On the 25th April 1974, a coup destroyed the ranks of Portugal's fascist Estado Novo government as the Portuguese people flooded the streets of Lisbon, placing red carnations in the barrels of guns and demanding a 'land for those who work in it'. This became the Carnation Revolution - an international coalition of working class and social movements, which also incited struggles for independence in Portugal's African colonies, the rebellion of the young military captains in the national armed forces and the uprising of Portugal's long-oppressed working classes. It was through the organising power of these diverse movements that a popular-front government was instituted and Portugal withdrew from its overseas colonies. Cutting against the grain of mainstream accounts, Raquel Cardeira Varela explores the role of trade unions, artists and women in the revolution, providing a rich account of the challenges faced and the victories gained through revolutionary means.

This book explores the substance and strategies of democracy promotion conducted by the Visegrad Group states (V4) - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. As these states are currently deemed to face democratic backsliding over thirty years after their own democratic transformations, the book discusses how democracy promotion is related to the four countries' understanding of liberalism and democracy and to their political cultures. It also addresses the question of what motivates the V4 states to engage in the politically sensitive activities of democracy assistance and how they intend to share their own experience and know-how of the democratic transformation process. The book concludes by discussing the possible future developments in the respective states' democracy promotion agendas. Examining the strategies, substance, and the domestic discourse related to the Visegrad states' democracy promotion policies, the book presents a much-needed reflection on a niche subject in the foreign policy agendas of these post-communist states for academics and practitioners alike.

From 1789 onwards there sprang up a fervent revolutionary cult of Rousseau, and at each stage in the subsequent unfolding of the drama of the Revolution historians have seen Rousseau's influence at work. Mrs McDonald seeks in this study to trace the development of the cult and to define the nature of the influence by means of a detailed survey of the appeals made to the authority of Rousseau in books, pamphlets and accounts of speeches put forth by revolutionary and counter-revolutionary writers between 1762 and 1791, and she reaches conclusions more complex than those which have been commonly accepted. She is able to show that most of the writers on the revolutionary side who invoked Rousseau's name did so in order to put forward their own views and used arguments that were often in direct contradiction with those which he had formulated; the Social Contract was not widely read in these years, and those revolutionaries who did actually study it were often critical of what they found there. By contrast, the most careful analysis of Rousseau's political theory is to be found in the pamphlets written by aristocratic critics of the Revolution in protest against the misuse to which his name had been put.

This pivotal history of the kings of Sparta not only describes their critical leadership in war, but also documents the waxing and waning of their social, political, and religious powers in the Spartan state. The Spartans have seemingly never gone out of interest, serving as mythic icons who exemplify fearlessness and an unwillingness to give in against impossible odds. Yet most are unaware of the true nature of the Spartan leaders-the fact that the kings maintained their position of power for 600 years by their willingness to compromise, even if it meant giving up some of their power, for example. Organized in a logical and chronological order, Leonidas and the Kings of Sparta: Mightiest Warriors, Fairest Kingdom describes the legendary origins of the dual kingship in Sparta, documents the many reigning eras of the kings, and then concludes with the time when the kingship was abolished six centuries later. The book examines the kings' roles in war and battle, in religion, in the social life of the city, and in formulating Spartan policy both at home and abroad. No other book on Sparta has concentrated on describing the role of the kings-and their absolutely essential contributions to Spartan society in general. Numerous translations by the author of original sources Chronology history from the Dorian Invasion (ca. 1000 BC) to the last king of Sparta (mid-2nd century BC) Illustrations of the kings of Sparta, gods, and heroes, as well as diagrams of battles and family trees Maps of Laconia, the Peloponnesus, and Greece A bibliography containing ancient and modern sources for Sparta

With the aim to write the history of Christianity in Scandinavia with Jerusalem as a lens, this book investigates the image - or rather the imagination - of Jerusalem in the religious, political, and artistic cultures of Scandinavia through most of the second millennium. Volume 3 analyses the impact of Jerusalem on Scandinavian Christianity from the middle of the 18. century in a broad context. Tracing the Jerusalem Code in three volumes Volume 1: The Holy City Christian Cultures in Medieval Scandinavia (ca. 1100-1536) Volume 2: The Chosen People Christian Cultures in Early Modern Scandinavia (1536-ca. 1750) Volume 3: The Promised Land Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750-ca. 1920)

