A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present: Modernisation, Ideology and Nationality

by Ian D. Armour

Why is Eastern Europe still different from Western Europe, more than a quarter-century after the collapse of Communism? A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present shows how the roots of this difference are based in Eastern Europe's tortured 20th century.

Eastern Europe emerged in 1918 as the 'lands between', new states whose weakness vis-à-vis Germany and Soviet Russia soon became obvious. The region was the main killing-field of the Second World War, which visited unimaginable horrors on its inhabitants before their 'liberation' by the Soviets in 1945. The imposition of Communist dictatorships on the region, ironically, only deepened Eastern Europe's backwardness. Even in the post-Communist period, its problems continue to make it a fertile breeding-ground for nationalism and political extremism.

A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present explores the comparative backwardness of Eastern Europe and how this has driven strategies of modernisation; it looks at the ways in which the region has served as a giant test-tube for political experimentation and, in particular, at the enduring strength of nationalism, which since 1989 has re-emerged more virulent than ever.

This book in the essential textbook for any student of 20th-century Eastern Europe.

432 pages, Paperback

Published April 8, 2021

About the author

Ian D. Armour is a native of Victoria, British Columbia, and completed his BA in History at the University of Victoria in 1974. In 1976 he came to Britain to do his postgraduate studies, and remained in the UK for the next thirty years. He does his MA in International History (1815-1919) at the London School of Economics & Political Studies (1977), and completed a part-time PhD in History at the School of Slavonic & East European Studies [SSEES] in 1994. After teaching part-time at SSEES in 1993-94, he was a Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Staffordshire University from 1996 to 2005. After a year’s teaching at SSEES (2005-06), he returned to Canada to take up an appointment teaching European and World History at Grant MacEwan Unversity, in Edmonton, Alberta, where he remained until his early retirement in 2014. He returned to the UK that year, and is now settled in north Devon. As an Honorary Fellow at Exeter he is happy to offer a 'sources and skills' course on the Habsburg Monarchy in the Dualist period, and he hopes to make additional contributions in the future.