New Books in Polish Studies

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5 risultati 152

Charlie English, "The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War" (Random House, 2025)
For nearly five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, forming the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the war was fought psychologically. It was a battle for hearts, minds, and intellects. Few understood this more clearly than George Minden, head of a covert intelligence operation known as the “CIA book program,” which aimed to undermine Soviet censorship and inspire revolt by offering different visions of thought and culture.From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s “book club” secretly sent ten million banned titles into the East. Volumes were smuggled aboard trucks and yachts, dropped from balloons, hidden aboard trains, and stowed in travelers’ luggage. Nowhere were the books welcomed more warmly than in Poland, where the texts would circulate covertly among circles of like-minded readers, quietly making the case against Soviet communism. Such was the demand for Minden’s books that dissidents began to reproduce these works in the underground. By the late 1980s, illicit literature was so pervasive in Poland that censorship broke down: the Iron Curtain soon followed.Charlie English narrates this tale of Cold War spycraft, smuggling, and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who fought for intellectual freedom—people like Mirosław Chojecki, who suffered beatings, imprisonment, and exile in pursuit of his clandestine mission. The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War (Random House, 2025) is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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47:32
Catching the China-Europe Express: Logistics, Local Agency & Eurasian Geopolitics in the Polish Borderlands
In this episode, we focus on the often-overlooked geographies of Eurasian connectivity with Dr. Wojciech Kębłowski, whose research brings attention to the Polish border towns of Małaszewicze and Narevka, key yet rarely discussed nodes in global infrastructure networks. As Eurasia undergoes a dramatic reconfiguration—with initiatives like China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor, and numerous regional projects vying for influence—we discuss what happens at the edges. How are logistics nodes developed? Who lives in these nodes of connection, and how do they navigate the shifting tides of global ambition? Our conversation spans local politics, logistics, labor, railway connectivity, and geopolitics, offering a multidimensional view of border hubs where the global meets the local. These sites are not only shaped by supply chain logics but also by mounting geopolitical rivalries, as powers compete for infrastructural influence across continents. Dr. Kębłowski paints a vivid picture of Małaszewicze, once a booming railway town employing over 10,000 people, now economically depressed but still strategically vital. While geopolitical tensions—like the war in Ukraine—have disrupted trade flows, they haven’t derailed Małaszewicze’s importance. The town’s traffic has rebounded, a testament to its logistical centrality. Dr. Kębłowski discussed the hopes of renewal spurred by the BRI and how local leaders have actively tried to position Małaszewicze on the global map—courting Chinese delegations, lobbying Warsaw, and crafting narratives of international relevance. He shares insights into how these symbolic and practical efforts illustrate both the ambitions and the limitations faced by peripheries striving to assert their place in global politics and connectivity networks. GUEST BIO: Wojciech Kębłowski is an urban researcher, photographer, and Assistant Professor in Urban Studies and Planning at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, with affiliations at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He will begin a new professorship at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in June 2025. His research sits at the intersection of urban, transport, and political geography, and draws on critical social and decolonial theory. It spans three main areas: the political economy and governance of “sustainable” transport, the urban geography of Global China, and alternatives to capitalist urbanism, including circular economy and degrowth practices. Wojciech’s research is global in scope, with fieldwork and collaborations in diverse cities in Western Europe (Aubagne, Brussels, Luxembourg, Helsinki, Madrid), Eastern Europe (Sopot, Wrocław, Tallinn), China (Chengdu) and Cuba (Santiago). He uses a range of qualitative methods and is interested in photography as a research tool and a creative practice. Wojciech is involved in several international research projects, including LiFT (on fare-related mobility transitions), CARIN-PT (on flexible and on-demand transport), and previously led PUTSPACE and CIRCITY, focused on public transport and circular economies, respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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58:34
David G. Williamson, "Poland Betrayed: The Nazi-Soviet Invasions of 1939" (Pen & Sword, 2011)
After staging a mock attack at Gleiwitz, Germany unleashed its blitzkrieg on Poland on September 1, 1939. Two week later, Soviet forces streamed into the beleaguered country from the east. By early October, Poland had fallen. In a vivid narrative that follows the invading armies from the battle at Westerplatte to the siege of Warsaw, David Williamson takes a fresh look at the opening campaign of World War II, shattering enduring myths and misconceptions and giving voice to the men -- German, Soviet, and Polish -- who did the fighting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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27:17
Peter Whitewood, "The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy: Lenin’s Defeat and the Rise of Stalinism" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
This detailed study traces the history of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-20), the first major international clash between the forces of communism and anti-communism, and the impact this had on Soviet Russia in the years that followed. It reflects upon how the Bolsheviks fought not only to defend the fledgling Soviet state, but also to bring the revolution to Europe. Peter Whitewood shows that while the Red Army's rapid drive to the gates of Warsaw in summer 1920 raised great hopes for world revolution, the subsequent collapse of the offensive had a more striking result. The Soviet military and political leadership drew the mistaken conclusion that they had not been defeated by the Polish Army, but by the forces of the capitalist world - Britain and France - who were perceived as having directed the war behind-the-scenes. They were taken aback by the strength of the forces of counterrevolution and convinced they had been overcome by the capitalist powers. The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2023) reveals that - in the aftermath of the catastrophe at Warsaw -Lenin, Stalin and other senior Bolsheviks were convinced that another war against Poland and its capitalist backers was inevitable with this perpetual fear of war shaping the evolution of the early Soviet state. It also further encouraged the creation of a centralised and repressive one-party state and provided a powerful rationale for the breakneck industrialisation of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1920s. The Soviet leadership's central preoccupation in the 1930s was Nazi Germany; this book convincingly argues that Bolshevik perceptions of Poland and the capitalist world in the decade before were given as much significance and were ultimately crucial to the rise of Stalinism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1:14:00
Sabrina P. Ramet and Lavinia Stan, "East Central Europe Since 1989" (Routledge, 2025)
East Central Europe Since 1989 (Routledge, 2025) examines politics, economics, media, religious institutions, transitional justice, gender inequality, and literature, highlighting the overt functions, latent functions, and side effects associated with each sphere. Communism in East Central Europe had cracks from the beginning, as uprisings in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956 demonstrated. But with the establishment of the Independent Trade Union Solidarity in Poland in the Summer of 1980, communism went into steady decline and, between 1988 and 1991, crumbled. What followed has been an unsteady transition to various forms of often corrupt pluralism with democracy doing best in the Czech Republic (with the exception of the years 2017-2021) and Slovenia, and worst in Hungary, Albania, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This volume will be of interest not only to specialists in East Central Europe but also to graduate and undergraduate students, members of the diplomatic corps, and general readers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1:32:32