Told with humor, intrigue, and a shrewd eye for detail, this riveting short biography sheds much-needed light on the life of nineteenth-century Russian icon Grigory Rasputin.
Grigory Rasputin, a Siberian peasant turned mystic and court sage, was as fascinating as he was unfathomable. He played the role of the simple man, eating with his fingers and boasting, "I don't even know the ABC." But, as the only person able to relieve the symptoms of hemophilia in the Tsar's heir Alexei, he gained almost hallowed status within the Imperial court.
During the last decade of his life, Rasputin and his band of "little ladies" came to symbolize all that was decadent, corrupt, and remote about the Imperial Family, especially when it was rumored that he was not only shaping Russian policy during the First World War, but also enjoying an intimate relationship with the Empress...
Rasputin's role in the downfall of the tsarist regime is beyond dispute. But who was he really? Prophet or rascal? A "breath of rank air...who blew away the cobwebs of the Imperial Palace," as Beryl Bainbridge put it, or a dangerous deviant?
Writing for historical aficionados and curious readers alike, Frances Welch turns her inimitable wry gaze on one of the great mysteries of Russian history.

This book examines the rhetorical force of certain key words in the discourses of Russian state, political thought, and literature. It shows how terms for cultured conduct (kul'turnost'), political affection (love, liubov', joy-radost' etc.), personhood (lichnost'), truth (pravda) and geographical integrity (tsel'nost') assumed almost sacral meaning. It considers how these terms took on a life of their own, imposing the designs of the Russian state and defining the hopes of educated society in the process. By exploring the usage of these words in a wide range of texts, Richard Wortman provides glimpses into the ideas and feelings of leading figures and thinkers in Russian history, from Peter the Great to Alexander Herzen and Nicholas Berdiaev, as well as writers like Mikhail Lermontov, Ivan Turgenev, and Fedor Dostoevsky, giving a sense of the intellectual and emotional universe they inhabited. The Power of Language and Rhetoric in Russian Political History provides both students and scholars with a specific focus through which to approach Russian culture and history. This book is essential reading for students of Russian government, thought, literature and political action.

Released for the first time in the English language, and marking the centennial of Albania's independence, Serbs and Albanians delivers an at once refreshing and comprehensive insight into the cultural composition of Southeast Europe. A wider audience can now appreciate the work of Milan ufflay, a controversial figure of his time whose assassination was denounced by leading intellectuals, Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann. With a measured and often poetic voice, ufflay takes us on a journey through the Middle Ages as it unfolded on a land where opposing cultures were distilled and interwoven, dynasts and whole cities upturned and reborn.

Just as Hitler wanted a New World Order, we now have a new world order, also called Globalism taking shape. We must all face the challenges of giving up our national sovereignty, many of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, peace, and prospertity. We must consider the reality of One World Government and One World Religion. We must consider The European Union, The North American Free Trade Agreement, The World Trade Organization Agreement, and numerous other such little discussed Agreements. We must consider The United Nations Report of the Commission on Global Governance, along with its Agenda 21, sustainablility and population reduction because it is easier for the powers that be, like the Trilateral Commission and their associates, to control a population of 1.5 billion rather than 8 or more billion people. The Global 2000 Report, The Charter of Economic Right and Freedoms, are largely being dismissed. Why? Herein we discuss the almost inexplicable ethical and philosophical reasons much of the world has long hated the Jewish peoples, the Gypsy peoples, the Aboriginals, and the disabled, of any and all nations. This book is a thought provoking attempt to reveal how money and power become concentrated in the hands of a few well known, well respected, evil beings, their families, their secret societies, and often their religious organizations. These same families and organizations, have through psychological conditioning of populations, through the centuries maintained control of societies, policies, and history.

1945 was the most pivotal year in Germany's modern history. As World War II drew to a devastating and violent close, the German people were confronted simultaneously with making sense of the horrors just passed and finding the strength and hope to move forward and rebuild. Richard Bessel offers a provocative portrait of Germany's emergence from catastrophe, and he astutely portrays the defeated nation's own sense of victimhood after the war, despite the crimes it had perpetrated. Authoritative and dramatic, Germany 1945 is groundbreaking history that brilliantly explores the destruction and remarkable rebirth of Germany at the end of World War II. Ultimately, it is a success story; a story of life after death.

