‘Tito’s Gulag’ by Martin Previšić review
Tito’s Gulag: A History of the Prison Island of Goli Otok by Martin Previšić reveals the brutal cost of the Soviet-Yugoslav split.
Eastern Europe
How did the Habsburg Empire Survive?
Finished by the First World War and buried under the nation states that succeeded it, the Habsburg monarchy had survived for centuries despite its obvious faultlines. What held it together?
Border Control: How States Get Recognised
What makes a state? Is it its people, its borders, its government, or does it rest on recognition from international powers? Across the 19th and 20th centuries, the process by which states have been created and recognised has taken many forms.
Gods at the Margins: How European Paganism Survived
By the 14th century Christianity had swept many of Europe’s indigenous religions aside, but not all. At the continent’s peripheries paganism survived and, in some cases, thrived.
Stalin’s Man in Belgrade
Teodoro Castro or Iosif Grigulevich? Costa Rica’s ambassador to Yugoslavia was a Soviet spy sent to kill Tito.
Habsburg Prague, Capital of the Renaissance
Prague, under the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, became the centre of the Renaissance world, where cultures mixed and learning flourished.
How Do Europe’s Cold War Divisions Persist?
East was East and West was West – until 1989. The Wall is gone, but are its Cold War demarcations still there?
Inventing Cyrillic
The Cyrillic alphabet is celebrated across the Slavonic-speaking world, but not only as an appreciation of literacy – it has a political dimension too.
‘The Picnic’ by Matthew Longo review
The Picnic: An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo explains how Hungary came to play a key role in the collapse of communism.
The Birth of Ovid
Writing from exile, the Roman poet Ovid revealed his birth date as 24 March 43 BC. But on the cause of said exile, he was unusually reticent.