Monika Baár
Biographic Data
| ID | 3843563 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Monika Baár |
| GIVEN NAMES | Monika |
| FAMILY NAME | Baár |
| SIGNATURE | BAAR M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3872-8553 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 29 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Matthijs Lok. Europe against Revolution
Rethinking “Transition” in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union Through the Lens of Disability
Published online: 26 April 2024
Seeking inclusion through redefining expertise
This article focuses on European transnational activism in the long 1970s. Using the independent living movement as a case study, it illuminates how new spaces of knowledge production, social experience and political activism often emerged from informal contacts. Such initiatives challenged the medical understanding of disability and questioned the expertise of medical and rehabilitation personnel: activists fighting for the elimination of spatia…
Dóra Vargha. Polio across the Iron Curtain
Dóra Vargha’s Polio across the Iron Curtain: Hungary’s Cold War with an Epidemic is an innovative and outstanding book that powerfully demonstrates that the study of even seemingly marginal topics, if properly contextualized and imaginatively framed, can make a significant contribution to mainstream scholarship. Rather than just having the potential to nuance existing viewpoints, such a study can fundamentally alter them. Positioned at the inters…
British and European Citizenship
As the process of Brexit has been unfolding, discussions on the UK's role in European history and politics have reaffirmed a narrative of an 'awkward relationship' or 'reluctant partnership'. Debates about the UK's role have focused on motivations by the UK government and certain key politicians, or the limitations of bureaucratic machineries and central issues of trade and border control. Arguments have often rested on an assumption concerning t…
A New State for “New Men”
Growing disappointment with party politics in the 1920s gave rise to discourses extolling the state as the principal actor of societal change. A common denominator of the various versions of etatism and technocratism in the region was a strong “anti-political” ideological reflex. In the 1930s, this was coupled with a discourse of a preventive strike, defending dictatorial policies as measures to hinder radical left- and right-wing movements from …
Velvet Revolutions and the Thorny Paths of Transition
The “velvet” and not so “velvet” revolutions of 1989 triggered fervent discussions on the nature of the postcommunist political system. The paradigm of transitology provided the dominant framework for these debates, while civil society remained a key concept, even though it became increasingly contested by the neoliberals and neoconservatives, as well as by the “new left.” The seemingly dominant, although never uncontested, “liberal consensus” of…
The Postwar “Transition Years”
Debates on the postwar “transition” are symbolically linked to the year 1945, but in many cases they had already started in 1943–4 and lasted until 1948. A general feeling of rupture with the past dominated throughout East Central Europe. Symbolic geographical references underwent important change, stressing some sort of synthesis between East and West. The experience of the Holocaust resulted in reflections on the responsibility of the region’s …
Stalinism and De-Stalinization
By 1948, a full-fledged Stalinist dictatorship was introduced all over the region. Socialist realism became an official aesthetic ideology; in historiography, in most cases it was the national Romantic vision that was extolled as “progressive,” but there were also attempts to claim the progressive character of a strong central state power. Independent reflection on Stalinism was only possible either in exile or in the private sphere. After Stalin…
Political Thought in Exile
The post-1945 exile from East Central Europe was characterized by extreme ideological pluralism and political fragmentation, ranging from post-fascist to radical leftist streams. Given this initial diversity and the permanent reconfiguration due to the arrival of new waves, it remained an extremely variegated phenomenon with limited ideological coherence. However the specific exile experience produced a certain type of political thought offering …
Dissidents and Opposition Movements
The evolution of dissident political thought had markedly different dynamics in different countries. In the satellites the dissidents represented a key component of the emerging “democratic opposition” focusing on human rights. The discourse of human rights gave to the henceforth fractured opposition groups a unifying language to voice their criticism, yet it did not erase the deep fissures among them. The contradiction between the doctrine of hu…
“Rebuilding the Boat in the Open Sea”
The reconfiguration of the state system and the dissolution of federations after 1989 prompted debates on the aims of state building and the nature of constitutionalism. The difference in the dynamics of these debates points to the radical divergence of experiences across the region from the peaceful “divorce” of Czechoslovakia to the much more violent reconfiguration of the post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav spaces. In this context one of the key top…
Toward Socialism with a Human Face?
