Download Free Poland Between The Superpowers Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Poland Between The Superpowers and write the review.

This book examines the foreign and domestic policies of Poland since World War II in light of the country's relations with the Soviet Union and the United States. Dr. Rachwald focuses on three salient goals of Polish foreign policy: security, guaranteed both by alliance with the Soviet Union and by support for the idea of European collective securi
Solidarity, Arthur Rachwald concludes, was the weight that tipped the scales toward democracy as Poland balanced precariously between democracy and Marxist-Leninst totalitarianism. An international event, that appearance in Poland of Solidarity--the first independent and self-governing labor union in the Soviet bloc--met strong reactions in the East and West. Moscow perceived Solidarity as the most destablizing challenge to its imperial order in Eastern Europe since Titoism in 1948. Professor Rachwald's timely book details the extraordinary events that led to the June 1989 semifree elections, which placed the government of Poland in the hands of a Solidarity-led coalition, and culminated in the self-dissolution of the Polish Communist party. Using documents and reports in Polish, Russian, and English, Arthur Rachwald compares U.S. Soviet, and Polish authorities' reactions to events in Poland during the 1980s as well as analyzes U.S.-Polish relations and their effect on the Polish government's domestic and foreign policies. The author gives careful attention to the complex relations among the political players, particularly the communist authorities and the Roman Catholic church. Exploring one of the most critical political developments of our time, he discusses the pivotal position, politically and geographically, that Poland occupies in Eastern Europe.
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores how the socially disputed period of the Cold War is remembered in today’s history classroom. Applying a diverse set of methodological strategies, the authors map the dividing lines in and between memory cultures across the globe, paying special attention to the impact the crisis-driven age of our present has on images of the past. Authors analysing educational media point to ambivalence, vagueness and contradictions in textbook narratives understood to be echoes of societal and academic controversies. Others focus on teachers and the history classroom, showing how unresolved political issues create tensions in history education. They render visible how teachers struggle to handle these challenges by pretending that what they do is ‘just history’. The contributions to this book unveil how teachers, backgrounding the political inherent in all memory practices, often nourish the illusion that the history in which they are engaged is all about addressing the past with a reflexive and disciplined approach.
Vividly written and based on up-to-date scholarship, this title provides an interpretive overview of the international history of the Cold War.
A new interpretation of the Cold War from the perspective of the smaller and middle powers in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
For better or worse--be it militarily, politically, economically, technologically, or culturally--Americans have had a profound role in shaping the wider world beyond them. The United States has been a savior to some, a curse to others, but either way such views are often based on a caricature of American actions and intentions. American Foreign Relations, then, is a subject of immense global importance that provokes strong emotions and much debate, but often based on deep misunderstanding. This Very Short Introduction analyzes the key episodes, themes, and individuals in the history of American foreign relations. While discussing diplomacy and the periods of war that have shaped national and international history, it also addresses such topics as industrialization, globalization, imperialism, and immigration. Covering the Revolution through the War on Terror, it examines the connections between domestic politics and foreign affairs, as well as the importance of ideals and values. Sharply written and highly readable, American Foreign Relations offers a clear-eyed narrative of America's role in the world and how it has evolved over time. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
This book publishes for the first time in print every word the American and Soviet leaders – Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George H.W. Bush – said to each other in their superpower summits from 1985 to 1991. Obtained by the authors through the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S., from the Gorbachev Foundation and the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, and from the personal donation of Anatoly Chernyaev, these previously Top Secret verbatim transcripts combine with key declassified preparatory and after-action documents from both sides to create a unique interactive documentary record of these historic highest-level talks – the conversations that ended the Cold War. The summits fueled a process of learning on both sides, as the authors argue in contextual essays on each summit and detailed headnotes on each document. Geneva 1985 and Reykjavik 1986 reduced Moscow's sense of threat and unleashed Reagan's inner abolitionist. Malta 1989 and Washington 1990 helped dampen any superpower sparks that might have flown in a time of revolutionary change in Eastern Europe, set off by Gorbachev and by Eastern Europeans (Solidarity, dissidents, reform Communists). The high level and scope of the dialogue between these world leaders was unprecedented, and is likely never to be repeated.
The Second World War gripped Poland as it did no other country in Europe. Invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union, it remained under occupation by foreign armies from the first day of the war to the last. The conflict was brutal, as Polish armies battled the enemy on four different fronts. It was on Polish soil that the architects of the Final Solution assembled their most elaborate network of extermination camps, culminating in the deliberate destruction of millions of lives, including three million Polish Jews. In The Eagle Unbowed, Halik Kochanski tells, for the first time, the story of Poland's war in its entirety, a story that captures both the diversity and the depth of the lives of those who endured its horrors. Most histories of the European war focus on the Allies' determination to liberate the continent from the fascist onslaught. Yet the "good war" looks quite different when viewed from Lodz or Krakow than from London or Washington, D.C. Poland emerged from the war trapped behind the Iron Curtain, and it would be nearly a half-century until Poland gained the freedom that its partners had secured with the defeat of Hitler. Rescuing the stories of those who died and those who vanished, those who fought and those who escaped, Kochanski deftly reconstructs the world of wartime Poland in all its complexity-from collaboration to resistance, from expulsion to exile, from Warsaw to Treblinka. The Eagle Unbowed provides in a single volume the first truly comprehensive account of one of the most harrowing periods in modern history.
Relations between the superpowers and the nations of Eastern and Western Europe are especially tenuous as the midpoint of the 1980s approaches. The contributors to this volume assess the current political, economic, and military dimensions of Europe’s international relations and consider the prospects for change, focusing on the role of the rival alliance systems (NATO and the Warsaw Pact), Soviet conceptions of the future of Europe, U.S. goals concerning the maintenance of NATO, and Europe’s assessment of its own interests and objectives. The book concludes by addressing the impact of Soviet and East European domestic developments on present and future East-West relations.