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What You Didn’t Know About Eastern European History, with Jacob Mikanowski
On the latest episode of “Loosely Eastern Europe,” I talk to Jacob Mikanowski, a historian, author, and journalist who has written a fabulous book titled Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land.
In this episode, we first touch on reasons why people believe that Eastern Europe is backward and why it’s ignored. We touch on the paradox of this by showcasing some important philosophical and literary contributions of this part of the world.
We then discuss the legacy of this in the post-socialist world and the reasons why the pro-democratic sentiment was lost in the 1990s. To contrast this democratic backsliding, we look at how Central and Eastern European countries led the way for Ukrainian support after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Lastly, we address what “the end of history” could look like in this part of the world.
Here is a link to the interview on Spotify; and here is a link on Substack. Please let me know in the comment section if you are having difficulties accessing it.
You can purchase Jacob Mikanowski’s book here: https://shorturl.at/nBCEN
For those of you interested in Eastern European history, I really recommend Jacob Mikanowski’s book.