Marxist revisionism, providing a powerful political language of intra-systemic opposition, was characterized by an effort to restore the relative autonomy of the personality in the face of both society and history, to provide new ethics, a new way of life, and envision “socialism with a human face.” The 1960s witnessed an unprecedented boom of Marxist and non-Marxist intellectual and cultural production, ranging from the rediscovery of the inconv…
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume synthetic overview, authored by an international team of researchers. Covering twenty national cultures and 250 years, it goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of discourses. Its principal aim is to look at these cultures within the global “market of ideas” and also help…
History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume synthetic overview, authored by an international team of researchers. Covering twenty national cultures and 250 years, it goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of discourses. Its principal aim is to look at these cultures within the global “market of ideas” and also help…
Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe
This encyclopedia documents the presence and impact of nationalized cultural consciousness in European nationalism. It tracks how intellectuals, historians, philologists, novelists, poets, painters, folklorists, and composers, in an intensely collaborative transnational network, articulated the national identities and aspirations that would go on to determine European history and politics, with effects that are still felt today. Edited by Joep Le…
The Interplay of National and Imperial Principles of Organization
The post-1848 period saw a proliferation of theories regarding the reorganization of empires, including the establishment of constitutional freedoms and political representation for all national groups. They sought theoretical justification for dividing central (imperial) and local (national, provincial) levels of governmental competence, to find a middle way between imperial sovereignty and the logic of nation-statehood. The Eastern Question ori…
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe. Covering twenty national cultures and languages, the ensuing work goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narrative and offers a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entangleme…
Lindsay Hamilton and Nik Taylor, Animals at Work. Identity, politics, and culture in work with animals

The Traditions of Invention
Alex Drace-Francis’s book contains a collection of eleven essays which study representations of Romanian culture from the eighteenth century to contemporary times, each of them taking a somewhat different angle. As such, the book does not claim to have the coherence of a classical monograph. At the same time, while the articles differ in scope and length, they are organised around overarching themes which provide the basis for a study which is mo…
Maciej Górny. The Nation Should Come First
Journal Article Maciej Górny. The Nation Should Come First: Marxism and Historiography in East Central Europe. Get access Maciej Górny. The Nation Should Come First: Marxism and Historiography in East Central Europe. Translated by Antoni Górny. With the editorial assistance of Aaron Law. (Warsaw Studies in Contemporary History, no. 1.) English ed. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2013. Pp. 302. Cloth $70.95, e-book $70.95. Monika Baár Monika Baár…
Tomas Sniegon. Vanished History
Journal Article Tomas Sniegon. Vanished History: The Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture. Get access Tomas Sniegon. Vanished History: The Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture. (Making Sense of History: Studies in Historical Cultures, no. 18.) New York: Berghahn Books, 2014. Pp. ix, 236. $95.00. Monika Baár Monika Baár University of Groningen [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Sc…
Mapping Europe's Borderlands
The simplest purpose of a map is a rational one: to educate, to solve a problem, to point someone in the right direction. Maps shape and communicate information, for the sake of improved orientation. But maps exist for states as well as individuals, and they need to be interpreted as expressions of power and knowledge, as Steven Seegel makes clear in his impressive and important new book. Mapping Europe's Borderlands takes the familiar problems o…
Historians and nationalism
Monika Baár examines the work of five prominent East-Central European historians in the 19th century, analyzing and contrasting their body of work, their promotion of a national culture, and the contributions they made to European historiography.
No prominent works on this page.
The Transylvanian Babel
Historians and Nationalism
Peripheral cultures have been largely absent from the European canon of historiography. The principal aim of this book is to contribute to redressing the balance. It does so by offering an insight into the complexities of historical writing in nineteenth‐century East‐Central Europe and by ascertaining this tradition's place within the European historiographical heritage. At the core of the book lies a comparative analysis of the life‐work of five…
Institutionalization and Professionalization
Chapter 3, ‘Institutionalization and Professionalization’, examines the institutional setting of the five scholars' activities and investigates their role in the professionalization and institutionalization of the discipline. It explores the role of patriotic and scholarly societies in the organization of national culture and the historians' contribution to those activities. This is followed by the study of the universities' limited role in the p…
The Making of Modern Lithuania by Tomas Balkelis
Historians and nationalism
Monika Baár examines the work of five prominent East-Central European historians in the 19th century, analyzing and contrasting their body of work, their promotion of a national culture, and the contributions they made to European historiography.
