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Social Currents in Eastern Europe

The Sources and Consequences of the Great Transformation

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Book

Pages: 616

Published: March 1995

Author: Sabrina P. Ramet

Social Currents in Eastern Europe traces the diverse social currents that have developed alongside and interacted with political and economic forces to bring about change in Eastern Europe. In this second edition—which significantly updates and expands the previous edition to include a new introduction, revisions throughout, as well as five new chapters, including timely material on ethnic war in the former Yugoslavia—Ramet extends and develops the theory of social change upon which the book is based.
Ramet draws on interviews conducted over a ten-year period with individuals active in arenas for social change—intellectual dissent, feminism, religious activism, youth cultures and movements, and trade unionism—in eight East European countries: East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. She shows how the processes leading to the ultimate collapse of communism began more than a decade earlier and how they were necessarily manifested in spheres as diverse as religion and rock music.
Ramet also examines the consequences of the "Great Transformation" and analyzes the numerous unresolved problems that these societies currently confront, whether it be in the arena of economics, political legitimation, or the challenges of establishing a civil society free of chauvinism.

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Sabrina P. Ramet is Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including Nihil Obstat (Duke University Press).

Table Of Contents

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Tables ix

Preface to the Second Edition x

Preface to the First Edition xi

Abbreviations xv

I. Introduction 3

2. Social Currents and Social Change 24

II. Dissent and Parallel Society in the 1980s

3. Disaffection and Dissent in East Germany 55

4. Underground Solidarity and Parallel Society in Poland 84

5. Independent Activism in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania 120

III. Religious and Ethnic Currents

6. Religious Change and New Cults in Eastern Europe 155

7. Church and Dissent in Praetorian Poland 178

8. Serb-Albanian Tensions in Kosovo 196

IV. A New Generation

9. Feminism in Yugoslavia 219

10. Rock Music and Counterculture 234

11. Young People: The Lost Generation 262

V. Collapse of the Old Order

12. Bulgaria: A Weak Society 279

13. Strong Societies: Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia 288

14. Dominoes: East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the Future of Europe 313

15. The Great Transformation 338

VI. Building New Systems

16. Core Tasks for a Pluralist Order 371

17. Yugoslav Breakup and Ethnic War 401

18. Civil Society and Uncivil Chauvinism 431

19. Propositions About the Future 455

Appendixes: Public Opinion Polls 461

Notes 483

Selected Bibliography 565

Index 569

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-1548-3 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-1551-3 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-7772-6 /

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