Old posters

from pre- and Soviet Russia.

1989

one of the best in the history of Europe.

1989-The Struggle to Create post-Cold War Europe

1989-2009 - 20 years after the start of the changes in Europe. A process still on the run, as long as even integrated as full EU and NATO members, the Central and Eastern European countries are still struggling to create functional market economies and political institutions. And, other countries - former parts of the Yougoslav Federation - are at various stages of the process of meeting the Western criteris.

1989-The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe is based on documents, television broadcasts, and interviews from many different locations including Moscow, Berlin, Bonn, Paris and Washington. The aim is to recontruct the starting process of the new Europe: the reunification of Germany, the NATO expansion and the redefinition of the role played by Russia on the world stage. A wide array of political players - from leaders as Mikhail Gorbatchev, Helmut Kohl, George H.W. Bush and James Baker, to organisations like NATO and the European Commission, as well to dissidents - all proposed courses of action and models for the future. The author explains how the aftermath of this fateful victory, and Russian resentment of it, continue to shape world politics today. The author is presenting diverse perspectives from the political elite as well as ordinary citizens.

Mary Elise Sarotte is associate professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. Her previous work includes the book, Dealing with the Devil and German Military Reform and European Security. She has served as a White House Fellow and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Read Central! Europe

Read Central! Europe is an informal association of four publishing houses from Central Europe: Magveto from Budapest, Hungary, Arhipelag from Belgrade, Serbia, Studentska zalozba from Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Fraktura from Zapresic, Croatia.

The common trait of all is the concern to publich literary works speaking to readers around the world and to offer a common basis of understanding in an area where disagreements were more often than the common perspectives.

Geography and conflict

The case of the Mountain Paekdu/Baekdu/Chengbai - the dispute between the two Koreas and China.

Iris Murdoch and Roma

Iris Murdoch's Philosopher's Pupil is not too complicate and metaphysical, with a certain story you could follow, at certain point, as a crime novel. John Robert Rozanov's death, for example - the character around whom all the main presences of the book are gravitating, with clear or unclear literary reasons - is something in between parody and real crime, as in the case when Rozanov's disciple George McCaffrey missed the only - psychoanalytical as well - chance of liberating himself of the power of his master : George wanted to kill his thinking master of whom he was existentially obsessed about, but in fact this one was already dead, after taking an overdose pills, soon before he thought he sunk him in the bathroom.

Shortly, it is a story loaded - and overloaded in some parts - with intellectual ideas, inserted and not always skilfully translated in a literary form through the characters. And many Freudian-interpreted couples.

What I found as well in the book, are the two characters of two Gypsies: Ruby and Pearl. Both of them are assigned the roles of servants/helpers of Alex - George's dominant mother -, respectively Hattie - Rozanov's daughter. They are portrayed as black, not very trustworthy, changing characters and with doubtful honor and morality, with bad habits acquired from the nomad camps they are frequenting from time to time. With prostitution family history. And obsessed with various superstitions, as Ruby's one related to the bad signs brought by the foxes.

October 9, 1989, Leipzig

The day of the wake-up call in Eastern Germany.
and
Preparing for the "20 years after" celebrations.