TOL STORE

This comprehensive report comprises 20 articles from Transitions Online’s correspondents, tracking the impact of the financial crisis in Central and Eastern Europe.

The crisis hits
Transitions Online’s coverage of the financial crisis began in 2008, as observers in the East watched the storm roll in from the West. Our writers considered what the banking industry’s woes would mean for banks in Central and Eastern Europe, many of which were owned in the West, or for consumers in the region, many of whom had taken out loans denominated in euros. We also looked at what the crisis would mean for local currencies.

The depths of the downturn
As the downturn deepened, we reported on its effects on government finances, foreign direct investment, and industries like tourism and auto manufacturing. Along the way, we found a bright spot or two, including examples of sound financial management in Estonia and Poland. But the pain of austerity, like that chronicled in Latvia and Romania, is far more typical.

Lessons learned and new economic realities
Recently, as economists debate whether the worst is over or whether we are heading for a double-dip recession, our coverage has turned to questions of whether governments have learned lasting lessons and how individuals will cope with the harsh new economic realities.

47 pages. Published in September 2010
Format: PDF file

You can buy a copy online using a credit/debit card at the above link; alternatively please contact marketing@tol.org if you would like us to send you an invoice. Please note that online purchases will be based on the dollar prices.

Available in PDF format, this 15-page report comprises four articles examining the growing Chinese influence in Central Asia. Published in May 2010.

Overview - China’s strategy toward its Central Asian neighbors rests on two pillars: securing energy and other raw materials for its booming industries, and easing tensions in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region. By Dr. Michael Clarke, a specialist in China and Central Asian affairs.

China in Kazakhstan - Chinese investments in energy and transportation now account for more than 10 % of the Kazakh economy, re-awakening old fears of domination by its enormous neighbor.

China in Mongolia - Mongolia’s vast mineral resources are another lure for Chinese investment, at the same time as overtly violent anti-Chinese incidents are on the rise. By Alicia Campi, president of the U.S.-Mongolia Advisory Group.

Kazakhstan’s Dependence on China - China’s role in Central Asia’s largest economy is more nuanced than many Western observers credit. Chinese trade and investment is becoming vital to Kazakhstanis’ economic well-being. By Kazakh economic analyst Kenjali Tinibai.
 

Format: PDF file

You can buy a copy online using a credit/debit card at the above link; alternatively please contact marketing@tol.org if you would like us to send you an invoice. Please note that online purchases will be based on the dollar prices.

A compilation of 20 articles published by Transitions Online in the first month of the conflict, following Georgian forces’ attack against alleged separatist fighters on 7 August and Russia’s subsequent invasion.

The articles take a look at the causes and the consequences of this latest Caucasus conflict, including compelling accounts of the human toll. TOL drew on a team of more than 20 correspondents and commentators in Russia, Georgia and around the world to offer analysis and on-the-ground reports. This special edition aims not just to tell the story of what was happening, but to investigate the reasons, and what comes next.

 

Published in September 2008.

Format
48-page PDF file.

Life beyond Communism in Central & Eastern Europe

This new TOL special report, which was published in November 2009, comprises a compilation of Transitions Online articles related the revolutions of 1989 in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania, and to the state of democracy, culture and civil society in the region today.

Importantly, the report addressed how the events of 1989 continue to resonate across Europe and Asia today – in politics and government, in art and commerce, in the everyday lives of everyday people.

Featured articles include:

Democracies Without Democrats, The Russian Patient, No More Low-Hanging Fruit, Where Did We Go Wrong?,
Living in the Anti-Material World, Still Comrades After All These Years, Dead Soles, No More Tractor Barricades,
The View from Carpathia, Zhivkov With Us, Velvet Cinema, Changing Professions, And End to 'Doubleness', Teaching One History, Living Another, The More Things Change, From the Front Office to the Factory Floor, Velvet Recollections, A Spititual Revolution, Dancing Days, I Didn't Believe It Would Last, The Rushed, Revolution, We Are Not Like Them

Where Are They Now?
Gabor Demszky, Fedor Gal, Emil Koshlukov, Josef Glemp, Mircea Dinescu, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Klara Vesela Samkova, Miklos Nemeth, Monica Lovinescu, Marta Kubisova, Laszlo Tokes, Zhelyu Zhelev, Jerzy Urban, Vladimir Meciar, Wojciech Jaruzelski

Format: PDF file

Published in November 2009.

You can buy a copy online using a credit/debit card at the above link; alternatively please contact marketing@tol.org if you would like us to send you an invoice. Please note that online purchases will be based on the dollar prices.

See the stories online at 1989: 20 Years After website.

This TOL special report is a compilation of nine articles, published on the Transitions Online website, examining the state of religious liberty in the countries of Central Asia.

