Our Story
December 1986
East European Politics and Societies (EEPS) Volume 1, Issue 1
From its first issue, EEPS defined its remit as the lands between Germany and Russia, including the Baltic region and the Balkans. Articles treating other areas have been welcome when historical or comparative considerations warranted. The intrinsic interest of the region’s diversity and its cultural-historical specificities, along with wider intellectual comparisons for social and political analysis, have always been the rationale for a journal on eastern Europe.
1989
This year, called the annus mirabilis, saw the first competitive elections in the Soviet bloc in Poland, the breaching of the Hungarian border, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thus began a cascade of transformations that by 1991 dismembered really-existing socialism in Europe and Eurasia. Persistent local social movements, shifting geopolitical tectonic forces, and spontaneous migrations from east to west through newly perforated borders shattered seemingly impregnable Communist institutions. In the wake of the Great Implosion, the states formerly dominated by the USSR reorganized themselves into independent entities. International alliances were reoriented, in most cases by 180 degrees.
Photo: Protest rally at Wenceslas Square, Prague, Czechoslovakia during the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Credit: RobbieIanMorrison, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The early euphoria of the transition soon dissipated, however, buffeted by indigenous political whirlwinds. The rising market economy was undermined by predatory privatization and by the social dislocations that followed. Break-ups of states, some nonviolent and some bloody, further roiled the status quo. Then came the re-emergence of right-wing populism, worrisome within the countries in which it appeared but also disturbing because it spread so quickly throughout the region.
In Yugoslavia, the 1980s had already been a period of economic crisis and ever-increasing political tension, putting inexorable strain on its federal system of government. Alongside the transformations elsewhere in eastern Europe, by 1990-91 the conflict between the forces of centralism and those calling for greater democratisation came to a head, intensified by fierce nationalist rhetoric on all sides. The constituent republics split apart, with declarations of independence accompanied by a series of insurgencies, ethnically defined conflicts and wars of independence that consumed the region until 2001, with the greatest violence taking place in parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and finally Kosovo. Though armed conflict was confined to the territories of what had been Yugoslavia, the UN and NATO intervened through a variety of means, from peacekeeping missions to the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. External pressure on the region came from the east as well through Russia’s ominous interference in Ukrainian affairs. In 2014, Russia’s military incursions into the Donbas and annexation of Crimea presaged the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, marking a bloody start to the new millennium.
2004 and 2007 and 2013
The worrisome internal and external threats to security in the region were countered by optimistic waves of accession by east European nations into the European Union. Decisively shedding their former Soviet-bloc identification, the following joined the EU: in 2004: Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. In 2007: Bulgaria and Romania. In 2013: Croatia. Membership in NATO by these states paralleled EU accession but the timeline was not identical. This fundamental, political and cultural reorientation conferred a new status on new EU and NATO members. They posed challenges to other nations in the region, some of whom, such as Ukraine, eagerly desired closer association with Europe.
November 2009
East European Politics and Societies, Volume 23, Issue 4
Twenty years after 1989, in an anniversary issue, EEPS surveyed the landscape after the implosion of the Soviet bloc, and the rise of democracy and market with the new social relations they propelled into existence. Articles covered these events from the gamut of disciplinary perspectives, including not only economics, sociology, and political science but also history, philosophy, literary analysis, linguistics, and anthropology.
Despite the emergence of democracy, the rise and spread of civil society organizations, the flourishing of literature and other forms of culture, many problems stubbornly remained in place. Nationalism, corruption, populism and democratic backsliding, and “competitive authoritarianism” exhibited a disquieting durability.
The similarities and contrasts among these phenomena challenge analysis and comparative study to keep pace. EEPS has served to encourage and facilitate such analysis and will continue to do so. Research presented in the journal’s pages has reconsidered or recast theoretical positions long taken for granted: the close relationship between economic growth and political consolidation, for instance, or the assumption that core/periphery relationships necessarily extend from the geopolitical or economic sphere to the cultural one.
