Divided Europe: The New Domination of the East

Synopsis

Almost a decade on from the sweeping political changes that began in 1989, the post-communist East remains excluded from the rest of Europe. This book systematically challenges the Western understanding of, and impact on, Eastern Europe in recent years. Through a highly readable and critical assessment of the new cultural division of Europe, and of the centrality of cultures, Adam Burgess scrutinizes the Western obsessions with history, ethnicity, intolerance and the need for 'civil society.' He concludes that the West, anxious to bolster its own flagging moral authority over the East in the quest for a post-Cold War 'other, ' has not itself 'failed' Eastern Europe. Instead it has created a climate of failure, dismissing the consequences as the product of the supposedly intrinsic backwardness of the East.