Examines the 1980 Solidarity revolution in Poland, the government's subsequent establishment of martial law in response, in 1981, and the eventual transition to democracy in 1989.

Jack M. Bloom presents a moving account of how an opposition developed and triumphed in communist Poland, showing the perspectives and experiences of the participants, while often letting them recount their own stories and explain their thinking.

"The list of contributors is impressive withnot a single dull chapter...; the editors are to be congratulated for making available such a stimulating and timely, if not timeless, collection" - Slavic Review "[T]his is a book that will serve many intellectual tastes and interests, and that will certainly prove thought provoking for anyone who reads it... I recommend it to anybody who wants to witness the analythical depth and span with which the meaning of 1989 can be approached." - Extremism & Democracy The tenth anniversary of the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe provides the starting point for this thought-provoking analysis. Between Past and Future reflects upon the past ten years and considers what lies ahead for the future. An international group of distinguished academics and public intellectuals, including former dissidents and active politicians, engage in a lively exchange on the antecedents, causes, contexts, meanings and legacies of the 1989 revolutions. At a crossroads between past and future, the contributors to this seminal volume address all the crucial issues -- liberal democracy and its enemies, modernity and discontent, economic reforms and their social impact, ethnicity, nationalism and religion, geopolitics, electoral systems and political power, European integration and the tragic demise of Yugoslavia. Based on the results of recent research on the ideologies behind one of the most dramatic systematic transformations in world history, and including contributions from some of the world's leading experts, Between Past and Future is an essential reference book for scholars and students of all levels, policy-makers, journalists and the general reader interested in the past and future prospects of Central & Eastern Europe

Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland is a music history of Solidarity, the social movement opposing state socialism in 1980s Poland. The story unfolds along crucial sites of political action under state socialism: underground radio networks, the sanctuaries of the Polish Roman Catholic Church, labor strikes and student demonstrations, and commemorative performances. Through innovative close listenings of archival recordings, author Andrea F. Bohlman uncovers creative sonic practices in bootleg cassettes, televised state propaganda, and the unofficial, uncensored print culture of the opposition. She argues that sound both unified and splintered the Polish opposition, keeping the contingent formations of political dissent in dynamic tension. By revealing the diverse repertories-singer-songwriter verses, religious hymns, large-scale symphonies, experimental music, and popular song-that played a role across the decade, she challenges paradigmatic visions of a late twentieth-century global protest culture that place song and communitas at the helm of social and political change. Musical Solidarities brings together perspectives from historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and sound studies to demonstrate the value of sound for thinking politics. Unfurling the rich soundscapes of political action at demonstrations, church services, meetings, and in detention, it offers a nuanced portrait of this pivotal decade of European and global history.

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Structured according to key themes, Polish Cinema Today analyzes the remarkable innovations in Polish cinema emerging a decade after the 1989 dissolution of the Soviet bloc, once its film industry had evolved from a socialist state enterprise into a much more accessible system of film production, with growing expertise in distribution and marketing. By the early 2000s, an impressive, diverse cohort of filmmakers broke through the gridlock of a small set of esteemed, aging auteurs as well as the glut of imported Hollywood blockbusters, empowered by the digital revolution and domestic audience appetite for independent work. Polish directors today challenge sacrosanct bromides about national and gender identity, Poland’s historical martyrdom, the status of the influential Catholic Church, and the benevolent family, while investigating the phenomena of migration and sexuality in their full complexity. Each thematic chapter places these recent films within a historical/cultural context nationally and transnationally, and designs its analyses of specific works to engage general audiences of film scholars, students, and cinephiles.

This book contains an overview of many publications by employees of the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw in the field of Eastern studies. We have selected texts on the recent history of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and communist rule, as well as contemporary Russia and Polish-Russian relations. By making these available to English-speaking readers, on the one hand, we want to present a small part, due to limited space, of the Eastern studies conducted by the Institute and, on the other, pay tribute to their distinguished representative, Richard Pipes. In 2019, according to the last will of this historian, scholar and sovietologist, who died on 18 May 2018, the Institute received his book collection of over three and a half thousand items, mainly concerning Russia and the Soviet Union. These are works of high scientific rank that the scholar collected for over half a century. Acquiring the book collection was the first step towards establishing the Professor Richard Pipes Laboratory. This was possible thanks to funding obtained by the Institute at the end of 2019 from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education as part of the Dialogue programme.