Abstracts for 2000 6-7/2007

György Spiró
Statehood and mentality in Poland and Hungary

Polak, Wegier, dwa bratanki, i do szabli, i do szklanki – which features do these have in common, and which not? Hungarian writer and Slavist György Spiró focuses on the issues of change and stability in the history of mentalities. Avoiding the oversimplification and dangerous determinism of so-called national characteristics, he looks at the differentiating experience of statehood.

Zoltán Sz. Bíró
Putin’s Russia

Recent developments in Russia: the managed democracy – or rather Putin’s “sovereign democracy” – and its enemies. Why are the supporters far stronger?

László Lengyel
Toward a new Middle Europe?

On current political events – transforming the region?

Victor Taki
Moldavia and Wallachia in the eyes of Russian observers in the first half of the nineteenth century

This article examines the way Russian elites (Westernized Russian officer corps and diplomats) responded to the emergence of the East-West symbolic divide through discovery and appropriation of their own “Orient” in the course of the Russian-Ottoman wars.

Wojciech Orlinsky
Ex Oriente horror

Central eastern Europe as seen via stereotypes of global popular culture

Nick Elsdorf
Letter from the Middle West

Our correspondent from Vienna on Molodaya Gvardiya: young “new Russians” in Austria