Mapping Europe's Borderlands
The simplest purpose of a map is a rational one: to educate, to solve a problem, to point someone in the right direction. Maps shape and communicate information, for the sake of improved orientation. But maps exist for states as well as individuals, and they need to be interpreted as expressions of power and knowledge, as Steven Seegel makes clear in his impressive and important new book. Mapping Europe's Borderlands takes the familiar problems o…
Tomas Sniegon. Vanished History
Journal Article Tomas Sniegon. Vanished History: The Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture. Get access Tomas Sniegon. Vanished History: The Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture. (Making Sense of History: Studies in Historical Cultures, no. 18.) New York: Berghahn Books, 2014. Pp. ix, 236. $95.00. Monika Baár Monika Baár University of Groningen [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Sc…
The Interplay of National and Imperial Principles of Organization
The post-1848 period saw a proliferation of theories regarding the reorganization of empires, including the establishment of constitutional freedoms and political representation for all national groups. They sought theoretical justification for dividing central (imperial) and local (national, provincial) levels of governmental competence, to find a middle way between imperial sovereignty and the logic of nation-statehood. The Eastern Question ori…
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe. Covering twenty national cultures and languages, the ensuing work goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narrative and offers a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entangleme…
Lindsay Hamilton and Nik Taylor, Animals at Work. Identity, politics, and culture in work with animals

The Traditions of Invention
Alex Drace-Francis’s book contains a collection of eleven essays which study representations of Romanian culture from the eighteenth century to contemporary times, each of them taking a somewhat different angle. As such, the book does not claim to have the coherence of a classical monograph. At the same time, while the articles differ in scope and length, they are organised around overarching themes which provide the basis for a study which is mo…
Maciej Górny. The Nation Should Come First
Journal Article Maciej Górny. The Nation Should Come First: Marxism and Historiography in East Central Europe. Get access Maciej Górny. The Nation Should Come First: Marxism and Historiography in East Central Europe. Translated by Antoni Górny. With the editorial assistance of Aaron Law. (Warsaw Studies in Contemporary History, no. 1.) English ed. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2013. Pp. 302. Cloth $70.95, e-book $70.95. Monika Baár Monika Baár…
A New State for “New Men”
Growing disappointment with party politics in the 1920s gave rise to discourses extolling the state as the principal actor of societal change. A common denominator of the various versions of etatism and technocratism in the region was a strong “anti-political” ideological reflex. In the 1930s, this was coupled with a discourse of a preventive strike, defending dictatorial policies as measures to hinder radical left- and right-wing movements from …
Velvet Revolutions and the Thorny Paths of Transition
The “velvet” and not so “velvet” revolutions of 1989 triggered fervent discussions on the nature of the postcommunist political system. The paradigm of transitology provided the dominant framework for these debates, while civil society remained a key concept, even though it became increasingly contested by the neoliberals and neoconservatives, as well as by the “new left.” The seemingly dominant, although never uncontested, “liberal consensus” of…
The Postwar “Transition Years”
Debates on the postwar “transition” are symbolically linked to the year 1945, but in many cases they had already started in 1943–4 and lasted until 1948. A general feeling of rupture with the past dominated throughout East Central Europe. Symbolic geographical references underwent important change, stressing some sort of synthesis between East and West. The experience of the Holocaust resulted in reflections on the responsibility of the region’s …
Stalinism and De-Stalinization
By 1948, a full-fledged Stalinist dictatorship was introduced all over the region. Socialist realism became an official aesthetic ideology; in historiography, in most cases it was the national Romantic vision that was extolled as “progressive,” but there were also attempts to claim the progressive character of a strong central state power. Independent reflection on Stalinism was only possible either in exile or in the private sphere. After Stalin…
Political Thought in Exile
The post-1945 exile from East Central Europe was characterized by extreme ideological pluralism and political fragmentation, ranging from post-fascist to radical leftist streams. Given this initial diversity and the permanent reconfiguration due to the arrival of new waves, it remained an extremely variegated phenomenon with limited ideological coherence. However the specific exile experience produced a certain type of political thought offering …
Dissidents and Opposition Movements
The evolution of dissident political thought had markedly different dynamics in different countries. In the satellites the dissidents represented a key component of the emerging “democratic opposition” focusing on human rights. The discourse of human rights gave to the henceforth fractured opposition groups a unifying language to voice their criticism, yet it did not erase the deep fissures among them. The contradiction between the doctrine of hu…
“Rebuilding the Boat in the Open Sea”
The reconfiguration of the state system and the dissolution of federations after 1989 prompted debates on the aims of state building and the nature of constitutionalism. The difference in the dynamics of these debates points to the radical divergence of experiences across the region from the peaceful “divorce” of Czechoslovakia to the much more violent reconfiguration of the post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav spaces. In this context one of the key top…
Toward Socialism with a Human Face?
Marxist revisionism, providing a powerful political language of intra-systemic opposition, was characterized by an effort to restore the relative autonomy of the personality in the face of both society and history, to provide new ethics, a new way of life, and envision “socialism with a human face.” The 1960s witnessed an unprecedented boom of Marxist and non-Marxist intellectual and cultural production, ranging from the rediscovery of the inconv…
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume synthetic overview, authored by an international team of researchers. Covering twenty national cultures and 250 years, it goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of discourses. Its principal aim is to look at these cultures within the global “market of ideas” and also help…
History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume synthetic overview, authored by an international team of researchers. Covering twenty national cultures and 250 years, it goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of discourses. Its principal aim is to look at these cultures within the global “market of ideas” and also help…
Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe
This encyclopedia documents the presence and impact of nationalized cultural consciousness in European nationalism. It tracks how intellectuals, historians, philologists, novelists, poets, painters, folklorists, and composers, in an intensely collaborative transnational network, articulated the national identities and aspirations that would go on to determine European history and politics, with effects that are still felt today. Edited by Joep Le…
British and European Citizenship
As the process of Brexit has been unfolding, discussions on the UK's role in European history and politics have reaffirmed a narrative of an 'awkward relationship' or 'reluctant partnership'. Debates about the UK's role have focused on motivations by the UK government and certain key politicians, or the limitations of bureaucratic machineries and central issues of trade and border control. Arguments have often rested on an assumption concerning t…
Political science (26 works) · Law (24 works) · Politics (21 works) · Sociology (17 works) · History (15 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (13 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Democracy (8 works) · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics (8 works)