This memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the objective-historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a totalitarian state: remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; and, remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within. Berend's memoir raises basic historical questions and debates, compares East European and American higher education systems, and presents an eyewitness' insights on life in the United States.
This memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the objective-historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a totalitarian state: remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; and, remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within. Berend's memoir raises basic historical questions and debates, compares East European and American higher education systems, and presents an eyewitness' insights on life in the United States.
List of Photos
Introduction and Acknowledgement
My Family in Budapest in the 1930s
The End of Childhood
Dachau—and the Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft’s Conference in Munich
The Gebirgsjägerschule in Mittenwald
Where is my Home?
The 1956 Revolution in My Life
My Universities
A Widening World, Learning by Traveling
In the International Community of Historians: Friends All Over the
World
Experiencing and Writing History: a Special Friend, Books and
Debates
Teaching in Two Different University Systems
My Globalized Family
In the Establishment
In the Storm of the Regime Change
Leaving Hungary for Los Angeles
America
References
Ivan T. Berend is Distinguished Research Professor at the History Department of the University of California Los Angeles.
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