Synopses & Reviews
A series of democratic transformations in the 1980s ended the cold war and ushered in the present era. This volume by Padraic Kenney uses six case studies from this period — Poland, the Philippines, Chile, South Africa, Ukraine, and China — to explore common characteristics of global political change while highlighting the differing strategies and perspectives of the people who sought to free themselves from dictatorship. A general introduction to the volume examines key trends in the decades leading up to the changes, tracing the paths that dictatorships and opposition movements took in their fateful confrontations. The first chapter with documents surveys the central ideas of this age of democratic, nonviolent revolution, and sets a framework for considering the case studies in the chapters that follow. The documents in each case study give voice to celebrated and uncelebrated participants alike — from Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev to Chinese hunger strikers and an ordinary Filipino activist — and provide students with an opportunity to compare histories. Photographs, document headnotes, a chronology, questions to consider, and a selected bibliography aid students understanding of this transformative period.
Synopsis
Using six case studies from aroumnd the world in the 1980's, 1989: Democratic Revolutions at the Cold War's End explores the common characteristics of global political change while highlighting the differing strategies and perspectives of the people who sought to free themselves from dictatorship.
About the Author
Padraic Kenney (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is Professor of History at Indiana University, where he teaches courses on Eastern European and Polish History as well as on political protest and the experience of communism. His work as a writer and a teacher has been shaped by a desire to understand the dynamics of communist societies, in particular those of Eastern Europe. He has lived and researched in a number of countries, among them Poland, Ukraine, and South Africa. He is the author of many articles and books, including Wroclawskie zadymy (2007), The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989 (2006), A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989 (2002), and Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945-1950 (1997).
Table of Contents
ForewordPreface List of Illustrations
PART ONE.