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Former communist countries --- Social conditions. --- Former Soviet bloc --- Second world (Former communist countries) --- Communist countries

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This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars working to address the puzzling durability of communist autocracies in Eastern Europe and Asia, which are the longest-lasting type of non-democratic regime to emerge after World War I. The volume conceptualizes the communist universe as consisting of the ten regimes in Eastern Europe and Mongolia that eventually collapsed in 1989-91, and the five regimes that survived the fall of the Berlin Wall: China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Cuba. The essays offer a theoretical argument that emphasizes the importance of institutional adaptations as a foundation of communist resilience. In particular, the contributors focus on four adaptations: of the economy, of ideology, of the mechanisms for inclusion of potential rivals, and of the institutions of vertical and horizontal accountability. The volume argues that when regimes are no longer able to implement adaptive change, contingent leadership choices and contagion dynamics make collapse more likely.

Post-communism --- Postcommunism --- World politics --- Communism --- Former communist countries --- Former Soviet bloc --- Second world (Former communist countries) --- Communist countries --- Politics and government. --- Social Sciences --- Political Science

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In quale misura gli eventi del 1956 hanno costituito una cesura nella storia del XX secolo? Il volume si propone di riflettere – anche criticamente – sull’idea del 1956 come “anno spartiacque”, tenendo assieme ricostruzione storica e dibattito storiografico, e ponendo al centro il nesso tra le vicende nazionali e gli avvenimenti di portata internazionale che in quell’anno si sono susseguiti, dalle crisi interne al blocco sovietico allo scacco subìto in Egitto dal colonialismo anglo-francese. Dal XX Congresso del Pcus ai “fatti d’Ungheria”, dal ’56 polacco alla crisi di Suez, sono ripercorse – con particolare attenzione alle culture politiche – le conseguenze italiane ed europee di eventi e processi di portata globale.

Literature (General) --- 1956 --- blocco sovietico --- colonialismo anglo-francese --- Europa --- crisi di Suez --- bloc soviétique --- colonialisme anglo-français --- Europe --- crise de Suez --- Soviet bloc --- Anglo-French colonialism --- Suez crisis

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Stephen Hall argues that democracies can preserve their norms and values from increasing attacks and backsliding by better understanding how authoritarian regimes learn. He focuses on the post-Soviet region, investigating two established authoritarian regimes, Belarus and Russia, and two hybrid-regimes, Moldova and Ukraine, with the aim of explaining the concept of authoritarian learning and revealing the practices that are developed and the sources of that learning. Hall finds clear signs of collaboration between countries in developing best survival practices between authoritarian-minded elites, and demonstrates that learning does not just occur between states, rather it can happen at the intra-state level, with elites learning lessons from previous regimes in their own countries. He highlights the horizontal nature of this learning, with authoritarian-minded elites developing methods from a range of sources to ascertain the best practices for survival. Post-Soviet regional organisations are crucial for the development and sharing of these survival practices as they provide 'learning rooms' and training exercises.

Authoritarianism --- Europe, Eastern --- Russia (Federation) --- Former communist countries --- Politics and government --- Politics and government. --- Political science --- Authority --- Former Soviet bloc --- Second world (Former communist countries) --- Communist countries

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The break-up of the Soviet Union is a key event of the twentieth century. The 39th IIS congress in Yerevan 2009 focused on causes and consequences of this event and on shifts in the world order that followed in its wake. This volume is an effort to chart these developments in empirical and conceptual terms. It has a focus on the lands of the former Soviet Union but also explores pathways and contexts in the Second World at large. The Soviet Union was a full scale experiment in creating an alternative modernity. The implosion of this union gave rise to new states in search of national identity. At a time when some observers heralded the end of history, there was a rediscovery of historical legacies and a search for new paths of development across the former Second World. In some parts of this world long-repressed legacies were rediscovered. They were sometimes, as in the case of countries in East Central Europe, built around memories of parliamentary democracy and its replacement by authoritarian rule during the interwar period. Some legacies referred to efforts at establishing statehood in the wake of the First World War, others to national upheavals in the nineteenth century and earlier. In Central Asia and many parts of the Caucasus the cultural heritage of Islam in its different varieties gave rise to new markers of identity but also to violent contestations. In South Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have embarked upon distinctly different, but invariably contingent, paths of development. Analogously core components of the old union have gone through tumultuous, but until the last year and a half largely bloodless, transformations. The crystallization of divergent paths of development in the two largest republics of that union, id est Russia and Ukraine, has ushered in divergent national imaginations but also in series of bloody confrontations.

Post-communism --- Social change --- Change, Social --- Cultural change --- Cultural transformation --- Societal change --- Socio-cultural change --- Social history --- Social evolution --- Former communist countries --- Former Soviet bloc --- Second world (Former communist countries) --- Communist countries --- Social conditions.