Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism

by Ellen Hinsey

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Winner of the 2017 Paris Book Festival in General Non-Fiction

Over the last decade Ellen Hinsey has traveled across Central and Eastern Europe researching a critical shift in the European political landscape: the rise of illiberalism. A quarter of a century after the changes of 1989—and as former Soviet sphere societies come to terms with their histories—the specters of populism, nationalism, extreme-right parties, and authoritarian rule have returned in force. Through a series of eyewitness reports, Mastering the Past offers an insider's view of key political events, including the 2012 Russian elections, the Polish presidential plane crash in Smolensk, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's vision for a new Hungary. Hinsey explores the darkening hour of European politics with an incisive mind and an eye for detail, recording the urgent danger that illiberalism represents for the new century.

Praise for Ellen Hinsey's Mastering the Past

"As Ellen Hinsey notes in Mastering the Past, among the many woes that plague the EU is that, on its expanded eastern borders, arise the 'spectres of populism, nationalism, extreme-right militantism and authoritarianism—released from their historical deep freeze.' . . . [Hinsey] mixes vivid personal description—as from Havel's funeral in Prague in December 2011, and the demonstrations against election fraud in Moscow that began that same month—with her own and others' analysis on this brief flourish of central European civic grace."
—John Lloyd, Financial Times

"Ellen Hinsey's concise, evocative new book offers flashes of insight into the journey from the joyous days of 1989 to the increasingly tenuous state of democracy today. . . . Hinsey's gift for the telling detail deepens her readers' engagement with these places and peoples. . . . Not since the 1930s have analyses of 'the rise of illiberalism' seemed so urgent, whether in the United States or in Central and Eastern Europe."
—Andrea Orzoff, The Berlin Journal

"[Hinsey's] collection of essays and interviews, Mastering the Past, surveys the landscape of Central Europe's weakening pluralism. One of the key questions in Hinsey's account is the degree to which a commitment to pluralism took root in post-communist Europe."
—Charles King, Times Literary Supplement

"Ellen Hinsey writes with power and passion: this is a formidable feast of research and interpretation. Her book is necessary and timely reading for anyone who wants to understand events in Central and Eastern Europe."
—John S. Friedman, author and contributor to The Nation

"Ellen Hinsey's book is a profound study that deals with a recent menacing—but not-yet-fully described or understood—phenomenon: the rebirth of backward nationalist attitudes in Eastern Europe. Based on first-hand experience, and making exemplary use of the author's contacts with dissident intellectuals in many countries, it is an indispensable work for specialists and simply fascinating for the general reader."
—Tomas Venclova, Lithuanian dissident and author

"Anyone interested in understanding current events in Europe needs to read this book. Hinsey writes with clarity, compassion, and insight about the people who are shaping and reshaping Europe and the world. Her voice is resolute, factual, and, believe me, to be trusted. Not to be missed."
—Peter Fray, former editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald

"Since 1989 Ellen Hinsey has traveled through Germany, Russia, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, translating her experiences of the tumult of post–Cold War politics into these intellectually rigorous and morally urgent essays. Hinsey encourages us to the tentative hope, articulated by Hannah Arendt, that 'perhaps thought itself can help us survive the dangers.'"
—Susan McKay, author and journalist for The Guardian

ISBN 978-0-914386-65-0 (paperback)
208 pages
Pub. Date: March 1, 2017