The nation-state faces more challenges than it has defenders. Wealthy citizens live their financial lives abroad, preventing the state from aiding others. The European Union has been halted in midcourse, with mixed sovereignty providing an excuse for nationalist demagogy among its members. In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, those who claim to defend the traditional state are often defending little more than the clique that happens to control it. In the United States, not only the Tea Party regards the state as a problem rather than a means of solving problems.
The ideological wars of the twentieth century were all about the future of the state. Now that these conflicts of ideas are in the past, can the state survive without ideas? Can the state be a functional reality without an animating mission?
Book presentation and discussion with:
Timothy Snyder
Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University and IWM Permanent Fellow
Ivan Krastev
Chair of the Board of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and IWM Permanent Fellow
Chair: Marci Shore
Associate Professor of History at Yale University and IWM Visiting Fellow
In cooperation with the Bruno Kreisky Forum, Hanser Verlag and Eurozine
Please register via mail events@iwm.at or phone +43-1-313-58-0
Tony Judt und Timothy Snyder: Nachdenken über das 20. Jahrhundert,
München: Hanser, 2013
Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder: Thinking the Twentieth Century. Intellectuals and Politics in the Twentieth Century, London: Penguin Press, 2012
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