Taking It to the Streets (in the GDR)

Posted by on Apr 11, 2013 in Articles, Blog, Eastern Europe, Europe, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments The home movies show a bunch of young kids doing skateboard stunts all around their neighborhood. Without the sound, the action could be taking place almost anywhere. The kids have clothes and haircuts that look like the late 1970s, the town they live in has a prefab drabness. But their goofiness and exuberance is universal. Look a little closer and you’ll see that their skateboards are...
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The Secret History of Yugoslavia

Posted by on Apr 5, 2013 in Articles, Blog, Book Reviews, Eastern Europe, Europe, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments In the 6th century, in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, the historian Procopius penned an account of the misdeeds of the emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora. The Secret History is a compelling account of the court intrigues of a treacherous emperor in a crumbling empire. That Justinian enjoyed a high reputation, the result of the military victories of his brilliant general...
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You Don’t Know Squat

Posted by on Feb 22, 2013 in Articles, Blog, Eastern Europe, Europe, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, Uncategorized | 2 comments It was breathtaking. We emerged from the forest on the outskirts of Moscow and saw, looming above the tall grass, an enormous ruined palace. It was 1985, and I was studying Russian at the Pushkin Institute. We heard a rumor about a grand edifice, the unfinished palace of Catherine the Great, that was moldering not far from where we were staying in Moscow. We took the subway to the end of the...
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Eating History

Posted by on Feb 18, 2013 in Articles, Blog, Eastern Europe, Europe, Featured, Food, Russia and Eastern Europe, Uncategorized | 2 comments The GDR Museum in Berlin is actually two museums in one. And these two parts, both devoted to everyday life in the German Democratic Republic, subtly contradict one another. That might not have been the intention of the museum founders. But this tension actually captures the ambiguities of East Germany and the ambivalence that many Germans feel today about the erstwhile communist state. The...
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Escape from Ignorance and Chalga

Posted by on Jan 17, 2013 in Articles, Blog, Eastern Europe, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, Uncategorized | 4 comments There is a joke in Bulgaria. What are the two ways out of the current crisis? Terminal One and Terminal Two. Those would be, of course, the terminals at the Sofia airport. An enormous number of people have left Bulgaria since 1989. Over the last quarter century or so, the population dropped from approximately 9 million to approximately 7.3 million people. Some of the population reduction is the...
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Serbia’s Strategic Ambiguity and the EU

Posted by on Jan 14, 2013 in Articles, Blog, Eastern Europe, Europe, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, Uncategorized | 2 comments Serbia this week adopted new guidelines for its talks with Kosovo. As usual, the Serbian parliament declared that it would never recognize the independence of the breakaway region. This was not a surprise. But the parliament also called for more autonomy for ethnic Serbians living in Kosovo. On the face of it, this latter statement seems of a piece with the refusal to recognize Kosovo’s...
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