Author: Gregory F. Domber
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618524
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anticommunist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence over Poland's politically tumultuous steps toward democratic revolution. In this groundbreaking history, Gregory F. Domber examines American policy toward Poland and its promotion of moderate voices within the opposition, while simultaneously addressing the Soviet and European influences on Poland's revolution in 1989. With a cast including Reagan, Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II, Domber charts American support of anticommunist opposition groups--particularly Solidarity, the underground movement led by future president Lech Wa&322;&281;sa--and highlights the transnational network of Polish emigres and trade unionists that kept the opposition alive. Utilizing archival research and interviews with Polish and American government officials and opposition leaders, Domber argues that the United States empowered a specific segment of the Polish opposition and illustrates how Soviet leaders unwittingly fostered radical, pro-democratic change through their policies. The result is fresh insight into the global impact of the Polish pro-democracy movement.
Empowering Revolution
Author: Gregory F. Domber
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618524
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anticommunist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence over Poland's politically tumultuous steps toward democratic revolution. In this groundbreaking history, Gregory F. Domber examines American policy toward Poland and its promotion of moderate voices within the opposition, while simultaneously addressing the Soviet and European influences on Poland's revolution in 1989. With a cast including Reagan, Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II, Domber charts American support of anticommunist opposition groups--particularly Solidarity, the underground movement led by future president Lech Wa&322;&281;sa--and highlights the transnational network of Polish emigres and trade unionists that kept the opposition alive. Utilizing archival research and interviews with Polish and American government officials and opposition leaders, Domber argues that the United States empowered a specific segment of the Polish opposition and illustrates how Soviet leaders unwittingly fostered radical, pro-democratic change through their policies. The result is fresh insight into the global impact of the Polish pro-democracy movement.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618524
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anticommunist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence over Poland's politically tumultuous steps toward democratic revolution. In this groundbreaking history, Gregory F. Domber examines American policy toward Poland and its promotion of moderate voices within the opposition, while simultaneously addressing the Soviet and European influences on Poland's revolution in 1989. With a cast including Reagan, Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II, Domber charts American support of anticommunist opposition groups--particularly Solidarity, the underground movement led by future president Lech Wa&322;&281;sa--and highlights the transnational network of Polish emigres and trade unionists that kept the opposition alive. Utilizing archival research and interviews with Polish and American government officials and opposition leaders, Domber argues that the United States empowered a specific segment of the Polish opposition and illustrates how Soviet leaders unwittingly fostered radical, pro-democratic change through their policies. The result is fresh insight into the global impact of the Polish pro-democracy movement.
The United States and Poland
Author: Piotr Stefan Wandycz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674926851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
The United States and Poland adds a new dimension to the scholarship of America's international relations. Piotr Wandycz presents a comprehensive picture of the changing relationships between the United States and Poland over two hundred years. This work is, as Wandycz writes, both a survey and a synthesis. Because he believes that an understanding of the history of Poland is necessary in order to appreciate the complex nature of its involvement with the United States, he provides a thorough analysis of Poland's internal development, concentrating on the twentieth century. He also carefully places American-Polish history in the broader context of changing East-West relations. Finally, he speculates on the future between the two countries as detente unfolds and surprising happenings like the election of a Polish Pope occur. Ultimately, Wandycz acknowledges, the American-Polish relationship has been one-sided, even more so than is normal in contacts between great and small powers. "One must not imagine," he writes, "that Poland has been on the minds of American foreign policy makers consistently...but if one thinks of Poland in the context of East Central Europe, her significance increases dramatically." This book provides a necessary history and evaluation of a nation state once dominant in Europe and now searching for an appropriate role.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674926851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
The United States and Poland adds a new dimension to the scholarship of America's international relations. Piotr Wandycz presents a comprehensive picture of the changing relationships between the United States and Poland over two hundred years. This work is, as Wandycz writes, both a survey and a synthesis. Because he believes that an understanding of the history of Poland is necessary in order to appreciate the complex nature of its involvement with the United States, he provides a thorough analysis of Poland's internal development, concentrating on the twentieth century. He also carefully places American-Polish history in the broader context of changing East-West relations. Finally, he speculates on the future between the two countries as detente unfolds and surprising happenings like the election of a Polish Pope occur. Ultimately, Wandycz acknowledges, the American-Polish relationship has been one-sided, even more so than is normal in contacts between great and small powers. "One must not imagine," he writes, "that Poland has been on the minds of American foreign policy makers consistently...but if one thinks of Poland in the context of East Central Europe, her significance increases dramatically." This book provides a necessary history and evaluation of a nation state once dominant in Europe and now searching for an appropriate role.
