Abstract
As an area studies journal, EEPS has just as important a role to play today as when it was founded in 1986. Then, outsiders tended to view the region known as “Eastern Europe” as a kind of appendage to the Soviet Union; now, despite decades of deepening integration between this region and the West, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated the lingering need to decolonize minds that continue to perceive the region through the prisms of outside powers. It is precisely the area’s misunderstood position between great power centers that justifies a journal such as ours, giving a diverse space the attention it deserves on its own terms.
When our predecessors, Wendy Bracewell and Krzysztof Jasiewicz, assumed the editorship of EEPS ten years ago, they set the goals of “preserving and extending the journal’s role as a focal point for research on and from eastern Europe.” We are happy to bask in their success. Today EEPS remains the premier academic journal devoted specifically to the lands between Germany and Russia, from the Baltics to the Balkans. World-class research by scholars based in the region has gained ever greater prominence in the journal’s pages, with such scholars now comprising a majority of contributors. One of our goals as the new editors will be to intensify cross-border dialogue among scholars within the area while maintaining EEPS as a global forum for the best research on the region from anywhere in the world.
We also renew our predecessors’ commitment to expansive interdisciplinarity. As the tagline appended to the journal’s official name suggests, our remit is East European Politics and Societies in all their complexity, including history. . .and Cultures. We therefore warmly encourage submissions in anthropology and on cinema, literature, and other art, in addition to politics, sociology, history, international relations, law, and economics. As our predecessors wrote ten years ago, “regardless of disciplinary provenance, no topic related to this region will ever be alien to us.”
The coming years promise to be momentous. The outcome of Russia’s war against Ukraine will have far-reaching consequences, the struggle between liberal and illiberal forms of democracy within the European Union is likely to intensify, and fundamental questions about the future of the EU will demand attention. We have reached a crossroads, where Europe must decide whether to continue along the path of integration and liberalization it has for the most part followed since the revolutions of 1989—or to set off in a new direction. From its founding in 1986, EEPS has kept its finger on the pulse of its region, and contributors to the journal have proven adept at diagnosing its problems, analyzing its trajectories, and presenting insights essential for wise policy-making. When we reflect in 2026 on the journal’s fortieth anniversary, we look forward to being able to say—whatever else may have happened—that EEPS has continued to serve this purpose.
Editing a journal of EEPS’s caliber is necessarily a collective endeavor, and we are grateful to all who have made and continue to make it possible. Our thanks go especially to Wendy Bracewell and Krzysztof Jasiewicz, who have worked hard to make the transition smooth and who continue to volunteer their time, and to Marta Kotwas, who remains the journal’s supremely competent managing editor. The articles that appear in this issue of EEPS and that will appear in the next issue are all products of their work. We are also grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies for sponsoring the journal from its inception and, following its recent decision to ratchet down support for European programs, graciously facilitating our transition to sponsorship by the new EEPS Foundation. Andrzej Tymowski, who managed the EEPS portfolio before he retired from the ACLS and is now president of the EEPS Foundation, has shepherded the journal through this transition with energy and devotion, and we cannot thank him enough. We are also grateful to our old and new associate editors and members of our editorial committee and international advisory board for their devoted service, and to all the journal’s anonymous reviewers, without whose generosity our project would be impossible. In the coming years, we look forward to fostering the community that has grown around EEPS, which of course includes our contributors and readers.