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Whereas for much of human history slavery was somewhat arbitrary, in its later forms, it often had a discriminatory component, typically based on race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. This distinction shows how the practitioners of slavery justified the practice in terms of ideology, and Slavic people were discriminated against within the Ottoman Empire. Slavs had lived in the lands of today’s Eastern European region for centuries.

In September 1939, a 10-year-old boy, Micha Giedroyc watched the Russian security police seize his home in eastern Poland. His father, a senator and judge, was imprisoned while his mother, with Micha and his two sisters, were left on the streets of the local town to fend for themselves. Later they were transported in cattle trucks to the wastes of Soviet Siberia, with hundreds of thousands of other deportees. 'Here, by the will of the rulers of the Soviet Empire, we were to toil and die.'

In Polish: A life as interesting as an action movie. Life of Zuzanna Łapicka, daughter of Andrzej Łapicki, an ex-wife of Daniel Olbrychski, is the perfect material for a screenplay about the life of the so-called artistic elites, not only Polish. In her book, Łapicka creates portraits of tens of intriguing people she met, like Krzysztof Kieślowski and Andrzej Żuławski. She looks at them closely and amusingly. She writes about Agnieszka Osiecka and Jeremi Przybora, about Federico Fellini met in Cinecittà, and Pope John Paul II whom she visited in the Vatican.

Історія Русі-України — 10-томна монографія Михайла Грушевського. Головна праця його життя. Містить виклад історії України від прадавніх часів до другої половини 17 століття. Писалася з перервами протягом 1895—1933 років. Справила вплив на формування української історіографії новітнього часу. У першому томі висвітлюються соціально-економічні, політичні і культурні процеси, що відбувалися на території України з найдавніших часів до початку XI ст. Для істориків, археологів, етнографів, філологів, усіх, хто цікавиться історичним минулим України.

An immigrant with a parrot in Stockholm, a photo of a girl in Lviv, a sculpture of Alexander the Great in Skopje, a memorial ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet led army invasion of Prague: these are a few glimpses of life in Eastern Europe today. Three decades after the Velvet Revolution, Slavenka Drakulic, the author of Cafe Europa and A Guided Tour of the Museum of Communism, takes a look at what has changed and what has remained the same in the region in her daring new essay collection.

Eighteen years have passed since ten countries from Central & Eastern Europe joined the European Union and more than three decades since the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989—but ignorance about what is popularly still called Eastern Europe is as widespread as ever. Slovenia still gets mixed up with Slovakia, the Slavs remain a mystery in a Europe apparently dominated by Romanic and Germanic nations and a country like the Czech Republic is labelled as Eastern European, although one needs to travel west to get from Vienna to Prague.

In May of 2007, in a small, quiet town in the South Moravia region of the Czech Republic, a technical glitch - a simple, accidental crossing of signals - revealed a terrible case of child abuse, and an entire nation watched transfixed with horror as the grisly extent of the perversion of the maternal instinct was revealed. Two small brothers named Jakub and Ondrej, nine and seven years old respectively, were revealed to have suffered confinement, mutilation, psychological brutality, and cannibalism at the hands of several people.

The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced: the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians.

Modern Latvia: The History and Legacy of Latvia’s Struggle for Independence in the 20th Century examines the geopolitics of the region, Latvia’s place in it, and the most important events in Lithuania’s recent history.

A few years ago Linda Kinstler discovered that a man fifty years dead—a former Nazi who belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather—was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in Latvia. The proceedings threatened to pardon his crimes. They put on the line hard-won facts about the Holocaust at the precise moment that the last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying.

A land of mountains, hills, and fertile plains, Romania is a tourist destination waiting to be discovered. It is a rich and complex country: a place whose cities are home to beautiful parks and vibrant cultural scenes and whose people welcome guests warmly into their homes, sharing the best of whatever they have and partying into the night, suffused by Latin joie de vivre. Buffeted over time between three great powers - the West, Russia, and Turkey - Romania betrays the cultural influences of each, and it can be a difficult place to get a handle on.

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history.

The story of Eastern Europe is one of successes and failures, competing interests, and the rise and fall of states and empires. The ancient Greek and Roman empires knew the importance of Eastern Europe for trade and settlement. The medieval period would see some of the greatest empires of European history, like Kievan Rus, the Bulgarian Empire, Serbia, and the German Crusader states. By the early modern period, these great states would be replaced by Russia, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Ottoman Empire.

Kosovo is a tiny land-locked nation located in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula in Eastern Europe. Before the 1990s, few people outside the immediate area had ever even heard of Kosovo. Then, in 1998, war began, and Kosovo moved to the center of the international stage.

The Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, subsequent war in Eastern Ukraine, and economic sanctions imposed by the West transformed European politics. The conflict did not escalate to the levels originally feared but nor was either side able to bring it to a definitive conclusion. Ukraine suffered a loss of territory but was not forced into changing its policies away from the Westward course adopted as a result of the EuroMaidan uprising of February 2014. President Putin was left supporting a separatist enclave as Russia's economy suffered significant damage.

Zapraszamy do fascynującej lektury o życiu uczuciowym Jagiellonów: przeczytaj o wielkich namiętnościach i sekretach dnia codziennego z historią Polski w tle! Poznaj historię miłości Zygmunta Augusta i Barbary Radziwiłłówny, odkryj, jakie intymne sekrety skrywał Władysław Warneńczyk i dowiedz się, kto w rodzie uchodził za rozpustnika. Sięgnij po najnowszą pozycję Iwony Kienzler - autorki bestsellerowych biografii historycznych, a przekonasz się, że życie miłosne Jagiellonów kryje wiele niespodzianek i tajemnic.

Lidice was a peaceful and vibrant community in Czechoslovakia with a rich mining heritage. But an act of Nazi revenge saw this village wiped from existence in a horrifying chapter of European history.

Accessible to students, tourists, and general listeners alike, this book provides a broad overview of Russian history since the ninth century. Paul Bushkovitch emphasizes the enormous changes in the understanding of Russian history resulting from the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, new material has come to light on the history of the Soviet era, providing new conceptions of Russia's pre-revolutionary past.

Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author’s grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community - an entire culture - that was annihilated in the Holocaust.

Beginning in the years immediately after the First World War and continuing for more than a decade, the German military and the Soviet Union, despite having been bitter enemies, entered into a partnership designed to overturn the order in Europe. Centering on economic and military cooperation, the arrangement led to the establishment of a network of military bases and industrial facilities on Soviet soil, away from the oversight established by Versailles.