20 Years after the Collapse of Communism

unpublished/graduate term paper/on file with Collegium Civitas, 2014

Nationalities Papers, 2000

2011

Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić, Sabina Sabolović[What, How & for Whom/WHW], Dóra Hegyi & Zsuzsa László [tranzit. hu], Magdalena Ziółkowska & Katarzyna Słoboda[Muzeum Sztuki], new media center_kuda.org (eds.), Art Always Has Its Consequences, Zagreb, WHW, , 2010

The challenge of thinking within the more or less invisible borders of West-Eastern Europe is to multiply and connect the options of localities and temporalities of thinking, beyond the overcoding and enclosing possibilities of the mirroring, Western-universal transitions from capitalism to socialism (1917-1992), and from socialism to capitalism (1989-2009), a mirroring which tends to reduce the historical experience of Eastern Europe to a distorted, deviant or unaccomplished form of Western modernity.

Eastern European Countryside, 2017

East Central Europe, 2009

Geojournal, 2000

At the beginning of the 21st century, Europe is in a great state of change. The post-WW2 political and economic division between east and west has been removed. Democracy and market economy (capitalism) have been spread in an eastern direction, towards Asia. The rule of law is on its way to replace chaos and painful transition times in what was once Eastern Europe. The economic coherence of Europe's western part is going to be strengthened with the introduction of the unifying currency Euro. But, Europe's geopolitical map for the 21st century is still uncertain. The Euro-Atlantic cooperation is impacted by the potency of the US economy and military strength. The European Union's enthusiasm to embrace the newly freed nation-states in the East is fading away. Facing the reality of their economy and judging the advantages and disadvantages of the enlargement, many social groups in the European core worry about the benefits gained in the union of 15. To the ten candidate countries, which have entered negotiations, EU first set the year 2001 as a goal to look ahead to. At present, according to verbal proclamations of responsible politicians, the 'enlargement of the Union towards the east' will not take place before 2004. The painful devolution of the multiethnic Yugoslavia and Cyprus and the never-ending drive towards regional autonomy, combined in places with terrorism (Spain, France, Great Britain), has also put the nation-state, as the best form of the societal and economic 'habitat', in question. Envisioning problems of the future, the world's political geographers have, in May 2000, gathered in Portorož-Portorose (Slovenia) and Gorizia (Italy) and discussed the world political map for the 21st century. The articles in this special issue of GeoJournal are a selection of papers presented at the conference. The conference, entitled 'Political Geography in the 21st Century: Understanding the Place-Looking Ahead', has taken place in a once turbulent part of Mediterranean Europe. In the past 20th century it all began there with the battlefields of Caporetto and Isonzo in 1916 (described in Hemingway's novel 'A Farewell to Arms'), continued with the reality of the Iron Curtain (a term invented by Churchill, with reference to the border near Trieste) in the 1950s, as communist and democratic worlds stood in confrontation against each other in Europe, and has been concluded in the 1990s with the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. The organizers, the Department of Geography of the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the Geography Section of

