It is no coincidence that the cover of this book features Warsaw, a city caught between East and West, different cultures and languages, 'globalized' for centuries, voluntarily and forcibly, by Poles and Jews, Russians and Germans. At least until the early 1990s, I associated this city, where my family has lived for five generations, not so much with globalization as with isolation and backwardness. This book, pioneering and surprising, allows me to verify this view and look at Eastern Europe from a different, non-stereotypical side. It shows how diverse, innovative, and at the same time hardly noticed and appreciated the region's contribution to the global sphere of ideas, science or culture is. It demonstrates the need to look holistically, broadly, and deeply, and it teaches but also warns-a must-read for these difficult times.

Jerzy Kochanowski, University of Warsaw, Poland

Whereas 'Eastern Europe' has conventionally been conceived as a product of the Cold War, this book challenges such traditional or isolationist perspectives, foregrounding exchanges and the multiple ways in which the societies in this part of Europe have positioned themselves in and towards global processes. Its purview is wide, including studies of interactions in economy and social issues, legal systems, international politics and culture, all of which adopt an actor-centred approach. In all these spheres the book offers a mine of new, little-known, findings that in many ways reshuffle our understanding of Eastern Europe away from essentializing clichés, towards 'process geography,' diversity, and human agency, that have all been vital in shaping the destinies of this region's societies.
This excellent volume also makes an important contribution to the currently vibrant debates on 'socialist globalization', its nature, ambitions, and effects. Methodologically as well as conceptually, it joins the field at a time of major reconfigurations of both Eastern Europe as a historical region following the Russian aggression against Ukraine, and of the process of globalization that is seemingly 'backsliding'.

Diana Mishkova, Centre for Advanced Study Sofia, Bulgaria