Meet treats the Ukrainian and Russian components of cultural experience in Ukraine's East as elements of a complex continuum. This study of cultural memory in post-Soviet space shows how its inhabitants negotiate the historical legacy they have inherited. Tanya Zaharchenko approaches contemporary Ukrainian literature at the intersection of memory studies and border studies, and her analysis adds a new voice to an ongoing exploration of cultural and historical discourses in Ukraine. This scholarly journey through storylines explores the ways in which younger writers in Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian), a diverse, dynamic, but understudied border city in east Ukraine today come to grips with a traumatized post-Soviet cultural landscape. Zaharchenko's book examines the works of Serhiy Zhadan, Andrei Krasniashchikh, Yuri Tsaplin, Oleh Kotsarev and others, introducing them as a "e;doubletake"e; generation who came of age during the Soviet Union's collapse and as adults revisited this experience in their novels. Filling the space between society and the state, local literary texts have turned into forms of historical memory and agents of political life.

In Southeast Europe there is a big disjunction between formal procedures and informal practices-and this gap is growing. When formal institutions fail, informal practices can solve problems. These practices can be viewed critically, as a space for favoritism and corruption, or favorably, as a space of creative problem-solving. In any case, informal practices consolidate the hold of unaccountable actors on power. This book presents findings from a collaborative and multidisciplinary research project. During a three-year exercise, a group of forty researchers looked at the world of informal practices in nine countries of Southeast Europe. The main strength in their procedures is the reciprocal modification and cross-checking between interviews and media, and the assemblage of comparative quantitative data. In the context of a mismatch between "the way the world is" and the world as described by law, the Balkans add a unique perspective due to a persistent deficit in state legitimacy and capacity. The underlying agenda is to bring Southeast Europe into line with European liberal democracy. The emerging evidence offers a critical assessment of "Europeanization" processes that produce only superficial changes and formal institutional resolutions. The book offers a rich analysis of the array of informal practices that people in the Balkans have resorted to in compensation for the poor implementation of formal reforms.

This book compares the various aspects - political, military economic - of Soviet occupation in Austria, Hungary and Romania. By bringing key documents together in one single volume, this book offers penetrating new insights into Soviet policies in Romania, Hungary and Austria that contributed to the origins of the Cold War.

In the best micro-historical tradition, Carlo Ginzburg, himself one of the founders and icons of this genre of historiography, dissects four moments of European intellectual history. This book relives the experience that participants in the Natalie Zemon Davis Lecture Series at the Budapest campus of Central European University had in 2019 listening to Ginzburg's eloquent and engaging discourses. For the purposes of this volume he has re-edited and completed the leporello of cases charged with the inherent ambiguity between secularism and religions.Secularism is often identified with rejection or at least distancing from the sacred. However, if one assumes that secularism also appropriates and reworks the sacred, its ambiguities come to the fore. The dilemma accompanies the reception of La Boétie's Servitude volontaire between 1574 and today. Before Walter Benjamin, the lesser-known 19th-century Léon de Laborde defended the profanity of reproducing the arts. The tension around the secular pervades the case of the College de Sociologie (Paris, 1937-1939), an attempt to analyze the ideological components of fascism. The fourth lecture approaches a much-discussed contemporary phenomenon - fake news - from a long-term perspective. To what extent are some disturbing features of the world we live in the result of a long, tortuous, unpredictable trajectory?

Why are anti -corruption campaigns running out of steam, and why are post-communist societies obsessed with corruption?This book is not a study of anti-corruption policies. Instead, it looks at the politics of anti-corruption. Policies are what institutions do. But in analyzing politics, this book seeks to discover why institutions do what they do.

Eric Fassin examines the trend of State anti-intellectualism in France using the nation as a case study to demonstrate that this tendency is not limited to ostensibly illiberal regimes. He argues that today's world requires an examination of this phenomenon beyond Cold War geopolitical divisions and highlights a global shift towards authoritarian neoliberalism. His book is a plea for the political urgency of intellectual work in a global moment of political anti-intellectualism. The book covers the period from President Sarkozy to Prime Minister Valls and includes both firsthand and public cases of attacks against academics, not only in France, but also in Brazil, Hungary, Russia, Turkey, and the United States, with examples of State racism and the argument of the State against antiracism. The book also considers issues of censorship and cancel culture, concluding with Fassin's firsthand account of attacks on him from the far-right.

