Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and over a decade after its reunification, the European Union (EU) is experiencing increasingly more challenges toward its unity. The EU has experienced a number of crises in the early 2000s, the breakaway of one of its members in 2019, and is challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The latter crisis exhibits, on the one hand, the need for social coherence and unified policies, and on the other, has prompted the physical closure of borders, and divergent responses by domestic political elite. One such reaction—the adopted strengthening of power for Hungary’s Prime Minister—has prompted an international outcry and re-heated the debate of the democratic backtracking of some of the new EU member-states. Analyzing the process of European Enlargement and the changing sentiments about European Integration in a number of East European countries, this symposium brings to the fore important questions about the relationship between Eastern and Western Europe. Although there is a general consensus that both the East and the West have benefited and continue to benefit from their reunion, it is nevertheless the case that the quick assimilation of liberal values has led to policies seen as threatening the liberal democracy model of the EU that we need to address in order to preserve the stability of the Union.

How do international nonprofit organizations influence political party formation in new democracies? Despite recent analyses of external influences on economic-restructuring, less attention has been paid to international assistance to political parties. Contrary to the scholarly literature stressing preexisting socioeconomic cleavages, I argue that new parties may emerge around political cleavages during rapid change; international assistance may encourage new parties to adopt organizational forms and issue areas lacking historical precedent, which are subsequently adapted to mobilize domestic public support. To demonstrate this claim, I contrast assistance by U.S. political party affiliates to parties in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where similar revolutionary movements emerged in the name of “civil society” in 1989 but diverged, with a Western market-oriented party in the Czech Republic and populist semidemocratic party in Slovakia winning subsequent elections. The divergent paths highlight the limits to applying Western models of party organization across contexts and the need for democratic actors to be strengthened beyond founding elections.

One of the key reasons for the scholarly and policy concern about the rising levels of ethnic diversity is its apparently detrimental effect on the production of public goods. Although numerous studies have tackled that issue, there is still much ambiguity as to the precise micro‐level mechanisms underpinning this relationship. In this article, a novel theoretical explanation for this relationship is proposed, building on the social resistance framework. This proposition is tested using a new cross‐sectional public opinion survey covering 14,536 respondents in 817 neighbourhoods across 11 Central Eastern European countries. Analysing national minorities defined by postwar border changes means one can overcome the endogeneity problem faced by research based on immigrant groups. The findings show that it is the combination of a minority group's discrimination and its spatial clustering that makes minorities reluctant to contribute to public goods. The article constitutes a novel theoretical and methodological contribution to the research on the effects of diversity on public goods provision.

Think tanks in the former Soviet bloc face the stark challenge of sustainability. To survive and prosper, they have to be increasingly entrepreneurial and business-like and have to actively seek contracts from government and the international donor community. In this context, this paper discusses the diversification strategies of four think tanks identified to be particularly entrepreneurial in developing new lines of work. This includes commercial activities similar to those of consulting firms, and tapping the business community for donations by offering seminars or other products. The paper reviews how these institutions identified and assessed various opportunities, and how they promoted a new line of work. It also explores the rewards—financial and other—and the challenges that are created by the new types of work within the organizations.

This article deals with the main obstacles in the way of conducting field research in Eastern Europe. Focusing on Ukraine, the article confronts a number of research design rules with the post-Soviet reality. Taking into consideration cultural and political factors, the article seeks to highlight the challenges that await researchers. Thanks to personal experience acquired in Ukraine, the author points to some of the potential difficulties, as well as opportunities awaiting political scientists conducting research in the region.

Preliminary results from the first archaeological excavations of Early Modern mercury-production sites at Idrija, Slovenia, confirm the use of ceramic vessels for mercury roasting following the techniques described in Agricola’s De re metallica, which was published in 1556.

Following the decisions of the scientific session ‘For the further flourishing of Pavlov’s doctrine’ of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1950, important reforms were introduced under political control in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc countries. Research plans of science institutions and medical university curricula were changed according to these decisions. Scientists and university professors were forced to adopt courses in Pavlovian doctrine. The reforms affected the work of hospitals and sanatoriums, whose staff was instructed to reform the everyday practice. Regarding the clinical work, the session had two main consequences: the introduction of the so-called Curative-Protective Hospital Regime and the introduction of sleep therapy for the treatment of psychiatric diseases, hypertension, ulcers, rheumatism, and other diseases. As a widespread therapeutic method, it was established in the 1950s in the USSR and in the countries of the Eastern Bloc as a general reform of health politics. Political (Soviet influence), ideological (dialectical materialism), theoretical (Pavlovian teaching), and practical medical considerations intersected in the implementation of the therapeutic methods which made patients objects of this treatment. This study explores the process of dissemination and establishment of sleep therapy in Bulgarian hospital practice based on the hospital documentation of the Pediatrics Clinic at the Medical Academy and the Clinic of Cardiac Diseases in Sofia in 1952–1953.

