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Reaching back centuries, this study makes a convincing case for very deep roots of current Eastern European backwardness. Its conclusions are suggestive for comparativists studying other parts of the world, and useful to those who want to understand contemporary Eastern Europe's past. Like the rest of the world except for that unique part of the West which has given us a false model of what was "normal," Eastern Europe developed slowly. The weight of established class relations, geography, lack of technological innovation, and wars kept the area from growing richer. In the nineteenth century the West exerted a powerful influence, but it was political more than economic. Nationalism and the creation of newly independent aspiring nation-states then began to shape national economies, often in unfavorable ways. One of this book's most important lessons is that while economics may limit the freedom of action of political players, it does not determine political outcomes. The authors offer no simple explanations but rather a theoretically complex synthesis that demonstrates the interaction of politics and economics.
This monograph is about an exciting episode in the intellectual history of Europe: the vigorous debate among leading Polish historians on the sources of the economic development and non-development, including the origins of economic divisions within Europe. The work covers nearly fifty years of this debate between the publication of two pivotal works in 1947 and 1994. Anna Sosnowska provides an insightful interpretation of how local and generational experience shaped the notions of post-1945 Polish historians about Eastern European backwardness, and how their debate influenced Western historical sociology, social theories of development and dependency in peripheral areas, and the image of Eastern Europe in Western, Marxist-inspired social science. Although created under the adverse conditions of state socialism and censorship, this body of scholarship had an important repercussion in international social science of the post-war period, contributing an emphasis on international comparisons, as well as a stress on social theory and explanations. Sosnowska's analysis also helps to understand current differences that lead to conflicts between Europe’s richest and economically most developed core and its southern and eastern peripheries. The historians she studies also investigated analogies between paths in Eastern Europe and regions of West Africa, Latin America and East Asia.
The subject of this book is the economic backwardness of Poland and Eastern Europe in the modern era. The studies in the first part analyse various aspects of the region's economic and social history in the period from the 16th to the 20th centuries, such as the nature of peasant economics, the character of economic evolution, and the ambiguity of social and economic relations between Poland and "the West". The second part deals with the change following the fall of state socialism. Papers in this part argue that, for understanding the present, it is necessary to take into consideration historical legacies. It is also important to look at the process of this recent change comparatively, both within Eastern Europe and comparing this region with other parts of the world. Professor Kochanowicz's contention in these essays is that the so-called transformation has had to cope not only with the effects of state socialism, but also with a much longer legacy of backwardness.
Why has the collapse of Communism resulted in so much disappointment for the hopeful millions of Eastern Europe? In this original and provocative book Philip Longworth argues that their predicament is only partly due to the imposition of the Soviet system but rather they are the heirs of misfortune which dates back centuries. In exploring the origins of current problems, this sweeping history ranges from the present day to the time of Constantine the Great, from the Urals to the Mediterranean and the Baltic, and emphasises culture and society, as well as politics and economics. The resulting analysis provides the crucial, and until now much-needed, long-term background to the difficulties now facing Eastern Europe. This new perspective and the insight it brings will improve our understanding of this complex region and be of immense value to all who want to understand Eastern Europe's past and present.
Wolff explores how Western thinkers contributed to defining and characterizing Eastern Europe as half-civilized and barbaric.
Historian Iván Berend turns his attention to Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th century, a turbulent period. Extending up to World War I, the period contained the seeds of developments and crises that continue to haunt the region today.
A study of East Central Europe and its place in the modern world. Combining narrative with analysis, it presents the past and present of East Central Europe in the larger context of the political and economic history of the continent.
"Why is Eastern Europe still different from Western Europe, more than a quarter-century after the collapse of Communism? A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present shows how the roots of this difference are based in Eastern Europe's tortured 20th century. Eastern Europe emerged in 1918 as the 'lands between', new states whose weakness vis-à-vis Germany and Soviet Russia soon became obvious. The region was the main killing-field of the Second World War, which visited unimaginable horrors on its inhabitants before their 'liberation' by the Soviets in 1945. The imposition of Communist dictatorships on the region, ironically, only deepened Eastern Europe's backwardness. Even in the post-Communist period, its problems continue to make it a fertile breeding-ground for nationalism and political extremism. A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present explores the comparative backwardness of Eastern Europe and how this has driven strategies of modernisation; it looks at the ways in which the region has served as a giant test-tube for political experimentation and, in particular, at the enduring strength of nationalism, which since 1989 has re-emerged more virulent than ever. Complete with a useful chronology, maps and a helpful glossary, this book in the essential textbook for any student of 20th-century Eastern Europe"--