Lin and East Europe

Spent most of the morning listening to the Plastic People of the Universe while working on my Bibliography, just to get me in the mindset. What I’ve gleaned? It’s terrible. Certainly no Blink-182 or Ramones. I must be an old Communist, because this music gives me a headache.     The good news is Zotero […]

I’ve been really undecided what to do for my final research paper, but I just realized I’ve been doing the research for weeks now already. In Carnival of Revolution by Padraic Kenney he mentions big punk rock bands protesting in 1989. I was fascinated by this, and began Googling it right away (not exactly scientific research, which […]

I know I’m mainly focusing on Communism here, but poetry is a lot like Gorbachev, because no one really cares what either one is doing in 2014. So when prompted to analyze a personal narrative, I knew Kelsey Rakes-Jaggers was my girl. I originally wanted to focus on her blog, but quickly realized I could […]

I want to clarify, before I start, that in no way did I dislike Tina Rosenberg’s The Haunted Land. The book, rather than collecting events that lead to the fall of the wall, attempt to gather a history to be collected on how citizens survived through Communism, and how they plan to tackle the future. Rosenberg […]

A Carnival of Revolution by Padraic Kenney examines the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe (or Central Europe as Kenney calls it) in 1989. His main argument is that no one series of events brought about the collapse in 1989. Many people, even today, call the year 1989 a “miracle” or a “sudden surprise”. However, […]

The difference between primary and secondary sources is clear, and Robert Darnton’s recounting of “The Great Cat Massacre” is an example of this. The story itself is a secondary source discussing a primary description of an apprentice’s experience as a printer. The story discusses the slaughter of several stray cats while other workers of the […]