Uncivil Society and the Implosion of the Communist Esta
1989
0.0
( 2929 )
Engelsk
Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East Eur...
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Forlagsbeskrivelse af Uncivil Society and the Implosion of the Communist Esta af Stephen Kotkin
Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies–East Germany, Romania, and Poland–to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be swept away in political bank runs. This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class–communism’s establishment, or “uncivil society. ” The Communists borrowed from the West like drunken sailors to buy mass consumer goods, then were unable to pay back the hard-currency debts and so borrowed even more. In Eastern Europe, communism came to resemble a Ponzi scheme, one whose implosion carries enduring lessons. From East Germany’s pseudotechnocracy to Romania’s megalomaniacal dystopia, from Communist Poland’s cult of Mary to the Kremlin’s surprise restraint, Kotkin and Gross pull back the curtain on the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy, an outcome that opened up to a deeper global integration that has proved destabilizing.
Detaljer
Forlag
Modern Library Inc
ISBN
9780812966794
Sprog
Engelsk
Sider
256
Udgivelsesdato
12-10-2010
Format
Paperback
Varenr.
1716288
EAN nr.
9780812966794
Varegruppe
Engelsk non fiction div.
Højde/Dybde (mm)
203
Bredde (mm)
134
Længde (mm)
22
Vægt (g)
224