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Though the study is rooted in Hungary, it explores the dynamic and contingent relationship between identity construction and transnational cultural and political currents in East-Central European nations in the interwar period.

This collection of essays considers the Soviet-era gulag in the Baltic States within the broader international research on displacement and cultural memory.

This book offers a detailed analysis of the construction, reception, and eventual decline of the cult of the Hungarian Communist Party Secretary, Mátyás Rákosi, one of the most striking examples of orchestrated adulation in the Soviet bloc. While his cult never approached the magnitude of that of Stalin, Rákosi’s ambition to outshine the other “best disciples” and become the best of the best was manifest in his diligence in promoting a Soviet-type ritual system in Hungary. The main argument of The Invisible Shining is that the cult of personality is not just a curious aspect of communist dictatorship, it is an essential element of it.The monograph is primarily concerned with techniques and methods of cult construction, as well as the role various institutions played in the creation of mythical representations of political figures. While engaging with a wider international literature on Stalinist cults, the author uses the case of Rákosi to explore how personality cults are created, how such cults are perceived, and how they are eventually unmade. The book addresses the success—generally questionable—of such projects, as well as their uncomfortable legacies.

This study analyzes the main requirements placed on Central and Eastern Europe's financial systems during their transition to a market economy. It assesses the financial reforms already carried out in the countries of Central Europe and their adaptations of Western institutional models.

The volume contains selected papers from two conferences in 2003, at the University of Bergen (Norway) and at CEU. They deal comparatively with the communication of the Holy See with Northern Europe and Eastern Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages, both areas at the margins of Western Christendom.

An assessment of the Central and East European Publishing Project, an initiative designed to support embattled Central and East European publishers and journals, and to punch holes through the cultural Iron Curtain by encouraging translations.

Reforms in the evaluation and funding of scientific research are a key element in the broader process of economic reform in Eastern Europe. This text examines the introduction of competitive funding and offers suggestions for dealing with some of the problems encountered by East European reformers.

Paying tribute to the Brazilian essayist, thinker and diplomat Jose Merquior, this collection of papers explores some of his favourite themes: liberalism as it relates to social cohesion; political stability; morality; republicanism and democracy; and the scepticism underlying postmodern thought.

This text examines how countries suffering from low productivity levels and innovatory momentum, over a period of 20-30 years can rediscover their dynamism. It challenges the belief that balanced budgets and stable prices are sufficient to cure the ills of an economically stagnant society.

This work attempts to assess the trends in social and labour market policy in Ukraine and to help to identify the priorities to follow in the restructuring of the Ukrainian economy and the reform of social policy.

The first of a three-volume series to be published on corporate governance in Central Europe and Russia, this work specifically investigates the role of banks, investment funds and pension funds, as well as the impact of residual state ownership.

Part of a three-volume work on corporate governance in Central Europe and Russia, this work examines the nature of control exercised by insiders in Central and East European firms, and the emergence of indigenous corporate governance institutions. It also addresses the role of foreign investors.

This study analyzes the background, events and leading figures involved in the December 1993 multiparty elections in Russia. It provides historical, political, regional and sociocultural interpretations of Russia's first post-communist elections, and examines their significance.

This study is devoted to recent developments in Central European (especially Polish) political thought, and concentrates on the emergence of liberal ideas, a subject largely neglected by Western observers. It provides an account of liberal thinking in Eastern Europe before and after 1989.

The International Labour Office is the moving force behind the adoption of the Labour Force Survey in Western countries as the only reliable means of gathering information about trends in employment and unemployment, and on pay. The countries of East-Central Europe and the former USSR have recognized their need of such statistiics and turned to the ILO to help them set up systems to provide data required by decision makers. This pioneering work shows how the old "e;command"e; economies are setting up brand new systems to classify occupations, to measure employment and unemployment, and to collect information on wages and labour costs, which will be useful to students of the area and essential for statisticians world-wide concerned with the challenge of instigating an entirely new statistical service.

The authors of this treatise attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the economic and political transformations now taking place in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. They build up a detailed picture of the privatization process in the retail trade, catering and more general services. Not only are these sectors strongly relevant to consumers in these countries, but they also offer attractive possibilities for property ownership on a mass scale, as well as for the fostering of the small enterprises and entrepreneurial spirit that will be so important in the future.

In Eastern Europe privatization is now a mass phenomenon. The authors propose a model of it by means of an illustration from the example of Poland, which envisages the free provision of shares in formerly public undertakings to employees and consumers, and the provision of corporate finance from foreign intermediaries. One danger that emerges is that of bureaucratization. On the broader canvas, mass privatization implies the reform of the whole system, the creation of a suitable economic infrastructure for a market economy and the institutions of corporate governance. The authors point out the need for a delicate balance between evolution - which may be too slow - and design - which brings the risk of more government involvement than it is able to manage. A chapter originating as a European Bank working paper explores the banking implications of setting up a totally new financial sector with interlocking classes of assets. The economic effects merge into politics as the role of the state is investigated. Teachers and graduate students of public/private sector economies, East European affairs; advisers to bankers or commercial companies with Eastern European interests.