Escaping Kakania is about fascinating characters-soldiers, doctors, scientists, writers, painters-who traveled from their eastern European homelands to colonial Southeast Asia. Their stories are told by experts on different countries in the two regions, who bring diverse approaches into a conversation that crosses disciplinary and national borders. The 14 chapters deal with the diverse encounters of eastern Europeans with the many faces of colonial southeast Asia. Some essays directly engage with post-colonial studies, contributing to an ongoing critical re-evaluation of eastern European "semi-peripheral" (non-)involvement in colonialism. Other chapters disclose a range of perspectives and narratives that illuminate the plurality of the travelers' positions while reflecting on the specificity of the eastern European experience. The travellers moved-as do the chapter authors-between two regions that are off-centre, in-between, shiftingly "Eastern," and disorientingly heterogeneous, thus complicating colonial and postcolonial notions of "Europe," "East," and East-West distinctions. Both at home and overseas, they navigated among a multiplicity of peoples, "races," and empires, Occidents and Orients, fantasies of the Self and the Other, adopting/adapting/mimicking/rejecting colonialist identities and ideologies. They saw both eastern Europe and southeast Asia in a distinctive light, as if through each other-and so will the readers of Escaping Kakania.

Few thinkers have contributed more to the understanding of modern civilization than Norbert Elias. Given the significance and relevance of his ideas in explaining social reality, this book seeks to make his complex concepts more accessible. A biographical account of his life (1897-1990) facilitates the comprehension of Elias's concepts. Elias's most famous work, "The Civilizing Process", is the focus of this discussion of his theoretical frameworks, with class structure, the patterns of behavior, and the role of the state as key factors. The book also dedicates special treatment to figurational sociology, an important research field linked especially to Elias. Elias was an innovator. He criticized accepted concepts and introduced numerous new constructs (habitus is perhaps the best known) discussed in this book. Respective chapters review Elias's theory of knowledge, the concept of de-civilization-with an emphasis on violence, his analysis of nations and nationalism, and emotions-and his focus on shame. Elias borrowed ideas from iconic figures in philosophy and the social sciences such as Edmund Husserl, Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, and Talcott Parsons. This book describes the characteristic way Elias interprets them. The book concludes with an overview of the most significant critiques of Norbert Elias's work.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 jeopardizes the country's independence and its chances for Western-style development. However, the heroic attitude of the Ukrainian people, combined with a solidifying national identity, makes the domestic foundations for a western turn stronger than ever. After the invasion, building strong foundations of liberal democracy will be a top priority. In addition to alleviating immediate problems, the country must also address its post-communist legacy and address the constraints of patronalism.The authors of this edited volume, leading Ukrainian scholars supplemented by colleagues from Hungary, examine the chances of an anti-patronal transformation after the war. The book provides an overview of the development of Ukraine's political-economic system: color revolutions in 2004 and 2014 brought democratic transformation, but no change in the patronage system The result was patronal regime cycles instead of the emergence of a Western-type liberal democracy in the country. Building on the conceptual framework of the editors' The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2020), the 12 chapters examine the impact of the war on patronal democracy, the relational economy, clientelist society, and the international environment in which Ukraine operates.This collection is complemented by the book entitled Russia. Imperial Endeavor and Geopolitical Consequences.

We have politics on our mind-or, rather, we have politics in different parts of our brains. In this path-breaking study, Matt Qvortrup takes the reader on a whistle stop tour through the fascinating, and sometimes frightening, world of neuropolitics; the discipline that combines neuroscience and politics, and is even being used to win elections. Putting the 'science' back into political science, The Political Brain shows how fMRI-scans can identify differences between Liberals and Conservatives, can predict our behaviour with sometimes greater accuracy than surveys, and can explain the biology of uprisings, revolutions, and wars. Not merely a study of empirical evidence, the book shows how the philosophical theories of, among others, Plato, Aristotle, and Spinoza can be supported by brain scans. Along the way, it also provides an overview of the state-of-the-art knowledge of the organ that shapes our politics. The book shows that if we rely on evolutionary primitive parts of the midbrain-those engaged when we succumb to polarised politics-we stand in danger of squandering the gains we made through the last eight million years.

