Mgr. Peter MARKOVIČ

The year 2014 will be remembered in Europe for the West’s rickety consensus on how best to minimize the damage caused by Russia’s resurgence as a revisionist power. Developments along Europe’s periphery marked the unequivocal end of aspirational “positive geopolitics,” built around the belief that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 began a […]

It was born in the ashes of World War II and grew rapidly during Les Trente Glorieuses, the 30 years of economic development that followed that conflict. It then matured, expanded, and acquired both a currency and a good deal of respect. By the start of the 21st century, it was feted as a great […]

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he wants to give away $45 billion. I’m sure he needs some advice on how to spend it. Here’s mine: He should use it to undo the terrible damage done by Facebook and other forms of social media to democratic debate and civilized discussion all over the […]

Unsurprisingly, the twentieth anniversary of 1989 has added to an already groaning shelf of books on the year that ended the short twentieth century. If we extend “1989” to include the unification of Germany and disunification of the Soviet Union in 1990–1991, we should more accurately say the three years that ended the century. The […]

It was 20 years after I chose to become a historian that I first saw a photograph of the woman who made my career possible. In the small photograph that my doctoral supervisor, her son, showed me in his Warsaw apartment, Wanda J radiates self-possession, a quality that stood her in good stead during the […]

In 1932 and 1933 a few starving Ukrainians made their way to Leningrad, where they had family connections. They narrowly escaped joining the seven million Soviet citizens who perished from malnutrition in the early 1930s, as the Soviet leaders brought peasant farms under collective control. Josef Stalin punished Soviet Ukraine particularly harshly for the shortfalls […]

Europe already accomplished a miracle once before: enemies became neighbours. In the light of the euro crisis, the cardinal question must be confronted once again: how can Europe guarantee its citizens peace, freedom and security in the risk-storms raging in the globalised world? This calls for nothing less than a second miracle: how can the […]

Dosud jsme tvrdili, že charakterové rysy vyvolané naším socioekonomickým systémem, tj. naším způsobem života, jsou patogenní a nakonec vytvářejí nemocného člověka, a tedy i nemocnou společnost. Ovšem existuje ještě druhý argument, který ze zcela jiného hlediska podporuje hluboké psychologické změny v člověku jako alternativu vůči ekonomické a ekologické katastrofě. Tento argument byl podán ve dvou zprávách […]

President Obama stands accused of political correctness for his unwillingness to accuse groups such as the Islamic State of “Islamic extremism,” choosing a more generic term, “violent extremism.” His critics say that you cannot fight an enemy you will not name. Even his supporters feel that his approach is too “professorial.” But far from being […]

Když lidé začnou pochybovat a hledat ospravedlnění, může je přepadnout nejistota. Ta nebývá právě příjemná, a tak se jí zpravidla snaží uniknout. Nátlak na přizpůsobení se normám šířeným kulturní výchovou bývá proto obvykle doprovázen snahou o diskreditaci a očernění norem kultur jiných. Na jednom konci spektra se pomocí rétorických projevů o „čistotě” a „nákaze” obhajuje […]