Today, European Studies as broadly understood have become an important discipline within the humanities and social sciences. The reason for this is, first of all, the contemporary significance of the issues covered by European Studies, that is the processes of European integration and the functioning of Europe both politically and as a specific cultural area. These issues generate a great deal of interest owing to Europe’s fluid position in the contemporary world. While not without objective limitations, it remains one of the key actors in the international arena and its influence still extends to all corners of the world. At the same time, European Studies are one of the most interesting disciplines at they are in a state of constant development, still searching for its own field and research matter as well as its own methodology and research instruments. As demonstrated in this book, these complex issues often give rise to doubt and con troversy. Hence the attempts to analyse them are both fascinating and important, and have attracted the interest of a growing number of academics all over the world, and within the last 25 years increasingly often of Polish scholars as well. These Polish scholars include the research staff of the Centre for Europe of the University of Warsaw, one of the oldest academic units of this profile in Poland. Not long ago, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Centre. Although 20 years might not seem impressive compared to similar centres operating in the Western part of Europe, we have to take into account the speci ficity of the Polish context, which is dealt with in the first group of texts in this book. This is a time for a reflection, summing up the achievements made in various disciplines and emphasising that in the two decades of our operation we have come a very long way. The Centre for Europe started as a unit of the University of Warsaw established to promote knowledge and information about European integration. This task was realised in the form of trainings, conferences, seminars, exhibitions, etc. Over time, our scope of activity was considerably broadened and, what’s more important, gradually became ever more academic. Presently, the Centre has attained the status of an autonomous, full-fledged organisational unit functioning as a faculty of the University of Warsaw. Our intensive activity includes didactics in the form of both undergraduate and graduate programmes in European Studies (europeistyka), as well as academic research. The results of our research are presented at various scientific conferences in Poland and abroad, as well as in numerous publications. We still play an important role as a centre spreading information and knowledge, e.g. through our highly esteemed library, which also plays the role of European Documentation Centre. We also have our own Publishing Programme, under which we issue two academic periodicals: the Polish quarterly “Studia Europejskie” and the English-language “Yearbook of Polish European Studies”. Furthermore, we publish various books in Polish and in foreign languages in the form of academic textbooks, studies and monographs, including the present work. While not wishing to engage in self-praise, we nonetheless should point out that our activity has been appreciated by external entities, which is shown, for instance, by the fact that the Centre for Europe has been placed in the highest cat egory in the official ranking of academic units compiled by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. We also try to perceive our activity in the broader perspective, not only as the functioning of a single institution. The two decades of the Centre’s existence is an important symbol of the transformations taking place in Poland and in Polish science. The launching of studies on European issues was only pos sible because of the general democratic transformations taking place in Poland, and its opening up to the world, especially to Europe. Our activity constitutes proof that Polish academic science has made the adjustments necessary to meet the requirements of modernity and that it continues to focus on the important challenges accompanying the rapid changes taking place in the world. We would like our anniversary to constitute a symbol of the increasingly close ties between Poland and the European Union, of which Poles remain enthusiastic proponents, even despite the current problems facing the EU. At the same time, we desire ever fuller and closer cooperation with our EU partners, as we consider this an important element in furthering the development of Polish science. We hope that the Centre for Europe will continue to contribute to this development, which is one of the aims underlying this publication. This book is the result of an international research project conducted by the Centre for Europe, University of Warsaw, in cooperation with Ukrainian universities, in particular with the Institute of European Integration and Faculty of International Relations at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. The project was co-financed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland under the cyclical programme ‘Cooperation in the Field of Public Diplomacy 2012’. One of the key goals of this undertaking was to prepare a book containing a methodological and factual introduction to European Studies. Our publication is not aimed at presenting the achievements of Polish scholars in this discipline, but at facilitating university education and academic research in this field. Hence we are not trying to devise a full compendium of knowledge about the vari ous aspects of the phenomena and processes of Euro pean integration, or to put it broadly – Europe treated as a specific civilisational area. As the title suggests, in this work we try to outline the most important notions which, in our opinion, European Studies should be dealing with. We know that the issues in question are interdisciplinary, hence the authors approach them from various perspectives: political science, law, economics, social studies, cultural studies. The publication consists of seven parts, comprising a total of 33 chapters. They correspond to individual groups of notions and concern the following problems: the methodology of conducting research under broadly-defined European Studies; the genesis and course of the integration processes in Europe; the functioning of EU law and the EU institutional system; the principles and mechanisms of European economic cooperation; the analysis of the selected key policies implemented by the EU; issues related to EU foreign policy and its significance in the contemporary world; and social issues and the role of culture in Europe. Apart from focusing on the contemporary context of these problems, we also take into account their historical background and future prospects. The authors of this publication are mainly members of the research staff of the Centre for Europe, University of Warsaw, who have devised the concept of the work and wrote the majority of its chapters. In this endeavour, they enjoyed ample and invaluable support from researchers from other Polish and foreign universities, especially from the Insti tute of International Relations and the Faculty of Management at the University of Warsaw, as well as the Warsaw School of Economics, the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, the Kozminski University in Warsaw, the National University of Lviv, and the University of Latvia in Riga. Here with we would like to express our thanks to all those who contributed to the content of this book, as well as to those who helped us in terms of organisation and funding – in particular the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the University of Warsaw.