Content:
Legal Actions – The governments of Central Asia have started going to the trouble to legalize their infringements on religious liberty.

The Region at a Glance

The U.S. View – When the United States put Uzbekistan on its list of anti-religion bullies, the Uzbek government pronounced itself perplexed.

Earthly Loyalties – Russian Orthodox believers face problems in Uzbekistan, but the church remains one of the most reliable supporters of President Islam Karimov's regime.

The Soul Snatchers – Uzbek television presents a chilling portrait of .the work of missionaries. From Forum 18.

Hijab Politics – A Tajik student fights for the right to wear a head scarf, but Islamic leaders see little chance for success.

Social Safety Net - The situation for believers in Central Asia only seems to be getting worse. For our sakes and theirs, the West needs to throw them a lifeline.

Siege Mentality - Islam has come back to Central Asia in part because it fills people's basic needs. If the region's governments did the same, they might not fear extremists.

Minority Report - Uzbekistan, like all of Central Asia, is overwhelmingly Muslim. Those who take the lonely road to Christianity remain an oddity to many of their countrymen.

Format: PDF file

Published in September 2007.

Available in PDF format, this report examines the state of education in post-conflict societies.

Topics addressed include the launch of a program to stem violence in Serbia's schools; military and patriotic education in Georgia's schools; the conditions of schools in Azerbaijan for refugees from the Nagorno-Karabakh war; and Skopje's approach to language instruction for its Albanian minority.

Published in March 2010.
Format: PDF file

   

Bringing together a top flight set of contributors, this book considers the problems and prospects for creating trustworthy and reliable public institutions since the transition from socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on "second generation" issues of democratic consolidation in states where the basic structures of the market and the state have been established. The contributors raise important issues, such as corruption and participation, largely neglected during the first stage of the transition and that are of growing importance as several countries in the region move toward entry into the European Union. Highlighting problems and prospects of democratization with comparative import to other newly democratizing areas, this volume draws on the experience of those who have lived through and studied the transition and contrasts their insights with those of generalist scholars who study government accountability and democracy.

In 1945, Russian forces advancing from the east attacked the German city of Danzig, and the German residents fled. As the Russians took control of the city, Poles driven from their native regions moved into the stately, now abandoned, homes. Hanemann, a German and a former professor of anatomy, refused to flee after the mysterious death of his lover. As Danzig became the Polish city of Gdansk and slowly relinquished its German identity, the old and new inhabitants were forced to interact. The narrator's family was driven out of Warsaw and settled into Hanemann's building. They take in a troubled young woman without a country, who struggles with her elusive and violent past. As the characters intermingle, they strive to define a city that no longer has a history of its own; their own stories define its nature, and reality becomes a blend of old and new. Chwin skillfully describes a city in as much chaos as its inhabitants, striving anew to forge a new sense of identity.

Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption

A global anticorruption crusade is underway. "As slavery was once a way of life and now has become obsolete and incomprehensible, so the practice of bribery will become obsolete," a modern-day moralist has said. But how is global consensus on corruption possible? Why are anticorruption campaigns running out of steam, and why are post-communist societies obsessed with corruption? This book is not a study of anti-corruption policies. Instead, it looks at the politics of anti-corruption. Policies are what institutions do. But in analyzing politics, this book seeks to discover why institutions do what they do. The author delves into political motivations at a time when "combating corruption" is the fashion among the academic community.
Krastev argues that anticorruption sentiments are not driven by the actual level of corruption but by general disappointment with liberal reforms that cause rising social inequality. In this collection of essays, the author makes the provocative argument that the current corruption-focused policies are doomed.

One of the central characteristics of socialist states and societies has been the absence of trust--between the state and the citizens, and then among citizens themselves. The process of developing trust is thus a major issue facing post-Socialist countries, and this book brings together a group of leading scholars to examine barriers to and bulwarks of trust in theoretical, cross-national, and topical perspectives. From the distinctive paradox of illegal organizations--such as the Mafiya--relying on trust within but undermining it without, to the effects of transparency, the authors examine the bases of trust and the effects of its presence or absence. Throughout the analysis is grounded in the interaction of individuals and their social, political, and economic environments.

Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic: The Environmental Movement in the Transition Process

Since a handful of environmental activists helped to bring down the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, the arena of environmental politics has offered a valuable lens on the transition process, providing a unique insight into the contradictory and highly contingent relationship between democratization and neo-liberalism.
Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic offers a radical perspective on the democratization process, revealing the extent to which the consolidation of a politically efficacious and diverse civil society is far more complex than the earlier generation of commentators acknowledged. The environmental movement has not flourished under political democracy; its radical activists have been marginalized and targeted by the state, their ideologies and strategies compromised and their critical voice silenced. Yet the book concludes that while the mainstream environmental movement has become institutionalized and appears incapable of representing community interests, the environmental issue retains the capacity to mobilize, this time against the neo-liberal agenda of the democratic government.

