Dr Kelly Hignett

Although communist propaganda frequently claimed that crime rates were negligible in Eastern Europe, a substantial informal economy developed during the latter decades of communist rule. Large numbers of citizens regularly engaged in a range of ‘petty illegalities’ including theft, underground trading and economic exchange, bribery and corruption. These activities were officially prohibited, but were widely accepted and tolerated in practice, both by ordinary citizens and state authorities. Drawing on written memoirs and original data from a series of oral interviews conducted in three former communist countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland – this chapter analyses popular motivations for engaging in petty economic crime under communism, providing some fascinating insights into the ways in which individuals internalised, interpreted and presented their own criminal behaviour, through the adoption of various ‘coping mechanisms’ to minimise the contradictions evident in personal accounts of life under the communist system and to justify and ‘normalise’ their own behaviour within it. The result is a complex and richly textured analysis of petty criminality and popular morality in late-communist central Europe.

In the twenty years that have passed since the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of communism across Central and Eastern Europe numerous fundamental changes have occurred across the region. One of the general trends associated with the post-communist transition has been rising levels of crime in general and organised crime in particular across countries in the region. Concerns about the perceived threat posed by increased levels of organised crime in Central and Eastern Europe became particularly prevalent in connection with European Union expansion to include countries from the region in 2004 and 2007. This paper seeks to analyse and explore the apparent “explosion”€™ of organised crime throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of 1989, considering the relationship between the post-communist transition and the development of organised crime, and exploring the complex realities behind the evolution of organised crime in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. This paper seeks to demonstrate that while the process of post-communist transition has facilitated a fundamental reshaping of organised crime in terms of its structure, composition and activities, the “worst case”€™ scenarios posited in relation to EU enlargement have not come to bear.

From the eighteenth century onwards, the state took increasing responsibility for controlling activities within its borders. Prior to this, however, the role of the state was less clearly defined. In the early modern period, with Europe dominated by expansionist Empires comprised of loose collaborations of national groupings, state borders were often not clearly defined, and inadequately policed or protected by the central state. Thus, as well as the persistent threat of large-scale military invasion, frontier or borderland regions also became hotspots for cross-border banditry, smuggling and piracy, often on a well-established and semi-professional scale. As a result, border communities were often co-opted by the state to act as ‘border guards’, by policing and defending the state frontiers, in return for certain ‘privileges’, despite the fact that, in some instances, these border communities were known to participate in large-scale criminal activities themselves. By considering and comparing three separate border communities: the Cossacks of Southern Russia (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries), the Uskoks of Dalmatia (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and the Chods of Bohemia (twelfth to seventeenth centuries), and their involvement with large-scale cross-border criminal activities, this article will draw a number of general conclusions about the nature of crime in state border regions and the complicity of the state in many aspects of organised crime during the early modern period.

Koniec zimnej wojny nie oznaczał ustania działań szpiegowskich pomiędzy Wielką Brytanią i Rosją. Jednak to za rządów Putina relacje brytyjsko-rosyjskie uległy pogorszeniu. Wielu ludzi na Kremlu uważa, że Londyn odgrywa dziś rolę irytującego i potencjalnie niebezpiecznego zagranicznego ośrodka dysydencko-opozycyjnego. Relacje brytyjsko-rosyjskie po rozpadzie ZSRR to temat niezwykle skomplikowany i niekiedy kontrowersyjny. Związki gospodarcze między Rosją i Wielką Brytanią przeżywają rozkwit, Zjednoczone Królestwo konsekwentnie plasuje się w czołówce państw inwestujących w rosyjską gospodarkę. Według statystyk, od 2001 roku obroty handlowe w stosunkach brytyjsko-rosyjskich rosną średnio o 21 procent rocznie. Również w polityce zagranicznej brytyjscy urzędnicy stale mówią o wzajemnym szacunku i podkreślają znaczenie trwałej współpracy na arenie międzynarodowej. Jeśli jednak spojrzymy głębiej, okaże się, że brytyjskorosyjska współpraca ma znacznie bardziej wyboisty charakter.

This article considers the small Czech spa town of Jáchymov as an example highlighting dissonance in heritage, tourism, and memory politics. The article begins by reviewing the complex and turbulent history of Jáchymov, a town that was ‘shaped by uranium’ during the twentieth century. Initially, the presence of naturally radon-infused springs enabled Jáchymov to develop into a popular and prosperous spa town, known for its healing waters. However, following the Second World War and the rise of Communism, Jáchymov became notorious as the site of several brutal forced labour camps, where prisoners were used to mine uranium on an industrial scale. This article goes on to consider how Jáchymov’s reputation as a place of wellness and healing both conflicts and intersects with the darker legacy of human suffering and trauma inflicted upon the region. In recent years, efforts to revive spa culture and health tourism in Jáchymov have been challenged by attempts to memorialise the communist-era forced labour camps and the growth in dark tourism this has engendered.

Based on extensive original research, including studies of autobiographies and biographies, reminiscences and memoirs, archived oral history data and interviews conducted by the authors, this book provides a rich picture of how women experienced repression in the former Soviet bloc. Although focusing on key years when repression was at its height – 1937 for the Soviet Union, 1941 for Lithuania and Poland, 1948 for Czechoslovakia and 1956 for Romania – the book ranges more widely. It demonstrates that although far fewer women than men were the direct victims of repression, women experienced severe repression in many ways, including exile, deportation and as family members of those arrested, imprisoned and executed.