Between East and West
Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525433198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
In 1991, Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag, Iron Curtain and Red Famine, took a three-month road trip through the borderlands between the fallen Soviet Union and Europe—lands that became Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova. In her iconic reportage, which has become indispensable history, she captures the harrowing story of a region that is once again threatened by Russia. An extraordinary journey into the past and present of the lands east of Poland and west of Russia—an area defined throughout its history by colliding empires. Traveling from the former Soviet naval center of Kaliningrad on the Baltic to the Black Sea port of Odessa, Anne Applebaum encounters a rich range of competing cultures, religions, and national aspirations. In reasserting their heritage, the inhabitants of the borderlands attempt to build a future grounded in their fractured ancestral legacies. In the process, neighbors unearth old conflicts, devote themselves to recovering lost culture, and piece together competing legends to create a new tradition. Rich in surprising encounters and vivid characters, Between East and West brilliantly illuminates the soul of the borderlands and the shaping power of the past.
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525433198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
In 1991, Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag, Iron Curtain and Red Famine, took a three-month road trip through the borderlands between the fallen Soviet Union and Europe—lands that became Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova. In her iconic reportage, which has become indispensable history, she captures the harrowing story of a region that is once again threatened by Russia. An extraordinary journey into the past and present of the lands east of Poland and west of Russia—an area defined throughout its history by colliding empires. Traveling from the former Soviet naval center of Kaliningrad on the Baltic to the Black Sea port of Odessa, Anne Applebaum encounters a rich range of competing cultures, religions, and national aspirations. In reasserting their heritage, the inhabitants of the borderlands attempt to build a future grounded in their fractured ancestral legacies. In the process, neighbors unearth old conflicts, devote themselves to recovering lost culture, and piece together competing legends to create a new tradition. Rich in surprising encounters and vivid characters, Between East and West brilliantly illuminates the soul of the borderlands and the shaping power of the past.
American Warsaw
Author: Dominic A. Pacyga
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022681534X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
Pacyga chronicles more than a century of immigration, and later emigration back to Poland, showing how the community has continually redefined what it means to be Polish in Chicago.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022681534X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
Pacyga chronicles more than a century of immigration, and later emigration back to Poland, showing how the community has continually redefined what it means to be Polish in Chicago.
Poland's Memory Wars
Author: Jo Harper
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9637326553
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Book Description
This volume of essays and interviews by Polish, British, and American academics and journalists provides an overview of current Polish politics for both informed and non-specialist readers. The essays consider why and how PiS, Law and Justice, the party of Jarosław Kaczynski, returned to power, and the why and how of its policies while in power. They help to make sense of how “history” plays a key role in Polish public life and politics. The descriptions of PiS in Western media tend to rework old stereotypes about Eastern Europe that had lain dormant for some time. The book addresses the underlying question whether PiS was simply successful in understanding its electorate, and just helped Poland to revert to its normal state. This new Normal seems quite similar to the old one: insular, conservative, xenophobic, and statist. The book looks at the current struggle between one ‘Poland’ and another; between a Western-looking Poland and an inward-looking Poland, the former more interested in opening to the world, competing in open markets, and working within the EU, and the latter more concerned with holding onto tradition. The question of illiberalism has gone from an ‘Eastern’ problem (Russia, Turkey, Hungary, etc.) to a global one (Brexit and the U.S. elections). This makes the very specific analysis of Poland’s illiberalism applicable on a broader scale.
