Four more books funded at CEU Press via OtF
Posted by Kira Hopkins on March 4, 2025 at 1509
Central European University (CEU) Press is pleased to announce the funding of four new open access books thanks to the existing supporters, and recently joined new library members of the Opening the Future (OtF) programme.
Published during 2025, our new OA books will be freely accessible and readable online, and will also be available in print.
Funding for these new OA titles comes from the Press’ collective library membership programme Opening the Future, bringing the initiative’s OA output to 37 published titles. Opening the Future at CEU Press is a cost-effective way for libraries to increase their digital collections on the history and culture of Central and Eastern Europe and the former communist countries.
Subscribing libraries get unlimited multi-user access to curated packages of backlist books, with perpetual access after three years. The Press uses membership funds solely to produce new frontlist titles in OA format.
More information on Opening the Future can be found on the website, or contact Kat Baier, Head of Sales, Marketing and Operations, on BaierK@press.ceu.edu
The Great Depression in Eastern Europe edited by Klaus Richter, Jasmin Nithammer, Anca Mândru
As the centenary of the Great Depression approaches, this book offers a historical study of its impact on Eastern Europe. Due to its agricultural dominance this region was particularly hard hit. The volume focuses on ten states of the interwar period that had emerged from the Ottoman, Romanov, Habsburg, and Hohenzollern empires and where national sovereignty was particularly contested.
The contributing authors apply an integrative approach that uses economic change as a starting point for analysing socio-institutional changes and political realignments. They review the main responses that the respective countries have made to try to mitigate the impact of the crises, such as economic protectionism or the construction of welfare states. The contributions also examine the profound impact of the Depression on the relationship between societies and states, between genders, between social classes, and between different nationalities. By moving the study of economic nationalism from economic history to the center of social and political history, the volume contributes to a much better understanding of states, societies and nationalism in Eastern Europe in the 1930s.
Governing Divided Societies: Habsburg Austria’s Democratic Legacy and the Czechoslovak First Republic by Philip J Lowe, Thomas A Lorman, Daniel E. Miller
The authors of this volume challenge conventional notions about Habsburg and Czechoslovak politics, arguing that they were more democratic than they often appear. At combining political science and history, the authors’ guiding principle and means of analysis is the consociational model of democracy. This theory, linked best to Arend Lijphart, asserts that consociationalism guarantees minorities a say in government and helps preserve democracy in societies that experience deep ideological, cultural, or ethnic divisions. It enables the main segments to be isolated organizationally from each other, thus avoiding conflict, and affording the leaders to make compromises for the good of the whole.
Consociationalism has proven its worth as a model for describing contemporary democracies and diagnosing their ills. By exploring the institutions and practices of the Habsburg Monarchy before 1918 and the Czechoslovak First Republic, Howe, Lorman, and Miller prove the value of the consociational theory at analyzing the past. They hold that a multitude of parties, frequent cabinet changes, and reliance on circles of experts do not necessarily signal flawed democracies, when, in fact, they are features of consociationalism. This book is a call to specialists to view current politics not just in terms of majoritarian democracy but rather by the standard of the consociational democracies.
Beyond Nazi Crimes and Soviet Propaganda: The Salaspils Camp in Latvia, 1941–1944 by Kārlis Kangeris, Rudīte Vīksne, Uldis Neiburgs
The Salaspils camp in the vicinity of Riga, which was operated during the Nazi occupation of Latvia, has long been at the center of controversies. Around 23,000 people were imprisoned there: half were political prisoners, labor resisters and convicted soldiers, the rest were prisoners from special operations against civilians in Belarus, Russia and Latgale. The death toll in the Salaspils was at least 2,000, but if the number of Jews who died during construction is included, the total is well over 3,000 people.
Despite the relatively small size of this camp, it became a model for Russian remembrance policy. Soviet propaganda once claimed that up to 100,000 prisoners were killed, that children were used to extract blood, and the extent of the persecution of imprisoned lawbreakers and political dissidents was greatly exaggerated. Salaspils had become a myth in Russian-speaking society in Latvia. It served to reinforce Soviet narratives of the “Great Patriotic War.”
The three authors drew on sources from the archives of Latvia, Germany and Russia and critically analyzed oral testimonies and earlier research to create a comprehensive account of the Salaspils camp in Nazi-occupied Latvia. In doing so, the book furthers the understanding of processes of deformation of collective memory and techniques of memory politics during the Cold War and in the present.
Contesting Copyright: A History of Intellectual Property in East Central Europe and the Balkans by Augusta Dimou
The creative sector, including the cultural industry, is key for today’s economy. Copyright has the capacity to fix the roles and tasks of the actors involved and determine the direction of cash flows within this sector. The study of the evolution of copyright helps understand and adjust the regulation and commercialization of creative labor.
Augusta Dimou provides a thoroughly researched, interdisciplinary and comparative study of the historical development of copyright regimes in three countries – Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. She examines the function and significance of copyright in the institutionalization, development, and regulation of modern culture in East Central Europe and the Balkans during the diverse political regimes of the modern era, and at the interface between the various nationalization and globalization processes of the 20th century. The bulk of the exposition deals with the first half of the twentieth century with a final chapter providing a summary history of copyright under communism.
The author presents the development of copyright in East Central Europe in the context of the European and global history of intellectual property and the creative industries. The study considers the expansion of copyright in the multiple contexts (social, economic political, cultural, technological, ideological, legal) that sustained its rise and development.
The title will be of interest to anyone researching European History, the history of WW2, and the history of intellectual property, and will be available on Project MUSE, DOAB, Open Research Library, JSTOR, OAPEN, De Gruyter as well as on EBSCO, ProQuest, and Overdrive.
For further information:
The Great Depression in Eastern Europe
Editors: Klaus Richter, Jasmin Nithammer, Anca Mândru
ISBN: 978-963-386-894-2 cloth
Publication Date: February 2025
Authors: Philip J Lowe, Thomas A Lorman, Daniel E. Miller
ISBN: 978-963-386-585-9 cloth
Publication Date: March 2025
Beyond Nazi Crimes and Soviet Propaganda: The Salaspils Camp in Latvia, 1941–1944
Authors: Kārlis Kangeris, Rudīte Vīksne, Uldis Neiburgs
ISBN: 978-963-386-796-9 cloth
Publication Date: March 2025
Contesting Copyright: A History of Intellectual Property in East Central Europe and the Balkans Author: Augusta Dimou
ISBN: 978-963-386-614-6 cloth
Publication Date: May 2025