Strongly affected by modern history and facing dilemmas of modernity, Central and Eastern Europe has been healing fresh wounds for the past 30 years. The present volume analyzes the contemporary challenges related to the heritage of 1989. The peaceful revolution brought substantial socio-cultural, institutional and strategic transformations, setting a long-term course for Central and Eastern European policymaking. Recently, however, these legacies, namely the geopolitical aspects of the transformation, the policies of collective memory, and even intrasocietal issues, have been questioned more than ever. It seems the region is approaching the end of a revolutionary cycle of transition. This volume tries to investigate this phenomenon as it unfolds.

Politics of symbolization affects the semantics of identities and power relations between various subjects, and encompasses the changing meanings of social spaces, times, historical narratives, as well as modalities of collective memory. The volume focuses on politics of symbolization across Central and Eastern Europe understood as complex spaces of semiosis that are rife with similarities and differences. Politics of symbolization consists of various strategies of referring to past collective experiences from the perspective of projected visions and representations of the future. The European Union and its politics of symbolization is relevant in this respect. The volume facilitates understanding of the problems associated with politics of symbolization in Central and Eastern Europe.