Cristina Florea

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de septiembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Ukrainians gather at the grave of the poet Taras Shevchenko, Kaniv, Ukraine, September 1991. Alain Nogues/Sygma/Getty Images

Europa, , ,

The Soviet Union’s demise in 1991 took everyone by surprise, including the man most directly responsible for it. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev had launched perestroika (“reconstruction”), a reform program aimed at radically restructuring Soviet society. A crucial aspect of this initiative, glasnost, promised that the party-state’s work would from then on be “transparent”. In other words, Communist officials could be criticized openly. Among the many unexpected consequences of these reforms was the emergence of new civil-political organizations that broke the Communist Party’s monopoly on public space.

In the Soviet Union’s satellites in Eastern Europe, perestroika emboldened domestic opposition movements that helped launch the series of “gentle” revolutions, such as Solidarity in Poland and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, that brought down Communist regimes in 1989.…  Seguir leyendo »

Putin commending Russian researchers of the Antarctic in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 2014. Alexei Nikolsky / Reuters

Europa, , ,

In Eurasia, empire has proved more durable than in other parts of the world. Whereas in Western Europe, empires have repeatedly broken down, further east, smaller political entities have tended to coalesce under a single supreme authority. For the past four centuries or so, Russian identity has been deeply entwined with empire. A Russian nation state didn’t emerge until 1991, and when it did, a swift descent into economic turmoil quickly helped fuel nostalgia for Soviet times. More recently, Ukraine’s rapprochement with the West has rekindled Russian ambitions for empire, presaging Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and his larger invasion of the country this year.…  Seguir leyendo »