The stewardship of Bracewell and Jasiewicz, 2013-2023
Wendy Bracewell and Krzysztof Jasiewicz, co-editors from 2013 to 2023, stayed faithful to this commitment, and further extended the journal’s scope and reach. Comparative and interdisciplinary work thrived in their care, particularly in fields such as gender and memory studies. Geographical coverage remained weighted to east-central Europe, though southeastern Europe was well represented.
Less obvious, perhaps, was the surge in EEPS’s international pool of authors and reviewers. After many years as a largely US-based institution, the journal now draws on expertise from around the globe, but especially from Europe. The same can be said of its readership, which – thanks to digital publishing, both by SAGE and, importantly, by authors reposting articles in OpenAccess form – now extends across the region and to other areas of the world.
These developments of the journal EEPS had a significant impact on the field of East European Studies. The journal widened its repertoire beyond publishing to other educational purposes: translation prizes, workshops on publishing in international journals, symposia on the practice and future of peer review, and a virtual anthology of OpenAccess articles on Ukraine for classroom use. Indeed, even the routine administrative tasks of the journal had a broadly pedagogical purpose – from peer review to discussions of article revisions with authors, to the sharing of all the reviews with the peer reviewers following a final decision.
The journal as a forum for intellectual interchange, as well as its community-engaging activities, assumed the role of a learned society for east European studies, albeit one without a formal institutional structure.
& Cultures
The co-editors of EEPS from 2004-2012, Ivo Banac and Irena Grudzińska Gross, presided over a significant internationalization of the journal’s submissions. In 2012 they added “and Cultures” to the journal’s title (East European Politics and Societies and Cultures). The intention of this addition was to make more explicit the journal’s commitment to publishing work in the humanities.
The editorial transition 2024 - January 2024
East European Politics and Societies (EEPS) Volume 38, Issue 1
The first issue of 2024 opened a new chapter for EEPSwith the assumption editorial leadership by James Krapfl and Lavinia Stan. Representing a new generation of scholarship on eastern Europe, Stan and Krapfl embody the internationalization of the journal’s editorial team. Both Krapfl and Stan teach at universities outside the United States.
The establishment of the EEPS Foundation (EF) January 2024
From its first issue in December1986 until December 2023, the journal EEPS had been sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Sponsorship entailed fiscal and fiduciary roles (negotiating contracts, legal protection, accounting and financial recordkeeping). ACLS served as the institutional umbrella both for the journal and for the growing number of ancillary, “learned-society,” activities.
In response to the end of ACLS sponsorship, friends of the journal undertook to establish a new institutional home for the journal, and to support and expand its role as a central point of reference for community of East Europe Studies.
The new EEPS Foundation, Inc. came into existence on January 1, 2024 with the mission to support research and teaching on and in eastern Europe. The Foundation provided an institutional home for the journal and for associated activities, with the fiscal, fiduciary, and leadership roles needed to support them. The ACLS decision to end its sponsorship was thus both a challenge and an opportunity. It required the EEPS-led community to self-organize, while at the same time energizing the learned-society functions that had gained momentum in the previous decade.
EEPS Foundation acts as an institutional home and fiscal sponsor, primarily for the journal EEPS, but also, potentially, for other initiatives related to the EF mission, such as the Michael Heim Prize, and a variety of educational initiatives. One such new initiative, with which EEPS Foundation signed a Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement, is the Flying University for Ukrainian Students (FUUS). The Flying University has an autonomous governance structure; its mission and activities are aligned with, and supportive of, the broad EF mission.
Ours is a continuing story
The vision of the founders of East European Politics and Societies in 1986, strengthened by the creation of EEPS Foundation in 2024, challenges us today to continue that mission in new conditions. Looking forward, the Foundation will ensure publication of innovative scholarship (and translations!) on eastern Europe. We will organize conferences, workshops, panels, and other meetings to foster scholarly communication. We will encourage exploration of new international interactions such as the Flying University.
We aim to affirm and expand the community of scholarship on eastern Europe.
“Our story” is a work in progress. Comments welcome! Support Us!