Vibrantly and perceptively told, this is the story of one remarkable year—a vivid history of exhilarating triumphs and shattering defeats around the world. 1956 was one of the most remarkable years of the twentieth century. All across the globe, ordinary people spoke out, filled the streets and city squares, and took up arms in an attempt to win their freedom. In this dramatic, page-turning history, Simon Hall takes the long view of the year's events—putting them in their post-war context and looking toward their influence on the counterculture movements of the 1960s—to tell the story of the year's epic, global struggles from the point of view of the freedom fighters, dissidents, and countless ordinary people who worked to overturn oppressive and authoritarian systems in order to build a brave new world. It was an epic contest. 1956 is the first narrative history of the year as a whole—and the first to frame its tumultuous events as part of an interconnected, global story of revolution.

Peoples of Eastern Europe -- Ethnicity on the edge of extinction -- Linguistic nationalism -- Nationality struggles : from idea to movement -- Insurgent nationalism : Serbia and Poland -- Cursed are the peacemakers : 1848 in East Central Europe -- The reform that made the monarchy unreformable : the 1867 compromise -- 1878 Berlin Congress : Europe's new ethno-nation states -- The origins of National Socialism : fin de siecle Hungary and Bohemia -- Liberalism's heirs and enemies : socialism vs. nationalism -- Peasant utopias : villages of yesterday and societies of tomorrow -- 1919 : a new Europe and its old problems -- The failure of national self-determination -- Fascism takes root : Iron Guard and Arrow Cross -- East Europe's anti-fascism -- Hitler's war and its East European enemies -- What Dante did not see : the Holocaust in Eastern Europe -- People's democracy : early postwar Eastern Europe -- Cold War and Stalinism -- Destalinization : Hungary's revolution -- National paths to communism : the 1960s -- 1968 and the Soviet bloc : reform communism -- Real existing socialism : life in the Soviet bloc -- The unraveling of communism -- 1989 -- East Europe explodes : the wars of Yugoslav succession -- East Europe joins Europe.

Communism in Eastern Europe is a ground-breaking new survey of the history of Eastern Europe since 1945. It examines how Communist governments came to Eastern Europe, how they changed their societies and the legacies that persisted after their fall. Written from the perspective of the 21st century, this book shows how Eastern Europe’s trajectory since 1989 fits into the longer history of its Communist past. Rather than focusing on high politics, Communism in Eastern Europe concentrates on the politics of daily life, melding political history with social, cultural and gender history. It tells the history of this complicated era through the voices and experiences of ordinary people. By focusing on the complex interactions of everyday life, Communism in Eastern Europe illuminates the world Communism made in Eastern Europe, its politics and culture, values and dreams, successes and failures. This book is an engaging introduction to the history of Communist Eastern Europe for any reader. It is ideal for adoption in a wide array of undergraduate and graduate courses in 20th century European history.

In 2011, the United States launched its third regime-change attempt in a decade. Like earlier targets, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi had little hope of defeating the forces stacked against him. He seemed to recognize this when calling for a cease-fire just after the intervention began. But by then, the United States had determined it was better to oust him than negotiate and thus backed his opposition. The history of foreign-imposed regime change is replete with leaders like Qaddafi, overthrown after wars they seemed unlikely to win. From the British ouster of Afghanistan's Sher Ali in 1878 to the Soviet overthrow of Hungary's Imre Nagy in 1956, regime change has been imposed on the weak and the friendless. In Toppling Foreign Governments, Melissa Willard-Foster explores the question of why stronger nations overthrow governments when they could attain their aims at the bargaining table. She identifies a central cause—the targeted leader's domestic political vulnerability—that not only gives the leader motive to resist a stronger nation's demands, making a bargain more difficult to attain, but also gives the stronger nation reason to believe that regime change will be comparatively cheap. As long as the targeted leader's domestic opposition is willing to collaborate with the foreign power, the latter is likely to conclude that ousting the leader is more cost effective than negotiating. Willard-Foster analyzes 133 instances of regime change, ranging from covert operations to major military invasions, and spanning over two hundred years. She also conducts three in-depth case studies that support her contention that domestically and militarily weak leaders appear more costly to coerce than overthrow and, as long as they remain ubiquitous, foreign-imposed regime change is likely to endure.

The fall of communism in Europe is now the frame of reference for any mass mobilization, from the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement to Brexit. Even thirty years on, 1989 still figures as a guide and motivation for political change. It is now a platitude to call 1989 a "world event," but the chapters in this volume show how it actually became one. The authors of these nine essays consider how revolutionary events in Europe resonated years later and thousands of miles away: in China and South Africa, Chile and Afghanistan, Turkey and the USA. They trace the circulation of people, practices, and concepts that linked these countries, turning local developments into a global phenomenon. At the same time, they examine the many shifts that revolution underwent in transit. All nine chapters detail the process of mutation, adaptation, and appropriation through which foreign affairs found new meanings on the ground. They interrogate the uses and understandings of 1989 in particular national contexts, often many years after the fact. Taken together, this volume asks how the fall of communism in Europe became the basis for revolutionary action around the world, proposing a paradigm shift in global thinking about revolution and protest.