Section: Visegrad Insight (Poland)
Soft Neo-imperialism: From Moscow with Love
This time Visegrad/Insight interviewed Ostap Kushnir, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Lazarski University, author of more than twenty academic articles on the topics of Ukrainian journalism and Eastern European geopolitics on the methodology presented in his recent book Ukraine and Russian Neo-Imperialism: The Divergent Break In the title of...
Putin’s Gambit
At one moment a few months ago, the very tense relationship between Hungary and Ukraine seemed to improve slightly when the Hungarian Foreign Ministry’s State Secretary for Parliament Relations Magyar Levente said, after meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, that “I see a serious chance to leave this difficult period behind.” The optimism...
The Eagle and the Trident
Although the western media’s coverage of Poland’s controversial amendment to the bill on the Institute of National Remembrance has focused on its impact on Polish-Israeli relations (previously written about here), it has also driven a wedge between Poland and Ukraine. While wartime atrocities by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles...
Leapfrogging to the Digital Future
With the welcomed news that Volkswagen will be opening facilities in the Czech Republic and Poland to aid in their electric car production, already running in Germany and Slovakia, the innovative future of the V4 looks ever brighter. This decision is in line with and follows the announcement from last October that the South Korean firm LG Chem is...
The Fallout of Murder
To get a broader understanding of the situation, we asked five opinion-leading Slovaks their take on the recent tragedy. We must not look in disbelief at the assassination of Jan Kuciak and his fiancé in Slovakia, but think hard and act responsibly to avert a further democratic decline not only in that country but across the entire region....
An Ill-advised History Lesson
The recent controversial amendment to Poland’s law on the Institute of National Remembrance, which bans blaming the Polish nation or state for the Holocaust, is misguided. However, the hysterical reactions to the law from Israel and part of the Jewish diaspora show that while jail sentences are the wrong way to correct historical...
Gender equality in Central-Eastern Europe Media
Like all other factors of social life in the region, twenty-eight years after the fall of the Iron Curtain the media landscape in Central Europe remains strongly influenced by its communist past. Media content has become Westernised in the sense that it is more consumption-oriented, which entails objectifying and sexualising bodies – female in...
A Nuanced Report: The Battle for Memories in Central Europe
The article was first published in “Res Publica Nowa” nr 3/2017 and translated into English with support from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education’s research dissemination funds (contract no. 692/P-DUN/217). This article covers: How nationalism in Central Europe is being spurred on by historical patriotism The impact of past...
Will Vienna build bridges or take sides?
“History teaches but has no pupils,” laments Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann in her dejected postwar novel Malina. “History does not repeat, but it does instruct,” Timothy Snyder ripostes, in the pamphlet On Tyranny, penned in anger as Donald Trump prepared for his inauguration a year ago. As a historian, Snyder sees himself especially called...
The Castle Shakes, But Doesn’t Move
Over the past few weeks, the Czech Republic got their chance at hearing how the EU institutions can help or harm them with future plans of integration, issues relating to immigration and several spurious stories surrounding the Pro-EU candidate Jiří Drahoš. While the fake news did most likely have some impact, Drahoš was an inexperienced...