This definitive account of the evolution of the Czech environmental movement since 1990 offers a radical evaluation of the institutions and practice of political democracy, and challenges some of the certainties of social movement theory. Although focused on the Czech Republic, the book will undoubtedly contribute to a better understanding of the role of environmental movements within contemporary politics throughout the world. It will be welcomed by political and social scientists with an interest in Central and Eastern Europe, and academics and students with an interest in environmental politics.

Not by Bread Alone : Social Support in the New Russia

What Muscovites get in a soup kitchen run by the Christian Church of Moscow is something far more subtle and complex--if no less necessary and nourishing--than the food that feeds their hunger. In Not by Bread Alone, the first full-length ethnographic study of poverty and social welfare in the postsocialist world, Melissa L. Caldwell focuses on the everyday operations and civil transactions at CCM soup kitchens to reveal the new realities, the enduring features, and the intriguing subtext of social support in Russia today.
In an international food aid community, Caldwell explores how Muscovites employ a number of improvisational tactics to satisfy their material needs. She shows how the relationships that develop among members of this community--elderly Muscovite recipients, Russian aid workers, African student volunteers, and North American and European donors and volunteers--provide forms of social support that are highly valued and ultimately far more important than material resources. In Not by Bread Alone we see how the soup kitchens become sites of social stability and refuge for all who interact there--not just those with limited financial means--and how Muscovites articulate definitions of hunger and poverty that depend far more on the extent of one's social contacts than on material factors.

By rethinking the ways in which relationships between social and economic practices are theorized--by identifying social relations and social status as Russia's true economic currency--this book challenges prevailing ideas about the role of the state, the nature of poverty and welfare, the feasibility of Western-style reforms, and the primacy of social connections in the daily lives of ordinary people in post-Soviet Russia.

Sacco translates the events in Bosnia into graphic novel format. An indispensable document of the conflict. Sacco spent four months in Bosnia, between 1995-1996, immersing himself in the human side of life during wartime, researching stoires that are rarely found in conventional news coverage. Here he focuses on the Muslim enclave of Gorazde, which was beseiged by Bosnian Serbs during the war. The book is strongly compared to the Pulitzer prize winner Maus, and advance praise rate it as being one of the most important documents to emerge from the conflict as it portrays day to day life at the heart of these events.

INVESTIGATING THE PEACE. When bombs are falling and western journalism is the only game left in town "fixers" are the people who sell war correspondents the human tragedy and moral outrage that makes news editors happy. American Book Award-winning comix-journalist Joe Sacco introduces us to his own fixer; a man looking to squeeze the last bit of profit from Bosnia before the reconstruction begins. Thanks to the fixer Sacco uncovers the story of warlords and gangsters running the countryside in wartime. Ten years later Sacco returns to Bosnia to look for his fixer. What he finds makes him wonder, who won the war? And who won the peace?

Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Question of Bruno, one of the most celebrated debuts in recent American fiction, returns with the mind- and language-bending adventures of his endearing protagonist Jozef Pronek.
This is what we know about Jozef Pronek: He is a young man from Sarajevo who left to visit the United States in 1992, just in time to watch war break out at home on TV. Stranded in the relative comfort of Chicago, he proves himself a charming and frankly perceptive observer of – and participant in – American life. With Nowhere Man, Pronek, accidental urban nomad, gets his own book.

Aleksandar Hemon lovingly crafts Pronek into a character who is sure to become an enduring literary icon. From the grand causes of his adolescence – principally, fighting to change the face of rock and roll and, hilariously, struggling to lose his virginity – up through a fleeting encounter with George Bush (the first) in Kiev, to enrollment in a Chicago ESL class and the glorious adventures of minimum-wage living, Pronek’s experiences are at once touchingly familiar and bracingly out-of-the-ordinary.

But the story of his life is not so simple as a series of global adventures. Pronek is continually haunted by an unseen observer, his movements chronicled by narrators with dubious motives–all of which culminates in a final episode that upends many of our assumptions about Pronek’s identity, while illustrating precisely what it means to be a Nowhere Man.

With all the literary verve of The Question of Bruno, but with an engrossing narrative, engaging warmth, and refreshing humor, Nowhere Man brings to life a protagonist whose very way of looking at and living in the world provokes an exhilarating sense of seeing everything new again. And all the while, the inspired freshness of the prose reminds the reader why Aleksandar Hemon earned such extraordinary recognition after just one book.