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9637326553
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Book Description
This volume of essays and interviews by Polish, British, and American academics and journalists provides an overview of current Polish politics for both informed and non-specialist readers. The essays consider why and how PiS, Law and Justice, the party of Jarosław Kaczynski, returned to power, and the why and how of its policies while in power. They help to make sense of how “history” plays a key role in Polish public life and politics. The descriptions of PiS in Western media tend to rework old stereotypes about Eastern Europe that had lain dormant for some time. The book addresses the underlying question whether PiS was simply successful in understanding its electorate, and just helped Poland to revert to its normal state. This new Normal seems quite similar to the old one: insular, conservative, xenophobic, and statist. The book looks at the current struggle between one ‘Poland’ and another; between a Western-looking Poland and an inward-looking Poland, the former more interested in opening to the world, competing in open markets, and working within the EU, and the latter more concerned with holding onto tradition. The question of illiberalism has gone from an ‘Eastern’ problem (Russia, Turkey, Hungary, etc.) to a global one (Brexit and the U.S. elections). This makes the very specific analysis of Poland’s illiberalism applicable on a broader scale.
Winning Independence
Author: John Ferling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635572770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 753
Book Description
Co-Winner of the 2022 Harry M. Ward Book Prize From celebrated historian John Ferling, the underexplored history of the second half of the Revolutionary War, when, after years of fighting, American independence often seemed beyond reach. It was 1778, and the recent American victory at Saratoga had netted the U.S a powerful ally in France. Many, including General George Washington, presumed France's entrance into the war meant independence was just around the corner. Meanwhile, having lost an entire army at Saratoga, Great Britain pivoted to a “southern strategy.” The army would henceforth seek to regain its southern colonies, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, a highly profitable segment of its pre-war American empire. Deep into 1780 Britain's new approach seemed headed for success as the U.S. economy collapsed and morale on the home front waned. By early 1781, Washington, and others, feared that France would drop out of the war if the Allies failed to score a decisive victory that year. Sir Henry Clinton, commander of Britain's army, thought “the rebellion is near its end.” Washington, who had been so optimistic in 1778, despaired: “I have almost ceased to hope.” Winning Independence is the dramatic story of how and why Great Britain-so close to regaining several southern colonies and rendering the postwar United States a fatally weak nation ultimately failed to win the war. The book explores the choices and decisions made by Clinton and Washington, and others, that ultimately led the French and American allies to clinch the pivotal victory at Yorktown that at long last secured American independence.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635572770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 753
Book Description
Co-Winner of the 2022 Harry M. Ward Book Prize From celebrated historian John Ferling, the underexplored history of the second half of the Revolutionary War, when, after years of fighting, American independence often seemed beyond reach. It was 1778, and the recent American victory at Saratoga had netted the U.S a powerful ally in France. Many, including General George Washington, presumed France's entrance into the war meant independence was just around the corner. Meanwhile, having lost an entire army at Saratoga, Great Britain pivoted to a “southern strategy.” The army would henceforth seek to regain its southern colonies, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, a highly profitable segment of its pre-war American empire. Deep into 1780 Britain's new approach seemed headed for success as the U.S. economy collapsed and morale on the home front waned. By early 1781, Washington, and others, feared that France would drop out of the war if the Allies failed to score a decisive victory that year. Sir Henry Clinton, commander of Britain's army, thought “the rebellion is near its end.” Washington, who had been so optimistic in 1778, despaired: “I have almost ceased to hope.” Winning Independence is the dramatic story of how and why Great Britain-so close to regaining several southern colonies and rendering the postwar United States a fatally weak nation ultimately failed to win the war. The book explores the choices and decisions made by Clinton and Washington, and others, that ultimately led the French and American allies to clinch the pivotal victory at Yorktown that at long last secured American independence.
