ABSTRACT
The political ascendance of Soviet communism prompted and legitimized Western scholarly studies of the region. This chapter provides historiographical trends in the scholarship on post-war Eastern Europe, and discusses several themes in light of scholarly approaches that entered the field both shortly before, and after, the collapse of communism. In an effort to position the communist period within the broader history of Eastern Europe, it focuses on four main topics: state- and nation-building; social relations; East–West interaction; and the decline and fall of communism. Historians of the Soviet Union, such as Martin Malia and Stephen Kotkin, have stressed the role of utopia and the idea of the “conflict-free society” as central to understanding the workings of communism in everyday life. The end of the Cold War contributed to de-politicizing and historicizing communism as a closed era in Western historiography. The impact of communism on the processes of state-building has been a subject of debate and contention.
