Prof Anita Prazmowska SAR M.09

This course is available to General Course ‘Spring Semester’ students.

The course aims to explain the history of these regions as expressed and moulded by the peoples and their leaders during a particularly turbulent period in European History. Attention will be paid to the consequences of the Second World War on the region. Soviet control over Eastern and South Eastern Europe had a profound impact on these countries' freedom to determine their destiny.  The Yugoslav-Soviet conflict will be considered as part of the discussion of the Soviet mechanisms of control.  A debate on the German Democratic Republic will form part of the course.  The invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops will be discussed in order to understand reformist movement in a Communist state.  The course will develop key themes in the history of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania and the Baltic States. Final lectures will concentrate on the transition from Communism to democratic states. The break up of Yugoslavia and the wars in the Balkans will be considered in a separate lecture.

Recorded lectures. Classes will be on campus or via Zoom, as circumstances dictate. There will be a reading week in the Lent term.

One essay in the LT and a timed essay as exam preparation.

R J Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (1994); P G Lewis, Central Europe since 1945 (1994); T Rakowska-Harmstone, Communism in Eastern Europe (1979); G Swain & N Swain, Eastern Europe since 1945 (1993); F Fejto, A History of the People's Democracies; Eastern Europe since Stalin (1971); J Rothschild, Return to Diversity. A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II (1990); G Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down. The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (1993).

Exam (100%, duration: 3 hours) in the summer exam period.