Between 2011 and 2017, excavations by a joint German-Georgian team at the Tabakoni settlement mound in the Colchis lowlands of western Georgia uncovered complex wooden constructions preserved in the waterlogged soils. Combined radiocarbon and dendrochronological dating, the first undertaking of its kind in Colchis, reveals that construction on a stable foundation for the site began in the twentieth century BC and identifies early evidence for the cultivation of millet. Subsequent occupation phases saw the careful levelling of previous structures and the addition of backfill, gradually building up the mound until it was ultimately abandoned in the second half of the first millennium BC.

New research at Ciepłe, a unique early-medieval centre in northern Poland, reveals a Piast-era complex with three strongholds, elite chamber graves and far-reaching connections. Founded in the late tenth century AD, Ciepłe challenges traditional models of Pomeranian integration, offering fresh perspectives on early medieval state formation, frontier strategy and cross-cultural interactions.

Roman amphitheatres were centres of public entertainment, hosting various spectacles that often included wild animals. Excavation of a building near the Viminacium amphitheatre in Serbia in 2016 uncovered the fragmentary cranium of a bear. Multistranded analysis, presented here, reveals that the six-year-old male brown bear (Ursus arctos) suffered an impact fracture to the frontal bone, the healing of which was impaired by a secondary infection. Excessive wear to the canine teeth further indicates cage chewing and thus a prolonged period of captivity that makes it likely this bear participated in more than one spectacle at the Viminacium amphitheatre.

The Terra Ferrifera project investigates the landscape and environmental conditions of mass iron production in one of the oldest iron production centres in central Europe: Mazovia, Poland (fourth century BC–fourth century AD). Spatial analyses, settlement pattern studies, prospection, excavation and archaeobotanical analyses provide insights into one of its microregions.

The discovery of an ornament made from Phyllobius viridicollis beetles in a cremation grave at the Domasław cemetery highlights the diverse use of organic materials in funerary rites. Together with dandelion pollen, the find offers interpretative potential for reconstructing the seasonal timing of the burial.

Scholarship has identified key determinants of people’s belief in misinformation predominantly from English-language contexts. However, multilingual citizens often consume news media in multiple languages. We study how the language of consumption affects belief in misinformation and true news articles in multilingual environments. We suggest that language may pass on specific cues affecting how bilinguals evaluate information. In a ten-week survey experiment with bilingual adults in Ukraine, we measured if subjects evaluating information in their less-preferred language were less likely to believe it. We find those who prefer Ukrainian are less likely to believe both false and true stories written in Russian by approximately 0.2 standard deviation units. Conversely, those who prefer Russian show increased belief in false stories in Ukrainian, though this effect is less robust. A secondary digital media literacy intervention does not increase discernment as it reduces belief in both true and false stories equally.

The global political order that emerged from 1919 inscribed Jews into two distinct legal roles under the League of Nations system: a model national minority in the new nation-states of Eastern Europe, and a virtual national majority in British Mandatory Palestine. Despite extensive scholarship on each of these stories, we know precious little about how they interacted in the interwar Jewish political imagination. In this article I track several key East European Zionist intellectuals through the period between World War I and the aftermath of World War II as they attempted to imagine a new geometry of transnational nationhood via international law. This account of their pursuit of national self-determination beyond sovereignty reveals the promise and limits of interwar Jewish worldmaking and provides an index of the changing meaning of nationhood itself in the interwar period.

Historical texts suggest that medieval Christianity condemned the consumption of horsemeat (hippophagy) yet also indicate that this practice persisted. Here, the authors review the contribution of horse to food refuse at 198 settlements across medieval Hungary, highlighting variability in food practices through time and space. Examination of these zooarchaeological assemblages indicates that hippophagy continued after the general conversion to Christianity in the eleventh century but substantially declined following the Mongol invasion (AD 1241–1242) and disappeared by the mid-sixteenth-century Ottoman occupation. Diachronic and geographic trends in this practice reveal ambiguity in food customs, reflecting complex (social, religious and ethnic) local identities.

Medieval elite culture is often difficult to grasp among archaeological records from settlement sites. A silver-gilt amethyst setting, probably part of a brooch, from the moat of Castle Kolno in Poland represents an unusual high-status find from a context related to everyday activity.