Anti-Communist Minorities in the U.S.


Book Description

Taking a new look at two controversial topics, American anti-Communism and the Cold War, this book reveals the little known history of anti-Communism in the US from the point of view of ethnic refugee/émigré groups, and also offers insight into the lives of minority groups that have hitherto not received scholarly attention.




Hungary in the Cold War, 1945-1956


Book Description

"Based on new archival evidence, this book examines Soviet empire building in Hungary and the American response to it." "The book analyzes why, given all its idealism and power, the U.S. failed even in its minimal aims concerning the states of Eastern Europe. Eventually both the United States and the Soviet Union pursued power politics: the Soviets in a naked form, the U.S. subtly, but both with little regard for the fate of Hungarians."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




The Yalta Myths


Book Description

Focuses on the shifting public attitudes toward the Yalta Conference in the decade following it.




The Reconstruction of Poland, 1914-23


Book Description

The Reconstruction of Poland, 1914-23 is a significant reappraisal of the political, social and economic problems associated with the rebirth of an independent Polish state. The book spans a chronological period beginning in the First World War and culminates in the de jure recognition of the last of Poland's borders in 1923. This book provides essential background for the more recent attempt to rebuild Poland in the 1990s.




For Your Freedom Through Ours


Book Description

In fact, these efforts have gone on, practically without interruption, thru nearly one hundred and thirty years, ever since the first immigrant committee was set up in New York in 1863 to rally Americans behind the cause of countrymen fighting to regain Polish independence against Russian imperial rule. These efforts continued during the years of the First and Second World Wars and have been in evidence most recently in the 1980s and early 1990s when Polish Americans mobilized themselves yet again in support of Poland's right to freedom and sovereignty. On the humanitarian side, the efforts of Polish American organizations have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in direct assistance to the Polish people in the times of their greatest misfortune. Billions more have gone to Poland through direct U.S. aid, in no small measure as a consequence of determined lobbying activities by Polish Americans in solidarity with their one-time countrymen.




The Exile Mission


Book Description

Considering the two distinct Polish immigrant groups after World War II - the Polish-American descendants of pre-war ecomomic migrants and polish refugees fleeing communism - this study explores the uneasy challenge to reconcile concepts of responsibility toward their homeland.







Constantine XI Dragaš Palaeologus (1404–1453)


Book Description

Constantine XI’s last moments in life, as he stood before the walls of Constantinople in 1453, have bestowed a heroic status on him. This book produces a more balanced portrait of an intriguing individual: the last emperor of Constantinople. To be sure, the last of the Greek Caesars was a fascinating figure, not so much because he was a great statesman, as he was not, and not because of his military prowess, as he was neither a notable tactician nor a soldier of exceptional merit. This monarch may have formulated grandiose plans but his hopes and ambitions were ultimately doomed, because he failed to inspire his own subjects, who did not rally to his cause. Constantine lacked the skills to create, restore, or maintain harmony in his troubled realm. In addition, he was ineffective on the diplomatic front, as he proved unable to stimulate Latin Christendom to mount an expedition and come to the aid of south-eastern Orthodox Europe. Yet in sharp contrast to his numerous shortcomings, his military defeats, and the various disappointments during his reign, posterity still fondly remembers the last Constantine.




The History of Poland Since 1863


Book Description

This is an account of the evolution of Poland from conditions of subjection to its reconstruction in 1918, development in the years between the two World Wars, and reorganisation after 1945. It begins at a time when Poland was still suffering from the legacy of the eighteenth-century Partitions and burdened with problems of sizeable ethnic minorities, inadequate agrarian reforms and sluggish industrial development sustained by foreign capital. It traces the history through to independence and then to the transformation of the country in the last thirty years. Although many of the problems of the past have now disappeared, industrialisation, the structure of peasant agriculture, and political association with the Soviet Union present the Polish People's Republic with difficulties that have yet to be resolved. Substantial achievements in an ethnically homogeneous state must be set against substantial discontents. This history provides the English-speaking reader with a scholarly synthesis based mainly on literature in Polish and other East European languages. It will be essential reading for historians of Eastern Europe and for those interested in modern Polish society.