Globalization in State Socialist East Central Europe

Béla Tomka is a professor of Contemporary Social and Economic History at the University of Szeged, Hungary. He is the author of 16 books including Welfare in East and West (2004), A Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe (2013, winner of ‘Outstanding Academic Title 2013 Award’ by Choice, American Library Association), Austerities and Aspirations: A Comparative History of Growth, Consumption and Quality of Life in East Central Europe since 1945 (2020), and the editor of several other volumes. He is the head of the Department of Contemporary History, University of Szeged, co-founder and board member of the International Social History Association, Amsterdam, as well as leader of the History of Globalization Research Group, Budapest-Szeged, established by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

• Introduction.- Chapter 1: Trends in research on state socialist globalization: the old and the new mainstream.- Chapter 2: Reconsidering cross-border interactions: balancing the scales.- Chapter 3: How to conceptualize state socialist globalization?.- Chapter 4: The role of 1989: dedramatization at its extreme?.- Chapter 5: Conclusions: limitations of the old and new mainstream narratives.