The Political History of Poland
Author: Edward Henry Lewinski Corwin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poland
Languages : en
Pages : 652
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poland
Languages : en
Pages : 652
Book Description
Three Minutes in Poland
Author: Glenn Kurtz
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374276773
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Book Description
"The author's search for the annihilated Polish community captured in his grandfather's 1938 home movie. Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community--an entire culture--that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four-year journey to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His search takes him across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; to archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty-six-year-old man who appears in the film as a thirteen-year-old boy. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival--a monument to a lost world"--
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374276773
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Book Description
"The author's search for the annihilated Polish community captured in his grandfather's 1938 home movie. Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community--an entire culture--that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four-year journey to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His search takes him across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; to archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty-six-year-old man who appears in the film as a thirteen-year-old boy. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival--a monument to a lost world"--
Spring Will Be Ours
Author: Andrzej Paczkowski
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271047539
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 608
Book Description
The Spring Will Be Ours focuses on the turbulent half century from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which started the chain of events that would lead to the communist takeover of Poland, to 1989, when futile attempts to reform the communist system gave way to its total transformation. Andrzej Paczkowski shows how the communists captured and consolidated power, describes their use of terror and propaganda, and illuminates the changes that took place within the governing elite. He also documents the political opposition to the regime - both inside Poland and abroad - that resulted in upheavals in 1956, 1968, 1970, 1976, and 1980. His narrative makes evident the pressures that the elite felt from above, from Moscow, and from below, from the population and from within the party. The history of Poland and the Poles is of special interest because on numerous occasions in the twentieth century this relatively small country influenced developments on a global scale.
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271047539
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 608
Book Description
The Spring Will Be Ours focuses on the turbulent half century from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which started the chain of events that would lead to the communist takeover of Poland, to 1989, when futile attempts to reform the communist system gave way to its total transformation. Andrzej Paczkowski shows how the communists captured and consolidated power, describes their use of terror and propaganda, and illuminates the changes that took place within the governing elite. He also documents the political opposition to the regime - both inside Poland and abroad - that resulted in upheavals in 1956, 1968, 1970, 1976, and 1980. His narrative makes evident the pressures that the elite felt from above, from Moscow, and from below, from the population and from within the party. The history of Poland and the Poles is of special interest because on numerous occasions in the twentieth century this relatively small country influenced developments on a global scale.
On Cultural Freedom
Author: Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226301006
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
In this timely study, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb explores the nature and prospects of cultural freedom by examining the conditions that favor or threaten its development in the political East and West. Goldfarb--who examines conditions in the Soviet Union, the United States, and their respective European allies--focuses most closely upon Poland and the United States. He investigates a wide range of concrete cases, including the Polish opposition movement and Solidarity, the migration of artists, the American television and magazine industries, American philanthropy, and communist cultural conveyor belts. From these cases, Goldfarb derives a definitive set of sociological conditions for cultural freedom: critical creativity which resists systematic constraints, continuity of cultural tradition, and a relatively autonomous public realm for the reception of culture. Cultural freedom, Goldfarb shows, is not a static state but a process of achievement. Its parameters and content are determined by social practice in cultural institutions and by their relations with other components and the totality of social structure. So defined, cultural freedom is transformed from an ideological concept into one with real critical and analytical power. Through it we can appreciate the invisible nature of constraint in the West and the unapparent but acting supports of cultural freedom existing in socialist countries. Most importantly, Goldfarb's conclusions provide a framework for understanding more clearly than before the circumstance of cultural freedom in both East and West so that citizens may utilize their full creative abilities as they address the problems of the present day.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226301006
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
In this timely study, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb explores the nature and prospects of cultural freedom by examining the conditions that favor or threaten its development in the political East and West. Goldfarb--who examines conditions in the Soviet Union, the United States, and their respective European allies--focuses most closely upon Poland and the United States. He investigates a wide range of concrete cases, including the Polish opposition movement and Solidarity, the migration of artists, the American television and magazine industries, American philanthropy, and communist cultural conveyor belts. From these cases, Goldfarb derives a definitive set of sociological conditions for cultural freedom: critical creativity which resists systematic constraints, continuity of cultural tradition, and a relatively autonomous public realm for the reception of culture. Cultural freedom, Goldfarb shows, is not a static state but a process of achievement. Its parameters and content are determined by social practice in cultural institutions and by their relations with other components and the totality of social structure. So defined, cultural freedom is transformed from an ideological concept into one with real critical and analytical power. Through it we can appreciate the invisible nature of constraint in the West and the unapparent but acting supports of cultural freedom existing in socialist countries. Most importantly, Goldfarb's conclusions provide a framework for understanding more clearly than before the circumstance of cultural freedom in both East and West so that citizens may utilize their full creative abilities as they address the problems of the present day.