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"In light of Russia's aggressive 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a crucial, elucidative read, a sweeping epic chronicling a thousand years of strife, war, and bloodshed--from pre-Christianity to the fall of Communism--illuminating the remarkable cultural significance and richness of a place perpetually lost to the margins of history. Eastern Europe, the moniker, has gone out of fashion since the fall of the Soviet Union. Ask someone now, and they might tell you that Estonia is in the Baltics, or Scandinavia, that Slovakia is in Central Europe and Croatia is in the Eastern Adriatic or the Balkans. In fact, Eastern Europe is a place that barely exists at all, except in cultural memory. Yet it remains a powerful marker of identity for many, with a fragmented and wide history, defined by texts, myths, and memories of centuries of hardship and suffering. Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a masterful narrative about a place that has survived the brink of being forgotten. Beginning with long-lost accounts of early pagan life, Mikanowski offers a kaleidoscopic tour recounting the rise and fall of the great empires--Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian--the dawn of the modern era, the ravages of Fascism and Communism, as well as Capitalism, the birth of the modern nation-state, and more. A student of literature, history, and the ghosts of his own family's past, Mikanowski paints a magisterial portrait of a place united by diversity, and eclecticism, and a people with the shared story of being the dominated rather than the dominating. The result is a loving and ebullient celebration of the distinctive and vibrant cultures that stubbornly persisted at the margins of Western Europe, and a powerful corrective that re-centers our understanding of how the modern Western world took shape"--… (más)
It isn’t easy to write about ‘Eastern Europe’. Many countries described as such now prefer the more civilised designation ‘Central European’. Others can more accurately be described as Balkan or Baltic. Some, such as Czechia and Slovakia, share common history and similar languages. Others, like Ukraine and Russia, or Serbia and Croatia share the same but want nothing to do with each other. Estonia and Macedonia, or Belarus and Hungary have as much in common with each other as they do with Belgium.
What exactly is Eastern Europe, then? The historian Larry Wolff argued in Inventing Eastern Europe that the concept emerged during the Enlightenment to give ‘the West’ its semi-barbaric eastern foil. It reached its apotheosis in Europe’s Cold War division, but since that division is long gone many now think Eastern Europe has outlived its purpose. Jacob Mikanowski’s Goodbye Eastern Europe is intended as its obituary. A light, panoramic portrait of a region that has left a lasting mark on the literary and cultural history of Europe, his book may well be the most readable overview of Eastern European history yet written, suffering as it does under the contradictions inherent to the idea itself.
Scholars of the region are unlikely to glean much new information from it beyond some amusing anecdotes, but this is not a book for scholars. It is a book aimed squarely at the average westerner who would find it hard to disagree with Neville Chamberlain’s assertion that Nazi Germany’s predatory behaviour towards Czechoslovakia was nothing but a ‘quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing’. Mikanowski covers everything from Eastern Europe’s Muslim communities to its golden age of alchemy; the experience of Stalinism and late-socialism to early 20th-century imperial collapse and late 20th-century utopian collapse. Borders, peoples and identities are, and always have been, perplexingly fluid in Eastern Europe.
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
To my parents, the start of everything, and To Nik, who made it all possible
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
(Prologue) This is a history of a place that doesn't exist.
A great forest, bristling with dangers and the occasional gleam of treasure: that is how the territories of Eastern Europe must have appeared to the average Roman in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Citas
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
To me, it symbolizes not just the era of transition but the capriciousness of history itself.
"In light of Russia's aggressive 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a crucial, elucidative read, a sweeping epic chronicling a thousand years of strife, war, and bloodshed--from pre-Christianity to the fall of Communism--illuminating the remarkable cultural significance and richness of a place perpetually lost to the margins of history. Eastern Europe, the moniker, has gone out of fashion since the fall of the Soviet Union. Ask someone now, and they might tell you that Estonia is in the Baltics, or Scandinavia, that Slovakia is in Central Europe and Croatia is in the Eastern Adriatic or the Balkans. In fact, Eastern Europe is a place that barely exists at all, except in cultural memory. Yet it remains a powerful marker of identity for many, with a fragmented and wide history, defined by texts, myths, and memories of centuries of hardship and suffering. Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a masterful narrative about a place that has survived the brink of being forgotten. Beginning with long-lost accounts of early pagan life, Mikanowski offers a kaleidoscopic tour recounting the rise and fall of the great empires--Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian--the dawn of the modern era, the ravages of Fascism and Communism, as well as Capitalism, the birth of the modern nation-state, and more. A student of literature, history, and the ghosts of his own family's past, Mikanowski paints a magisterial portrait of a place united by diversity, and eclecticism, and a people with the shared story of being the dominated rather than the dominating. The result is a loving and ebullient celebration of the distinctive and vibrant cultures that stubbornly persisted at the margins of Western Europe, and a powerful corrective that re-centers our understanding of how the modern Western world took shape"--
Google Books — Cargando...
(4.17)
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What exactly is Eastern Europe, then? The historian Larry Wolff argued in Inventing Eastern Europe that the concept emerged during the Enlightenment to give ‘the West’ its semi-barbaric eastern foil. It reached its apotheosis in Europe’s Cold War division, but since that division is long gone many now think Eastern Europe has outlived its purpose. Jacob Mikanowski’s Goodbye Eastern Europe is intended as its obituary. A light, panoramic portrait of a region that has left a lasting mark on the literary and cultural history of Europe, his book may well be the most readable overview of Eastern European history yet written, suffering as it does under the contradictions inherent to the idea itself.
Scholars of the region are unlikely to glean much new information from it beyond some amusing anecdotes, but this is not a book for scholars. It is a book aimed squarely at the average westerner who would find it hard to disagree with Neville Chamberlain’s assertion that Nazi Germany’s predatory behaviour towards Czechoslovakia was nothing but a ‘quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing’. Mikanowski covers everything from Eastern Europe’s Muslim communities to its golden age of alchemy; the experience of Stalinism and late-socialism to early 20th-century imperial collapse and late 20th-century utopian collapse. Borders, peoples and identities are, and always have been, perplexingly fluid in Eastern Europe.
Read the rest at HistoryToday.com
Luka Ivan Jukic writes on Central Europe.