Globalizing Eastern Europe

Globalizing Eastern Europe

For far too long, views of Eastern Europe as a negligible and peripheral region have shaped popular perceptions of this part of the world. Presenting new research, Globalizing Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture and Economics from the 18th to the 21st Century offers refreshing arguments to counter such misconceptions. Global politics and international law have been profoundly shaped by the experiences and expertise that emanated from this region. Migration to and from Eastern Europe, has fostered deep ties with neighbouring and distant societies, as have this area's literature and music. The importance of its agricultural development has reverberated in the global economy. This volume recasts Eastern Europe as a global region. It shows how people from this part of the world shaped the 'global', and how in turn, the 'global' shaped them. Authors from a range of disciplines, chart century-long traditions of entanglements and contemporary interactions. In doing so, this book further enriches the perennial debates regarding this region's spatial boundaries.

Alternative Globalizations

Globalization has become synonymous with the seemingly unfettered spread of capitalist multinationals, but this focus on the West and western economies ignores the wide variety of globalizing projects that sprang up in the socialist world as a consequence of the end of the European empires. This collection is the first to explore alternative forms of globalization across the socialist world during the Cold War. Gathering the work of established and upcoming scholars of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, Alternative Globalizations addresses the new relationships and interconnections which emerged between a decolonizing world in the postwar period and an increasingly internationalist eastern bloc after the death of Stalin. In many cases, the legacies of these former globalizing impulses from the socialist world still exist today. Divided into four sections, the works gathered examine the economic, political, developmental, and cultural aspects of this exchange. In doing so, the authors break new ground in exploring this understudied history of globalization and provide a multifaceted study of an increasing postwar interconnectedness across a socialist world.

Global Trends in Eastern Europe