Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989

by Gerd Rainer-Horn, Padraic Kenney, Aldo Agosti, Anna Balzarro, Paulina Bren

Overview

Transnational Moments of Change offers a broad introduction to the methodology and practice of transnational history. To demonstrate the value of this approach, the work focuses on Europe since World War II, a period whose study particularly benefits from a transnational vantage point. Twelve distinguished contributors from around the globe offer a range of transnational approaches to three continent-wide moments of change. The work begins with a look at the close of World War Two, when liberation from Nazi occupation offered the opportunity for social and political experiment. Next, essays explore the late 1960s as generational change and political dissatisfaction rocked urban centers from Paris to Prague. Finally, the book turns to the fall of communism, a moment of revolutionary change that not only spread rapidly from country to country, but even affected and interacted with protest movements in Western Europe and elsewhere. Together, the essays provide both a new perspective on postwar Europe and a range of models for the historian interested in using the transnational approach.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742523234
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	01/29/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.72(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Gerd Rainer-Horn is lecturer at the University of Warwick and the author of European Socialists Respond to Fascism: Ideology, Activism and Contingency in the 1930's and co-editor of Left Catholicism: Catholics and Society in Western Europe at the Point of Liberation, 1943-1955. Padraic Kenney is associate professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His books include Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945-1950 and A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 1945 Chapter 3 Recasting Democracy? Communist Parties Facing Change and Reconstruction in Post-War Europe Chapter 4 Window of Opportunities or trompe l'oeil? The Myth of Labor Unity in Western Europe after 1945 Chapter 5 Liberated Zones in Northern Italy and Southeastern France: The Cases of the Alto Tortonese and the Vercors Chapter 6 The Influence of Socialist Realism in Italy During the Immediate Postwar Period Part 7 1968 Chapter 8 "1968" and "The Cultural Revolution of the Long Sixties (c. 1958 - c. 1974)" Chapter 9 The Working Class Dimension Of "1968" Chapter 10 1968 East and West: Visions of Political Change and Student Protest from Across the Iron Curtain Chapter 11 Echoes of Provocation: "1968" and the Women's Movements in France and Germany Part 12 1989 Chapter 13 The Global Context of 1989 Chapter 14 The Development of a Green Opposition in Czechoslovakia: The Role of International Contacts Chapter 15 A Transcontinental Movement of Citizens? Strategic Debates in the 1980s Western Peace Movement Chapter 16 Opposition Networks and Transnational Diffusion in the Revolutions of 1989 Chapter 17 Bibliographic Essay

Editorial Reviews

It encourages us to transcend the framework of Cold War politics and assess the history of European politics in both East and West in diachronic perspective. Moreover, taken together, the essays provide snapshots into the contemporary history of notions and practices of "democracy" in Europe.. .. This stimulating volume should, therefore, serve as an incentive to explore in more detail the meanings of "democracy" in the whole of Europe since 1945.

From the Publisher