Democracy And Myth In Russia And Eastern Europe

Author : Alexander Wöll
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134089074
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe written by Alexander Wöll and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-10-18 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the absence of democratic state institutions, eastern European countries were considered to possess only myths of democracy. Working on the premise that democracy is not only an institutional arrangement but also a civilisational project, this book argues that mythical narratives help understanding the emergence of democracy without ‘democrats’. Examining different national traditions as well as pre-communist and communist narratives, myths are seen as politically fabricated ‘programmes of truth’ that form and sustain the political imagination. Appearing as cultural, literary, or historical resources, myths amount to ideology in narrative form, which actors use in political struggles for the sake of achieving social compliance and loyalty with the authority of new political forms. Drawing on a wide range of case studies including Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, this book argues that narratives about the past are not simply ‘legacies’ of former regimes but have actively shaped representations and meanings of democracy in the region. Taking different theoretical and methodological approaches, the power of myth is explored for issues such as leadership, collective identity-formation, literary representation of heroic figures, cultural symbolism in performative art as well as on the constitution of legitimacy and civic identity in post-communist democracies.

Author : Vladimir Tismaneanu
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400822505
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fantasies of Salvation written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-08 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eastern Europe has become an ideological battleground since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with liberals and authoritarians struggling to seize the ground lost by Marxism. In Fantasies of Salvation, Vladimir Tismaneanu traces the intellectual history of this struggle and warns that authoritarian nationalists pose a serious threat to democratic forces. A leading observer of the often baffling world of post-Communist Europe, Tismaneanu shows that extreme nationalistic and authoritarian thought has been influential in Eastern Europe for much of this century, while liberalism has only shallow historical roots. Despite democratic successes in places such as the Czech Republic and Poland, he argues, it would be a mistake for the West to assume that liberalism will always triumph. He backs this argument by showing how nationalist intellectuals have encouraged ethnic hatred in such countries as Russia, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia by reviving patriotic myths of heroes, scapegoats, and historical injustices. And he shows how enthusiastically these myths have been welcomed by people desperate for some form of "salvation" from political and economic uncertainty. On a theoretical level, Tismaneanu challenges the common ideas that the ideological struggle is between "right" and "left" or between "nationalists" and "internationalists." In a careful analysis of the conflict's ideological roots, he argues that it is more useful and historically accurate to view the struggle as between those who embrace the individualist traditions of the Enlightenment and those who reject them. Tismaneanu himself has been active in the intellectual battles he describes, particularly in his native Romania, and makes insightful use of interviews with key members of the dissident movements of the 1970s and 1980s. He offers original observations of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea and expresses his ideas in a vivid and forceful style. Fantasies of Salvation is an indispensable book for both academic and nonacademic readers who wish to understand the forces shaping one of the world's most important and unpredictable regions.

Author : Vladimir Tismaneanu
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781400818419
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fantasies of Salvation written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by . This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite Democratic successes in places such as the Czech Republic and Poland, Tismaneanu argues that it would be a mistake for the West to assume that liberalism will always triumph in post-Communist Europe. "Fantasies of Salvation" is a thought-provoking book for both academic and nonacademic readers who wish to understand the forces shaping one of the world's most important and unpredictable regions.

Author : Vladislav Inozemtsev
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136267808
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Democracy versus Modernization written by Vladislav Inozemtsev and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to "re-think democracy." Over the past years, there has been a tendency in the global policy community and, even more widely, in the world’s media, to focus on democracy as the "gold standard" by which all things political are measured. This book re-examines democracy in Russia and in the world more generally, as idea, desired ideal, and practice. A major issue for Russia is whether the modernization of Russia might not prosper better by Russia focusing directly on modernization and not worrying too much about democracy. This book explores a wide range of aspects of this important question. It discusses how the debate is conducted in Russia; outlines how Russians contrast their own experiences, unfavourably, with the experience of China, where reform and modernization have been pursued with great success, with no concern for democracy; and concludes by assessing how the debate in Russia is likely to be resolved.

Author : Kate C. Langdon
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3030205797
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy written by Kate C. Langdon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the cultural, societal, and ideological factors absent from popular discourse on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, contesting the misleading mainstream assumption that Putin is the all-powerful sovereign of Russia. In carefully examining the ideological underpinnings of Putinism—its tsarist and Soviet elements, its intellectual origins, its culturally reproductive nature, and its imperialist foreign policy—the authors reveal that an indoctrinating ideology and a willing population are simultaneously the most crucial yet overlooked keys to analyzing Putin’s totalitarian democracy. Because Putinism is part of a global wave of extreme political movements, the book also reaffirms the need to understand—but not accept—how and why nation-states and masses turn to nationalism, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism in modern times.

Author : Harald Wydra
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139462180
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Communism and the Emergence of Democracy written by Harald Wydra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before democracy becomes an institutionalised form of political authority, the rupture with authoritarian forms of power causes deep uncertainty about power and outcomes. This book connects the study of democratisation in eastern Europe and Russia to the emergence and crisis of communism. Wydra argues that the communist past is not simply a legacy but needs to be seen as a social organism in gestation, where critical events produce new expectations, memories and symbols that influence meanings of democracy. By examining a series of pivotal historical events, he shows that democratisation is not just a matter of institutional design, but rather a matter of consciousness and leadership under conditions of extreme and traumatic incivility. Rather than adopting the opposition between non-democratic and democratic, Wydra argues that the communist experience must be central to the study of the emergence and nature of democracy in (post-) communist countries.

Author : Veljko Vujačić
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107074088
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nationalism, Myth, and the State in Russia and Serbia written by Veljko Vujačić and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of Russian and Serbian nationalism in dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1991.

Author : Shashikant Jha
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9788170950912
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Amidst Turbulence and Hope written by Shashikant Jha and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributed articles presented at a seminar in 2001.

Author : Zoltan D. Barany
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521805124
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Russian Politics written by Zoltan D. Barany and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-08-27 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What went wrong in Russia's decade-old post-communist transition? A group of leading young scholars answer this question by offering assessments of five crucial political arenas during the Yeltsin era: elections, executive-legislative relations, interactions between the central state and the regions, economic reforms, and civil-military relations. All of the contributors recognize that adverse historical legacies have complicated Russian democratization. They challenge structural explanations that emphasize constraints of the pre-existing system, however, and concentrate instead on the importance of elite decisions and institution-building. The authors agree that elites' failure to develop robust political institutions has been a central problem of Russia's post-communist transition. The weakness of the state and its institutions has contributed to a number of serious problems threatening democratic consolidation. These include the tensions between the executive and the legislature, the frail infrastructure for successful market reform, and the absence of proper civilian control over the armed forces.

Author : Yitzhak Brudny
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521840279
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Restructuring Post-Communist Russia written by Yitzhak Brudny and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-21 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by Russian and Western scholars, this collection of original essays presents a general overview of political change in Russia since 1991. Rather than interpret the collapse of state socialism as "the end of history" or the beginning of the "transition" to a liberal, free market democracy, the contributors examine recent Russian history by analyzing it in comparison with the histories of other states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They address topics of national identity, demographic change, and the characteristics of Russian democracy.