A Tale of Two Villages [electronic resource] : Coerced Modernization in the East European Countryside / Alina Mungiu-Pippidi

Author:: Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina
Published:: Budapest : Central European University Press, 2013.
Physical Description:: 1 online resource

Online Version

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OpenEdition Freemium

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Summary:

This dramatic story of land and power from twentieth-century Eastern Europe is set in two extraordinary villages: a rebel village, where peasants fought the advent of Communism and became its first martyrs, and a model village turned forcibly into a town, Dictator Ceauşescu's birthplace. The two villages capture among themselves nearly a century of dramatic transformation and social engineering, ending up with their charged heritage in the present European Union. "One of Romania's foremost social critics, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi offers a valuable look at several decades of policy that marginalized that country's rural population, from the 1918 land reform to the post-1989 property restitution. Illustrating her arguments with a close comparison of two contrasting villages, she describes the actions of a long series of "predatory elites," from feudal landowners through the Communist Party through post-communist leaders, all of whom maintained the rural population's dependency. A forceful concluding chapter shows that its prospects for improvement are scarcely better within the EU. Romania's villagers have an eminent and spirited advocate in the author."--

ISBN:

9789633860076
9633860075

View MARC record | catkey: 31805417