- The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- Rethinking Decolonization: A New Research Agenda for the Twenty-First Century
- 1918 and the End of Europe’s Land Empires
- An Empire Unredeemed: Tracing the Ottoman State’s Path towards Collapse
- Britain and decolonization in an Era of Global Change
- France: The Longue Durée of French Decolonization
- The First Postcolonial Nation in Europe? The End of the German Empire
- Exceptional Italy? The Many Ends of the Italian Colonial Empire
- Après nous, le déluge: Belgium, Decolonization, and the Congo
- The Open Ends of the Dutch Empire and the Indonesian Past: Sites, Scholarly Networks, and Moral Geographies of Greater India across Decolonization
- Portugal: Decolonization without Agency
- The Collapse of the Romanov Empire
- Empire by Imitation? US Economic Imperialism within a British World System
- The Eclipse of Empire in China: From the Manchus to Mao
- Rethinking Empire: Lessons from Imperial and Post-Imperial Japan
- Decolonization in South Asia: The Long View
- Global Wars and Decolonization in East and South-East Asia (1937–1954)
- The End of Empire in the Maghreb: The Common Heritage and Distinct Destinies of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia
- Decolonization in Tropical Africa
- The Caribbean in an International and Regional Context: Revolution, Neo-Colonialism, and Diaspora
- Eastern Europe in the Global History of Decolonization
- Decolonization and the Arid World
- Anti-Colonialism: Origins, Practices, and Historical Legacies
- Self-Determination and Decolonization
- Unravelling the Relationships between Humanitarianism, Human Rights, and Decolonization: Time for a Radical Rethink?
- Decolonization and the Cold War
- Violence, Insurgency, and the End of Empires
- Refugees and the End of Empire
- Islamic Revolutionaries and the End of Empire
- Nationalism, Development, and Welfare Colonialism: Gender and the Dynamics of Decolonization
- Postcolonial Migrations to Europe
- Imperial Business Interests, Decolonization, and Post-Colonial Diversification
- Beyond Dependency: North–South Relationships in the Age of Development
- Repressive Developmentalism: Idioms, Repertoires, and Trajectories in Late Colonialism
- Film and the End of Empire: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Colonial Pasts and their Legacy in World Cinemas
- Remnants of Empire
- Apologies, Restitutions, and Compensation: Making Reparations for Colonialism
- Literature and Decolonization
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter places Eastern Europe into a broader history of decolonization. It shows how the region’s own experience of the end of Empire after the World War I led its new states to consider their relationships with both European colonialism and those were struggling for their future liberation outside their continent. Following World War II, as Communist regimes took power in Eastern Europe, and overseas European Empires dissolved in Africa and Asia, newly powerful relationships developed. Analogies between the end of empire in Eastern Europe and the Global South, though sometimes tortured and riddled with their own blind spots, were nonetheless potent rhetorical idioms, enabling imagined solidarities and facilitating material connections in the era of the Cold War and non-alignment. After the demise of the so-called “evil empire” of the Soviet Union, analogies between the postcolonial and the postcommunist condition allowed for further novel equivalencies between these regions to develop.
Keywords: Decolonization, globalization, global history, Communist bloc, non-alignment, Third Worldism, anti-colonialism, revolution, post-colonialism, Eastern Europe
James Mark is Professor of History and Principal Investigator on the 1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective research project at the University of Exeter.
Quinn Slobodian is Associate Professor of History at Wellesley College.
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- The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- Rethinking Decolonization: A New Research Agenda for the Twenty-First Century
- 1918 and the End of Europe’s Land Empires
- An Empire Unredeemed: Tracing the Ottoman State’s Path towards Collapse
- Britain and decolonization in an Era of Global Change
- France: The Longue Durée of French Decolonization
- The First Postcolonial Nation in Europe? The End of the German Empire
- Exceptional Italy? The Many Ends of the Italian Colonial Empire
- Après nous, le déluge: Belgium, Decolonization, and the Congo
- The Open Ends of the Dutch Empire and the Indonesian Past: Sites, Scholarly Networks, and Moral Geographies of Greater India across Decolonization
- Portugal: Decolonization without Agency
- The Collapse of the Romanov Empire
- Empire by Imitation? US Economic Imperialism within a British World System
- The Eclipse of Empire in China: From the Manchus to Mao
- Rethinking Empire: Lessons from Imperial and Post-Imperial Japan
- Decolonization in South Asia: The Long View
- Global Wars and Decolonization in East and South-East Asia (1937–1954)
- The End of Empire in the Maghreb: The Common Heritage and Distinct Destinies of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia
- Decolonization in Tropical Africa
- The Caribbean in an International and Regional Context: Revolution, Neo-Colonialism, and Diaspora
- Eastern Europe in the Global History of Decolonization
- Decolonization and the Arid World
- Anti-Colonialism: Origins, Practices, and Historical Legacies
- Self-Determination and Decolonization
- Unravelling the Relationships between Humanitarianism, Human Rights, and Decolonization: Time for a Radical Rethink?
- Decolonization and the Cold War
- Violence, Insurgency, and the End of Empires
- Refugees and the End of Empire
- Islamic Revolutionaries and the End of Empire
- Nationalism, Development, and Welfare Colonialism: Gender and the Dynamics of Decolonization
- Postcolonial Migrations to Europe
- Imperial Business Interests, Decolonization, and Post-Colonial Diversification
- Beyond Dependency: North–South Relationships in the Age of Development
- Repressive Developmentalism: Idioms, Repertoires, and Trajectories in Late Colonialism
- Film and the End of Empire: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Colonial Pasts and their Legacy in World Cinemas
- Remnants of Empire
- Apologies, Restitutions, and Compensation: Making Reparations for Colonialism
- Literature and Decolonization
- Index