In this work, comprehensive comparative information on five Central European countries has been collected by teams of researchers from both within the region and from the West. Following an introduction to the economic environment in each country, it provides an overview of the privatization process, including an account of the legal framework of ownership, institutions for state regulation, an overview of privatization programmes and the initial transformation of enterprises. A key feature of the book is the authors' access to hitherto unavailable information and their ability to present a vast amount of material in an easily available format. Aimed at policy makers and business people, the work should provide a strong foundation for future research.

The Second Vatican Council is the single most influential event in the twentieth-century history of the Catholic Church. The book analyzes the relationship between the Council and the "Ostpolitik" of the Vatican through the history of the Hungarian presence at Vatican II.

The Eugenic Fortress examines the eugenic movement that emerged in the early twentieth century, and focuses on its conceptual and methodological evolution during this turbulent period.

This edited volume speaks at large about issues at the core of the dispute of Turkey's accession to the EU taking a wider angle and locating the subject in foreign policy dimensions.

Expanding the horizon of accounts of art under communism, The Green Bloc uncovers the history of artistic engagement with the natural environment in the Eastern Bloc.

Introducing the concept of the post-communist mafia state, Balint Magyar has established a new interpretative framework and vocabulary to describe the Orban regime, which has become equally central to the main lines of argument in both scientific debate and public discourse.

This book concerns the politics of religion as expressed through apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Dzhublyk in Transcarpathian Ukraine.

Provides comprehensive comparative information on the privatization process in five former Soviet republics. Following an introduction to the economic environment in each country, it covers ownership, state regulation, privatization programmes and the initial transformation of enterprises.

This book focuses on regulatory challenges of creating and sustaining freedom of speech and freedom of information two decades after the fall of the Berlin wall, in global, comparative context. Some chapters overview, others address specific issues, or describe country case studies. Instead of trying to provide an exhaustive assessment which in one volume might not reach deeper analyzes of contextual details, this book will shed light on and help better understanding of general challenges for freedom of speech and information through varying comparative examples and highlighting important regulatory questions.

The book deals with the expansion and institutionalization of intellectual property norms in the twentieth century, with a European focus. Its thirteen chapters revolve around the transfer, adaptation and the ambivalence of legal transplants in the interface between national and international projects, trends and contexts.

The 500th anniversary of Thomas More's Utopia has directed attention toward the importance of utopianism. This book investigates the possibilities of cooperation between the humanities and the social sciences in the analysis of 20th century and contemporary utopian phenomena. The papers deal with major problems of interpreting utopias, the relationship of utopia and ideology, and the highly problematic issue as to whether utopia necessarily leads to dystopia. Besides reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary utopian investigations, the eleven essays effectively represent the constructive attitudes of utopian thought, a feature that not only defines late 20th- and 21st-century utopianism, but is one of the primary reasons behind the rising importance of the topic. The volume's originality and value lies not only in the innovative theoretical approaches proposed, but also in the practical application of the concept of utopia to a variety of phenomena which have been neglected in the utopian studies paradigm, especially to the rarely discussed Central European texts and ideologies.

The common critique of media- and ratings-driven politics envisions democracy falling hostage to a popularity contest. By contrast, the following book reconceives politics as a speculative Keynesian beauty contest that alienates itself from the popular audience it ceaselessly targets. Political actors unknowingly lean on collective beliefs about the popular expectations they seek to gratify, and thus do not follow popular public opinion as it is, but popular public opinion about popular public opinion. This book unravels how collective discourses on "e;the popular"e; have taken the role of intermediary between political elites and electorates. The shift has been driven by the idea of "e;liquid control:"e; that postindustrial electorates should be reached through flexibly designed media campaigns based on a complete understanding of their media-immersed lives. Such a complex representation of popular electorates, actors have believed, cannot be secured by rigid bureaucratic parties, but has to be distilled from the collective wisdom of the crowd of consultants, pollsters, journalists and pundits commenting on the political process. The mediatization of political representation has run a strikingly similar trajectory to the marketization of capital allocation in finance: starting from a rejection of bureaucratic control, promising a more "e;liquid"e; alternative, attempting to detect a collective wisdom (of/about "e;the markets"e; and "e;the people"e;), and ending up in self-driven spirals of collective speculation.

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 addressed in the book but most profoundly, the book wrestles with the subject of the Holocaust and its legacy in Estonia.