Aftershock: A Journey into Eastern Europe’s Broken Dreams

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More praise for Aftershock ‘A brisk, vivid and wide-ranging survey of a region in the grip of neoliberalism. As Feffer makes clear, this is hardly just a book about Eastern Europe, as the challenges there now seem to be spreading throughout the world. Feffer’s sense of the future evinces both pessimism of the mind and optimism of the will.’ Lawrence Weschler, author of Vermeerin Bosnia and Calamities of Exile ‘A breath-taking whirlwind tour through the transformations of eastern Europe over the past 30 years. With its account of the travails of contemporary capitalism, is also astonishingly relevant for understanding pressing political problems in the United States as well.’ David Ost, author of The Defeat of Solidarity:Anger and Politics in Post-Communist Europe Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Exile Off Main Street Glass Half Full The Same River Twice The Rise and Fall of Liberalism Mind the Gap The Trauma Known as Eastern Europe A Tale of Two Eastern Europes Part I: Stepping Backward 1. Pyramids of Sacrifice The Ideology of Sacrifice From First to Last From Heroes to Victims From the Margins to the Hinterlands Self-Defeating Sacrifices 2. The Journey to Utopia Transitology The Diagram Property The Utopia of the West Disappointments with Democracy 3. The Revenge of the Provinces Eastern Europe B Reforming Agriculture 4. The Faces of Illiberalism The Nationalist Turn The Populist Reformation Trumpism in Poland Hungary’s Illiberal Democracy Going on the Attack Scratching the Surface 5. Unexploded Ordnance The Black Box Puppet Masters? The Lives of Others History Commissions The Tribunal The Wages of Corruption Interlude: Stepping Backward, Leaping Forward Part II: Leaping Forward 6. Reinvention of Self Creating a New Elite Changing Things Locally Switching Sides in Hungary Rebranding a Country 7. The Talented Tenth The Setback The Apartheid System The NGO Strategy The Business Strategy The Political Strategy The Resistance Strategy The Cultural Strategy 8. The New Dissidents Krytyka Polityczna The Feminization of Dissent The Green Alternative The New Politics of Self-Determination The Rise of the Precariat Exporting Dissent 9. The Next Generation Young Republicans Young Liberals Young Radicals 10. Creating New Worlds Squat Paradise Artopia Utopia Boxes Conclusion: The Future of Illiberalism Stepping Back and Leaping Forward Serbia on the Edge The Culture of Europe The Impact of Globalization The New Political Order Looking Ahead Notes Index About the Author