BOOK: Balázs TRENCSÉNY, Michal KOPECEK, Luka LISJAK GABRIJELCIC, Maria FALINA, Monika BAÁR & Maiej JANOWSKI (eds.), A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe (Oxford: OUP, 2018), 480 p. SIBN 9780198737155, 75 GBP

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Book abstract:

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of political ideas and discourses. Its principal aim is to make these cultures available for the global 'market of ideas' and revisit some of the basic assumptions about the history of modern political thought, and modernity as such.
The present volume is a sequel to Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century'. It begins with the end of the Great War, depicting the colorful intellectual landscape of the interwar period and the increasing political and ideological radicalization culminating in the Second World War. Taking the war experience both as a breaking point but in many ways also a transmitter of previous intellectual traditions, it maps the intellectual paradigms and debates of the immediate postwar years, marked by a negotiation between the democratic and communist agendas, as well as the subsequent processes of political and cultural Stalinization. Subsequently, the post-Stalinist period is analyzed with a special focus on the various attempts of de-Stalinization and the rise of revisionist Marxism and other critical projects culminating in the carnivalesque but also extremely dramatic year of 1968. This volume is followed by Volume II: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Short Twentieth Century' and Beyond, Part II: 1968-2018.

On the contributors:

Balázs Trencsényi, Professor in the Department of History, Central European University Budapest, Michal Kopeček, Head of the Ideas and Concepts Department, Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, PhD candidate in the Program in Comparative History of Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe, Central European University, Budapest, Maria Falina, Lecturer in European History, Dublin City University, Mónika Baár, Professor of Central European Studies, University of Leiden, and Maciej Janowski, Head of Section at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences,

Warsaw Balázs Trencsényi is Professor in the Department of History, Central European University Budapest. His research focuses on the comparative history of political thought in East Central Europe and the history of historiography. He is Co-Director of Pasts, Inc., Center for Historical Studies at CEU and Editor of the periodical East Central Europe (Brill). His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Maciej Janowski, Monika Baar, Maria Falina, and Michal Kopeček, OUP, 2016), The Politics of 'National Character': A Study in Interwar East European Thought (Routledge, 2012), Whose Love of Which Country?: Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe (Brill, 2010), and Hungary and Romania beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements (Peter Lang, 2013).

Michal Kopeček is Head of the Ideas and Concepts Department at the Institute of Contemporary History in Prague, and Co-Director of Imre Kertész Kolleg, Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balázs Trencsényi, Maciej Janowski, Monika Baar, Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Quest for the Revolution's Lost Meaning: Origins of the Marxist Revisionism in Central Europe, 1953-1960 (forthcoming Brill, 2018).

Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič is a PhD candidate at the program in Comparative History of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe at the Central European University, Budapest. His main fields of interest include intellectual history, nationalism, and history of political thought, with a focus on European peripheries and semi-peripheries. He co-authored a volume on modern radical ideologies ( Utopije demokracije, ZNK Masovna, 2005), and edited a volume on humanism in contemporary social and political thought ( Blodnjaki smisla: misliti humanizem danes, DHG, 2007). He is the editor of the Slovenian quarterly journal Razpotja.

Maria Falina is Lecturer in Modern European History at Dublin City University. Her main fields of interest are intellectual history, nationalism, and history of religion and politics. Her publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balázs Trencsényi, Michal Kopeček, Maciej Janowski, and Monika Baar, OUP, 2016), and articles such as 'Between >"Clerical Fascism>" and Political Orthodoxy: Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Interwar Serbia' in Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions, (2007) 8/2: 247-258, and 'Religion Visible and Invisible: The Case of Post-Yugoslav Anti-War Films', in C. Schmitt and L. Berezhnaya, eds. Iconic Turn(s): Religion and Nation in East European Films after 1989 (Brill, 2013).

Mónika Baár is Professor of Central European Studies at the University of Leiden. Her research focuses on modern historiography, cultural history and political thought, with special attention to the problem of marginality. Her publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balázs Trencsényi, Michal Kopeček, Maciej Janowski, and Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Historians and the Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (OUP, 2010). She is Associate Editor of Nationalities Papers.

Maciej Janowski is Head of Section at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw and Visiting Professor at the Central European University, Budapest. His main fields of interest are social and intellectual history of Central Europe and the history of liberalism. He is editor of the periodical East Central Europe (Brill) and Deputy Editor of Kwartalnik Historyczny. His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balázs Trencsényi, Michal Kopeček, Mónika Baár, and Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Polish Liberal Thought before 1918 (CEU Press, 2004).

 More information at OUP.