This work explores the representation, meanings and uses of space in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The essays investigate the extent to which actual spaces conformed to the dominant political order in the region.

Informed by in-depth case studies focusing on a wide spectrum of micro and macro post-socialist realities, this book demonstrates the multi-faceted nature of informality and suggests that it is a widely diffused phenomenon, used at all levels of a society and by both winners and losers of post-socialist transition.

Mapping Vilnius is the first book in a series promoting Critical Urbanism as a way of analyzing the changing relationships between citizens, the state and the international context in shaping urban spaces in Central- and Eastern Europe. In this participatory research into two districts of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, mapping is used as a process-oriented technique to visualize these relationships in transition. It book was edited by the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism at the European Humanities University in Vilnius. Among the authors are Felix Ackermann, Vaiva Andriušytė, Philip Boos, Benjamin Cope, Dalia Čiupalaitė, Inga Freimane, Elisa Gerbsch, Tomas Grunskis, Max Hellriegel, Alina Jablonskaya, Justas Juzėnas, Anu Kägu, Andrei Karpeka, Yagmur Koreli, Miodrag Kuč, Siarhei Liubimau, Miglė Paužaitė, Indre Ruseckaitė, Tomáš Samec, Aliaksandra Smirnova, Kamilė Užpalytė, Gerda Vaitkevičiūtė, Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė, Clemens Weise, Lennart Wiesiolek

This book analyzes two Romanian villages – 2 Mai and Vama Veche – as spaces of relative freedom during the last decades of socialist rule. This microhistorical study refutes simplistic views of the communist past which focus on political figures and events, and instead explores ordinary people and everyday life. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, it considers a broad range of sources, including official Communist Party documents, secret police files, personal memoirs, oral history interviews, ethnographic films, songs, and artistic performances. This book intertwines three narrative threads: that of the visitors (mainly members of the Romanian intelligentsia, young people, and hippies); that of the local inhabitants; and that of 'authority' (local and central state agents actively engaged in surveillance and supervision). In doing so, it interrogates the spectrum of consent/dissent and resistance/collaboration hitherto neglected in scholarship.

This collection takes a case study approach to enter into and explore spaces of 'Second-Third World' interaction during the Cold War. From the dining halls of a university, to hospital wards, construction sites, military barracks, pubs and more, the chapters drop the scale down from the global to the particular to better see, understand and interpret the complex nature of these spaces. These ordinary spaces are examined to understand how they were conceived, constructed, shaped and reshaped by people over time. Many are physical places of encounter, while others are more abstract, embodying ideological goals. In exploring these spaces the contributors show how the Second and Third World actors understood them and connected them to ideas such as gender and space, the space of the nation, of the modern and of the self. Essentially, it seeks to unravel how these spaces between Second and Third Worlds worked, and what, if anything, was distinctive and consequential about them. Second-Third World Spaces in the Cold War explores the ways in which these Second and Third World actors collaborated and clashed in these everyday spaces, and brings these multi-faceted, multi-actor histories to a vital centre ground.

Starting with the first man-made satellite 'Sputnik' in 1957 and culminating four years later with the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, space became a new utopian horizon. This book explores the profound repercussions of the Soviet space exploration program on culture and everyday life in Eastern Europe, especially in the Soviet Union itself.