These two accounts of the battle of Sedan in 1870 have been combined for good value to enable readers to gain a balanced overview of the action from different perspectives. What makes these accounts particularly interesting is that they were written not only by authors who were able to view the events without the impediment of national bias, but because both were present on the field of battle itself. So this excellent book offers the reader a history, an analysis, first-hand eyewitness accounts, the accounts and views of other witnesses and participants and a number of anecdotes including those concerning General Sheridan. This most significant of battles of the Franco-Prussian War came about as the numerically superior French Army under MacMahon attempted to relieve the siege of Metz. That attempt failed as the French were defeated at Beaumont. Moltke, Bismarck and the king, Wilhelm I, subsequently cornered the French at Sedan and surrounded them. The Emperor, Napoleon III, was with the French forces and, unable to escape, suffered the humiliation of both defeat and personal capture. This battle typified the pattern of the Franco-Prussian War which, following the lessons of the American Civil War, took armed conflict on its first steps into the industrial age. All of those lessons had been learnt by the Prussians and very few of them by the French, whose view of warfare and especially of the Prussians remained, to their cost, rooted in the experiences of another Napoleon and entirely different French and Prussian Armies in the days of the First Empire. Times had changed the French had been out-planned, out-organised, out-manoeuvred and out-gunned.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Tsar Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV, 1533-1584) is one of the most controversial rulers in Russian history, infamous for his cruelty. He was the first Russian ruler to use mass terror as a political instrument, and the only Russian ruler to do so before Stalin. Comparisons of Ivan to Stalin only exacerbated the politicization of his image. Russians have never agreed on his role in Russian history, but his reign is too important to ignore. Since the abolition of censorship in 1991 professional historians and amateurs have grappled with this problem. Some authors have manipulated that image to serve political and cultural agendas. This book explores Russia's contradictory historical memory of Ivan in scholarly, pedagogical and political publications.

Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States 2011 is a volume in "The World Today Series". Published and updated annually, this series provides both a short historical treatment and an up-to-date look at the various countries of the entire globe. Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States deals with the twelve independent republics that became members of the Commonwealth of Independent States following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1992. The book focuses strongly on recent economic and political developments with shorter sections dealing with foreign policy, the military, religion, education, and specific cultural elements that help to define each republic and differentiate one from the other. Approximately one-third of the book is devoted to Russia, with shorter sections dealing with Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. There is also a section dealing with how the Commonwealth of Independent States came into being and how it has evolved since 1992.

This book investigates the demobilization and post-war readjustment of Red Army veterans in Leningrad and its environs after the Great Patriotic War. Over 300,000 soldiers were stood down in this war-ravaged region between July 1945 and 1948. They found the transition to civilian life more challenging than many could ever have imagined. For civilian Leningraders, reintegrating the rapid influx of former soldiers represented an enormous political, economic, social and cultural challenge. In this book, Robert Dale reveals how these former soldiers became civilians in a society devastated and traumatized by total warfare. Dale discusses how, and how successfully, veterans became ordinary citizens. Based on extensive original research in local and national archives, oral history interviews and the examination of various newspaper collections, Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad peels back the myths woven around demobilization, to reveal a darker history repressed by society and concealed from historiography. While propaganda celebrated this disarmament as a smooth process which reunited veterans with their families, reintegrated them into the workforce and facilitated upward social mobility, the reality was rarely straightforward. Many veterans were caught up in the scramble for work, housing, healthcare and state hand-outs. Others drifted to the social margins, criminality or became the victims of post-war political repression. Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad tells the story of both the failure of local representatives to support returning Soviet soldiers, and the remarkable resilience and creativity of veterans in solving the problems created by their return to society. It is a vital study for all scholars and students of post-war Soviet history and the impact of war in the modern era.

For a long time agriculture and rural life were dismissed by many contemporaries as irrelevant or old-fashioned. Contrasted with cities as centers of intellectual debate and political decision-making, the countryside seemed to be becoming increasingly irrelevant. Today, politicians in many European countries are starting to understand that the neglect of the countryside has created grave problems. Similarly, historians are remembering that European history in the twentieth century was strongly influenced by problems connected to the production of food, access to natural resources, land rights, and the political representation and activism of rural populations. Hence, the handbook offers an overview of historical knowledge on a variety of topics related to the land. It does so through a distinctly activity-centric and genuinely European perspective. Rather than comparing different national approaches to living with the land, the different chapters focus on particular activities - from measuring to settling the land, from producing and selling food to improving agronomic knowledge, from organizing rural life to challenging political structures in the countryside. Furthermore, the handbook overcomes the traditional division between East and West, North and South, by embracing a transregional approach that allows readers to gain an understanding of similarities and differences across national and ideological borders in twentieth-century Europe.

Translation of the Destruction of Czenstochow (Czestochowa, Poland) is the English translation of the Yizkor (Memorial) Book published in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1949 in Yiddish by survivors and former residents of the town. It details through personal accounts the destruction of the Jewish community by the Nazis and their Polish collaborators in World War II. This publication by the "Yizkor Books in Print Project" of JewishGen, Inc., serves to provide the English speaking community with these first-hand accounts in book format, so that researchers and descendants of Jewish emigrants from the town can learn this history. 200 pages with Illustrations. Hard Cover Flight to Survival 1939-1945 by Peninah Cypkewicz-Rosin is an excellent companion book because it is a first-hand account of a young Jewish woman survivor of the ghetto and the Hasag Labor Camp both in Czestochowa.