The increasing radicalization of political life in most countries in Europe lends special relevance to studies of the antifascist legacies on the continent. This insightful collection of essays is an in-depth review of antifascism in Slovenia, setting it in the context of related movements elsewhere in Europe. The period treated by the 19 essays comprises the interwar period, World War Two, and the post-war decades. The comparative and transnational perspectives advanced by the volume change our understanding of antifascism. The essays deal with the right-wing but also left-wing instrumentalization of antifascism, with a particular focus on the communist and post-communist periods. The authors point out that antifascism comes in various strains, whether inspired by liberalism, social democracy, communism, monarchism, anarchism, or even Christian conservatism. The contributors bring to light several overlooked antifascist actors, campaigns, and organisations, mostly in Slovenia and the Adriatic area.

Aside from the near-complete devastation of a sovereign state and reversal of the global balance of power, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is leading to a radical transformation in the Eastern European and Eurasian regions - including Russia itself.The 13 chapters in this volume examine the main geopolitical consequences of the resurgent imperialist aspirations of the Russian Federation. They examine the ideological tools of history falsification as an integral part of hybrid warfare. Turning to the economy, the book discusses how the war and economic sanctions imposed on Russia are redrawing the geopolitical map and how economic relations would change following a regime transformation. The book discusses the reactions of members of the international community to the invasion, whether threatened or neutral parties or allies. The collection therefore offers a comprehensive picture of the main consequences of the resurgent imperialist aspirations of the Russian Federation. Equipped with the conceptual tools of the analysis with a focus on the patronal features of the political-economic system, the book considers the aftermath of the war. This collection complements the book entitled Ukraine. Patronal Democracy and the Russian Invasion.

For long periods in history, the Austrian capital found itself on the geographical edge of western civilisation. Yet from the 18th century on, Vienna has been a vibrant centre of European culture. This city is the scene of the formidable meeting of the two outstanding intellectuals that are at the core of this book. The warm relationship between W.H. Auden, the celebrated British-American poet (1907-1973), and his fellow expatriate, the Welsh-Austrian journalist, translator and writer Stella Musulin (1915-1996) lasted while Auden resided in the nearby small town of Kirchstetten starting in 1958. It was here that the poet was laid to rest in the autumn of 1973. This book is based on the unpublished letters of Auden to Musulin and her private journals. The study of this inspiring material yields new insights into Auden's last, prolific, creative period and underscores the 'Austrian Auden.' In addition, Michael O'Sullivan pays tribute to the closest 'Austrian' friend of the poet. Baroness Stella von Musulin was an intellectual whose two books for Faber & Faber are acknowledged as classics: Vienna in the Age of Metternich and Austria: People & Landscape (with a foreword by Auden). The author situates the close relationship of two individuals in the context of Austria's complex political, social, and cultural history in the Cold War years.

The war in Ukraine, with the exposure of nuclear power stations and the danger of atomic warfare, has made the legacy of the Soviet nuclear sector of critical importance. The two authors map the Soviet nuclear industry in a shifting historical context, making sense of a complex socio-technical and environmental history. Taking an innovative approach, this book explores the history of atomic power in the former Soviet Union using the spatial dimensions of the nuclear industry as a point of departure. The key concept is that of the archipelago - a network of nuclear facilities spread throughout the Soviet territory, but mutually reliant on each other and densely connected. The story traces the emergence of nuclear science and technology for military and civilian purposes through to the post-Soviet Russian nuclear corporations as providers of resources and technology. The book explains how nuclear developments in the Soviet Union interacted with processes of environmental and landscape change. The spatial lens offers an analytically fruitful and pedagogically stimulating way to comprehend the nuclear histories of the Soviet Union and its successor states.

The area that constitutes the Austrian federal province of Burgenland belonged to the Hungarian part of the Habsburg empire until the end of World War I. This book helps us realize that geographical knowledge does not come ready-made. Instead, it is created by knowledge makers: geographers, historians, statisticians etc. This knowledge-making helped to legitimatize the area transferred between Austria and Hungary, shape the Burgenland identity, and depict its geopolitical role in the rise of national socialism. This book is about how those studying Burgenland, the creators of its geographical knowledge, saw and represented the province. It explores how they grasped the geographical characteristics of the region through their own perspective, influenced by their own professional positions, individual careers, motivations, and by the broader historical and social medium. The way the area between the provinces of Lower Austria and Styria came about as Burgenland is enthralling, as is how the people there experienced this change of sovereignty and how everyday social and economic relationships were transformed. Tracing the geographical discourses in the interwar period and beyond, the book argues that Burgenland became a successful geographical project, and departs from thoughts of subdivision, unviability, and backwardness, concentrating instead on fertility, unity, and modernization.

