Catalogue

Social systems do not disappear overnight; sometimes they are not as "gone" as people think they are. Despite Western triumphalism, the recent past remains very important in Eastern Europe. Although there were real elements of grassroots, "people's revolutions" in the ouster of communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989, Mark's point of departure is that the "unrevolutionary, negotiated elite ... nature of the system change" failed to produce a heroic narrative or to completely chase former communists from power. When the ex-communist Left showed that it retained electoral power in the 1990s, conservatives (i.e., anti-communist elites) searched for ways to manipulate public memory and discourse so the "unfinished revolution" could continue well after the fall of the Iron Curtain--while still convincing NATO and the EU that their countries were already reconstructed enough to deserve acceptance. The ensuing social mobilization created lots of space for nationalism, hostility to leftism, and historical revisionism. Victims of Stalinist terror, the Holocaust, and Red Army atrocities recalibrated the public expression of their experiences. Mark (Univ. of Exeter, UK) uses oral history in this delightful book to get at the debates over collaboration and agency under the ancien regime, especially in Hungary and Poland. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries. J. K. Cox North Dakota State University