Böcker i European History in Perspective-serien

This text considers the Reformed churches of Europe in an international and comparative context from around 1540 to 1620. It discusses how Calvinism operated as an international movement by looking at links between Reformed churches, communities, and states.

The consequences are traced through the Stalin Revolution, the Great Terror, the Second World War, the Cold War, the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years down to Gorbachev's doomed attempt to transform the Soviet system.

A concise and comparative analysis of the private and public careers of Richelieu and Mazarin which deals with such central themes as the international government of France and the conduct of foreign policy, as well as the political strategies of the two men, among other aspects.

Stalin's massive impact on Soviet history is often explained in terms of his inherent evil, personality defects and power lust.

During the Middle Ages, the popes of Rome claimed both spiritual authority and worldly powers, vying with emperors for supremacy, ruling over the Papal States, and legislating the norms of Christian society.

Few Europeans in the twentieth century have been subject to the repeated buffetings by foreign powers, ideologically driven transformations and internal upheaval of the Czechs and the Slovaks. The period of Communist rule was complex, and those who gleefully overthrew the regime in 1989 were the very grandchildren of those who had voted for Communism with hope in the free elections of 1946. This concise account includes both political and social history, analysing half a century of Communism from at all strata of society. Kevin McDermott is equally intrigued by those in power and ordinary citizens, asking what motivates a young Czech worker-believer to join the Communist Party in the early 1950s, enrol in the People's Militia and remain in the party during the dark years of 'normalisation', yet end up welcoming the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Using Czech and Slovak archival sources and the most recent historiography, McDermott challenges the still dominant 'totalitarian' paradigm and argues that the forty year communist experience in Czechoslovakia cannot simply be dismissed as a Soviet-imposed aberration.

This book explores the long-term reasons for the demise of Imperial Russia, examining the failure of the autocratic state to strengthen its own political position while economic change transformed Russian society.