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.

The Covid pandemic has put all modern societies to a serious test of resilience. The interdisciplinary research on which this book is based examined how four European governments behaved in these circumstances. During the months of the crisis, the team of experts coordinated by the editors of this volume took a close look at the decision-making processes in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia - the so-called Visegrad Four.The inquiries focused on experiences from the academic, health, economic and social fields. The methods of comparison included surveys, interviews, discourse analysis, for which the adaptive leadership theory provided the conceptual framework. The conclusions are both academic and practical. Aside the description of the pandemic responses, the research had a formative dimension: how can an adaptive leadership approach better help societies manage the health and societal impacts of similar challenges? The spectrum of emerging anti-democratic tendencies in the region provided the specific context of the exercise. The four states face varying degrees of democratic backsliding as well as illiberal influences that have affected their response to the pandemic, which gives this research on the Visegrad Four a worldwide resonance.

In August 1916 the Kingdom of Romania (Wallachia and Moldova) entered World War One, which by 1918 led to a union with Transylvania and Bessarabia. This book considers the contribution of women to the achievement of the Romanian national project, includingthe role of bourgeoisie and middle-class women, the position of women in rural areas, and love, sex, and eroticism in wartime. Alin Ciupala also presents portraits of feminine personalities, among them Queen Mary with her participation in the organization of campaign hospitals, her role in supplying the civil population with food and necessary goods, and her presence among the soldiers and in foreign propaganda in favor of Romanian causes. Another example is Ecaterina Teodoroiu, the only woman in Romania to served as an officer, who died on the battlefield leading soldiers under her command. Beyond women's contribution to the war, the book examines the effects of World War One on gender roles in Romania . Feminist leaders expected that a wartime 'training service' would entitle women to a life withfull rights as citizens. Yet after the war, the situation returned to "normal," and women largely continued to be excluded from the public sphere.

The proclamation of Belarusian independence on March 25, 1918, and the rival establishment of the Soviet Belarusian state on January 1, 1919, created two distinct and mutually exclusive national myths, which continue to define contemporary Belarusian society. This book examines the processes that resulted in this dual resolution in the context of World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolutions.Based on original archival material, Lizaveta Kasmach scrutinizes the development of competing concepts of Belarusian nationhood in the context of rivaling national aspirations and imperial policies. The analysis convincingly demonstrates the divisions within the nationalist movement, both politically between the moderates and socialists, and geographically between German-occupied territory with Vilna as a center versus Russian-controlled territory around Minsk. Besides the case study of Belarusian nation-building efforts, the book is a contribution to the study of the First World War in East Central Europe, approaching the war and its aftermath as a mobilizational moment in the region.

The impact of the passage of war refugees on the lives and minds of local residents and officials is the subject of this study. Between 2017 and 2020, Beatrix Futak-Campbell conducted interviews with over fifty people who live and work near the Hungarian-Serbian border. This area was exposed to the unprecedented stream of refugees, most of them seeking safety from the Syrian civil war. The Hungarian government's hostility to migrants has been widely criticized, and news coverage has tended to reiterate unhelpful characterisations of Hungarian citizens as being anti-migrant, anti-Muslim and racist. The situation is, however, more nuanced. There is a substantial difference between the border police, local communities, and organizations, on the one hand, and national politicians and the international media perception of the refugee 'crisis', on the other. Those living and working with migrants at the border were caught between the domestic political situation, the plight of the refugees and the international support the latter receive, and the exigencies of their own livelihoods. This book explores these communities and their own security concerns.

More Nights Than Days is a unique exploration of the experience of children who survived the Holocaust-including Roma and Sinti victims-and the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Children are among the principal victims of armed conflicts and slaughters; nonetheless, they perceive events through the prism of their unique perspective and have a range of coping techniques adults don't possess.This overview of writings of ninety-one child survivors bears evidence from a wide range of human ruthlessness. The author presents little-known texts along with famous memoirs and autobiographical fiction, with abundant quotations. Many of these are not only compelling as historical testimony, but poetic and stirringly expressive. Yudit Kiss has not written a historical study or literary criticism of the children's books. She explores, instead, what the authors went through and what they felt and understood about their experience. An accessible and captivating reading, this volume presents a close-up, human size dimension of the destruction. The books written by child survivors also describe the resources and means that helped them to remain human even in the deepest well of inhumanity, offering precious lessons about resistance and resilience.M