Eastern Europe category: 1864 books

Mary Edith Durham (1863-1944) was a British traveller, artist and writer who became famous for her anthropological accounts of life in Albania in the early 20th century. She sailed to Montenegro and began a love affair with the Balkans that lasted the rest of her life. This is her passionate account of life in the formidable mountainous terrain of Northern Albania.

I HAVE to deal, under strict limitations of space, with a long life, almost the whole of its adult period passed in the exercise of sovereignty—a life which is in effect the history of England during forty-five years, abounding at the same time in personal interest, and the subject, both in its...

At the heart of today’s fierce political anger over income inequality is a feature of capitalism that Karl Marx famously obsessed over: the commodification of labor. Most of us think wage-labor economics is at odds with socialist thinking, but as Martha Lampland explains in this fascinating look...

Anyone interested in or wishing to understand the roots of Putin’s ultra-nationalist Russia (and his territorial ambitions!) woild do well to read Ukranian nihilist Sergei Stepniak’s compelling study of The Russian Peasantry. Written over 120 years ago it helps explain not only the social plight...

“Stealing from capitalism is not like stealing out of our own pockets. Marx and Lenin have taught us that anything is ethical, so long as it is in the interest of the proletarian class and its world revolution.” ―Nicolae Ceauşescu   “Dialectical materialism works like cocaine,...

The military organization of nation states and their employment of armies are central aspects of early modern European history. The seventeenth century was particularly a period of transformation that witnessed drastic change in armies’ preparation for and execution of military campaigns. To date,...

This colorfully drawn and acutely observed book explores Russia by engaging all our senses. Today's Russia smells different from the Soviet Union. The country looks and sounds different, its touch is different and its food tastes different. Thus, Christoph Neidhart argues, Russia is truly a changed...

The three-part work provides a first synthetic account of the history of the Polish intelligentsia from the days of its formation to World War I. The third part deals with the period between 1865 and 1918. It is the period of numerical growth of the intelligentsia, growth of its self-consciousness...

This Festschrift acknowledges the scholarly work of Leo Schelbert and his mentorship of graduate students in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago where for 33 years he taught American history. Professor Schelbert has specialized in the story of European migrations and...

The searing accounts of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Evgeniia Ginsberg and Varlam Shalamov opened the world's eyes to the terrors of the Soviet Gulag. But not until now has there been a memoir of life inside the camps written from the perspective of an actual employee of the Secret police. In this riveting...

While you read Czech history background, in this book you have more information on Czech present stands on culture, people, government, politics, and entire environmentAlthough a Czechoslovak state did not emerge until 1918, its roots go back many centuries. The earliest records of Slavic inhabitants...

“Kissinger opted for a strategy of accommodation with Moscow, while Brzezinski, claiming that the very nature of Soviet ideology and policies prevents stability, sought strategies for undermining the Soviet system. . . . In retrospect, Brzezinski was proven right and Kissinger was wrong.” —Shlomo...

The final volume in the Barbarossa trilogy, this title complete the account of the strategic intricacies of the German campaign against Russia. Robert Kirchubel examines the causes behind the German failure, including the inability to resupply troops or provide reserves, as well as the lack of decent...

Following the death of the Yugoslavian President Tito in 1980, the semi-autonomous republics and provinces that he had welded into a multi-cultural nation in 1945 slid gradually towards separation. For ten years following 1991, the world watched in horror as a series of bloody wars ripped a modern...