From Stalinism to Pluralism: A Documentary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945

by Gale Stokes (Editor)

Bringing together a wealth of historical documents, memoirs, essays, and literature from Eastern Europe, this highly successful book vividly illustrates how the most original and challenging minds of the region have understood and reacted to Stanlinism and its successors since the end of the Second World War, ultimately showing how Eastern Europeans have made the journey from Stalinism to a new pluralism. The book creates a rich mosaic of political and historical development in these countries, presenting extracts from the works of Leszek Kolakowski, Czeslaw Milosz, Milovan Djilas, George Lukacs, Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, and George Konrad alongside such seminal primary documents as the Yalta Agreement, the Helsinki Accords, and the Gdansk Agreement. Organized chronologically and thematically, a fifth chapter, entitled After the Fall, has been added to create a completely updated and expanded second edition. The new edition covers the critical events attending the rise of Stalinism and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Four new readings on the collapse of Yugoslavia into civil war, as well as close to fifty other documents make this reader the most comprehensive and up-to-date textbook on the history and politics of Eastern Europe since the end of World War II.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Russia, European History, School

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 3, 1991

Reviews

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my eastern European history class. this is a collection of primary source documents about the history of that region. There are little blurbs explaining each section of this book and I think they do a good job of laying out the history. This isn't a book I would read for fun but if you really love eastern European history this will definitely be a good book for understanding the politics of the region.