Social Currents In Eastern Europe,Sources/Meaning Great Transformation RAMET NEW

Feminism, religion, and rock music have all played crucial roles in the recent revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe. This important and engaging book traces the diverse social currents that have developed alongside and interacted with political and economic forces to bring about change in the region. Sabrina P. Ramet examines the meanings and sources of various social currents - intellectual dissent, feminism, religious activism, the formation of independent youth cultures and movements, and trade unionism - in seven communist East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria. The author also highlights the powerful force of Albanian irredentism in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Drawing on interviews conducted over an eight-year period in Eastern and Western Europe with those active in arenas for social change, Ramet argues that social disaffection provided the seeds for a steady and incremental transition to pluralist systems in each of these countries. "Social Currents in Eastern Europe" provides a useful perspective that should be of great interest to scholars and general readers seeking to understand the role of social change in the current transformation of Eastern Europe.