The structure of the Soviet bloc would appear to be ideal for the maximization of Soviet domestic and foreign interests. The actual ledger of Soviet gains and losses from control over Eastern Europe, however, reveals a different picture. Over the postwar period Eastern European contributions to Soviet national security, economic growth, and domestic stability have declined. This decline in the value of empire to the Soviets is a function of three factors. The first is growing regime-society tensions in Eastern Europe as a result of East Europe's dependence on the Soviet Union and the derivative structures of its Stalinist political economies. The second is the Soviet role within the bloc as a political and economic monopoly and monopsony. And the third is the unexpected costs, both to the Soviet Union and to Eastern Europe, that attended the bloc's reunion in the early 1970s with a global capitalist system in crisis.

/pdf/the-empire-strikes-back-the-evolution-of-the-eastern-bloc-1fn72vqzyn.pdf

The empire strikes back: the evolution of the Eastern bloc from a Soviet asset to a Soviet liability

We investigate the long-term effects of the important presence of Jews in Eastern Europe before the Second World War and their disappearance during the Holocaust. The Pale of Settlement, the area which Jewish residents were confined to in the Russian Empire, is used as a source of exogenous variation in the size of the Jewish population before the Second World War. Based on election and survey data, we find that current residents of the Pale, compared to their counterparts outside the Pale, vote more for socialist anti-market parties, have lower support for market economy and democracy, are less engaged in entrepreneurship, but exhibit higher levels of trust. At the same time, the Pale has no lasting effects on average consumption, income, and education levels. Regression discontinuity at the Pale border helps identification. We show that the effect of the Pale is related to the former presence of Jews rather than the inflow of new migrant population into the formerly-Jewish areas. We suggest a possible mechanism and present evidence consistent with it: non-Jewish population, at the time when two groups lived together side-by-side, developed persistent anti-market culture and bonding trust, rooted in ethnic hatred towards Jews. We show that, consistent with the mechanism, current residents of towns closer to places of pogroms exhibit higher trust and anti-market attitudes even controlling for the historical share of Jews in the population and the Pale.

http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/docs/ydepot/semin/texte1011/ZHU2010PER.pdf

Persistent Antimarket Culture: A Legacy of the Pale of Settlement after the Holocaust

/pdf/eastern-europe-and-the-former-soviet-union-3mcbnjzihm.pdf

Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine

One answer to this seemingly simple question was suggested by a Ukrainian scholar when he retorted that if Ukraine has a future, then Ukraine will have a history. He thereby correctly put politics, including international politics, at the center of the discussion. A simple answer to the question is, of course, that the peoples and institutions that occupy the contemporary state of Ukraine have a history, in the sense of lived experience, wie es eigentlich gewesen ist, the way all of us have pasts to which we can appeal. But if we re-ask the question, "Does Ukraine have a history?" and mean this time a written record of that experienced past that commands some widespread acceptance and authority in the international scholarly and political communities, then the answer is not so simple. The title of this paper echoes an important essay by Ukrainian historian Serhii Bilokin', "Chy maemo my istorychnu nauku?"'-literally "do we have historical science?" perhaps more clearly translated "Do we have a tradition of historical scholarship?" Bilokin', by the way, persuasively argues that it is too early to speak of such traditions. If we leave Ukraine and look to the political geography of history teaching, we find virtually no recognition that Ukraine has a history. In major Anglo-American, German and Japanese academic centers, Ukrainian history as a field (with a couple of important exceptions) does not exist per se; the exceptions only confirm the general rule. The Canadian government and Canadian Ukrainian emigrants subsidize Ukrainian history and culture in Canada, but here an "abnormal" situation exists in that nearly all the scholars are of Ukrainian descent. This fact has allowed "mainstream" historians to characterize Ukrainian history as "searching for roots," national advocacy or some other partisan pleading, and to deny the field the valorization it seeks as

Peter J. Potichnyj

Papers

Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective

Ukraine and Russia in Their Historical Encounter

Political Development in Eastern Europe

Poland and Ukraine: Past and Present

Soviet Policy-Making