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Histories and Cultures of Debt in Eastern Europe

Fri, November 21, 10:00 to 11:45am EST (10:00 to 11:45am EST), -

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The history of debt offers an especially generative framework through which to study the experience of state socialism in Eastern Europe. It is crucial to helping us situate the region within the wider history of twentieth century globalization. Sovereign debt was a central factor in the crisis of late-socialism and erosion of the legitimacy of socialist regimes. The debt crises of the 1980s disrupted socialism’s temporal order, disorienting its horizons of expectation and fostering a sense of the “end of history.” Nor was this a regional story. Eastern Europe’s socialist regimes were not just debtors, but also creditors, and international finance and debt crises mediated relations between the Second and Third worlds. This panel will explore the economics, politics, and cultures of public debt in late socialist Eastern Europe, examining how this debt functioned under certain conditions as a form of solidarity and under other conditions as a form of exploitation and extraction, and its post-1989 legacies.

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