Eastern Europe

Mary Heimann restores Czechoslovakia to its pivotal role in the Munich Crisis.

Richard Cavendish provides an overview of the life and career of the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, who died on April 11th, 1985.

The 2009 Nobel Prize winner for literature is well placed to describe the trials of Eastern European minorities through the maelstrom of the 20th century, writes Markus Bauer.

Yehuda Koren tells one family’s remarkable story of surviving Auschwitz.

The mutual defence treaty between Communist states was signed on May 14th, 1955.

Mark Rathbone compares Gladstone's and Disraeli's differing approaches to a crucial foreign policy issue.

Martin D. Brown tells the little-known story of how British and American soldiers disappeared in Slovakia’s Tatra Mountains during the remarkable episode of Slovakia’s National Uprising against its Nazi-supporting government during the Second World War.

Anthony Head describes the ways in which an atrocity has been commemorated, sixty years on.

John W. Mason gives the historical background to this month's elections in Slovakia.

Nicholas Soteri reflects on the early religious controversies of Eastern Europe, focusing in particular on an often overlooked kingdom, the Khazar..

An article about a project in exploring Jewish instrumental music

Kenneth Asch on Prague's memento to the great composer

Robin Bruce Lockhart looks at the Anglophile his father knew and discusses new theories on how he died and why.

Frank L. Holt looks at the legends and realities of Alexander's bride from Central Asia, the world she lived in and the power struggles that ensnared her.

Michael Burleigh charts the career of one of the pillars of the German scholarly establishment under the Third Reich an invaluable middle-man in 're-educating' his pupils and massaging research to suit Nazi ideology.

John Erickson assesses the massive Soviet assault into Germany in the final year of the war and the price of liberation.

Josip Broz Tito died on May 4th, 1980. In this article from our 1980 archive, Basil Davidson reassesses the legacy of the Yugoslavian president and soldier.

Between the years 1300 and 600 B.C. the virile kingdom of Ararat rose to be a large empire, M. Chahin writes, which long held the Assyrians at bay.

Terence O’Brien recounts how some women served with their husbands in the Crimean War as cooks, laundresses and nurses to the Regiment.

Joanna Richardson describes how, during the 1830s, the world of Bohemia offered a warm and fruitful climate to artists and writers.

Cecil Parrott describes how the elderly monarch from A Christmas Carol was based on the character of a young and vigorous sovereign, assassinated on his birthday by his own brother.