The National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER) is a non-profit organization that develops and sustains long-term, high-quality programs for post-doctoral research on the social, political, economic, environmental, and historical development of Eurasia and Central and Eastern Europe.   More

NCEEER News and Announcements

2008 Grant Recipients Announced

Current NCEEER grant recipients and projects

Fall 2008 Carnegie Fellows Selected Latest Carnegie fellow selections and projects

Employment Opportunity: AAASS Membership Coordinator     

The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) is currently seeking a new Membership Coordinator. The Association's national office is based at Harvard University and all staff are Harvard University employees. For more information, please see the Position Description on the Harvard University Employment website. If interested, please e-mail Dmitry Gorenburg, AAASS Executive Director, or apply directly through the Harvard University Employment website.

New Working Papers Released

Economic Reference Groups and Relative Deprivation in Post-Communist Eastern Europe The present paper offers an exploratory analysis of the drivers and consequences of economic reference group choice in three post-communist East European countries: Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria. The main emphasis will be on three comparisons: the increasing penetration of Western media programming, combined with increasingly widespread international travel and the growing number of East Europeans with friends or relatives living abroad; the nascent domestic economic elite with its often conspicuous consumption habits; and the traumatic experience of the post-communist economic reform process.
Just Rewards? Communism's Hard Bargain with the Citizen-Consumer The paper considers the implications of the common argument that consumption opportunities were a key to legitimacy and "normalization" in European state-socialist regimes. Such interpretations have stressed a conclusion that the people of the communist societies were, in effect, bought off by their illegitimate leaders. This paper suggests that the historiography of communism and of the region more generally might benefit from a fresh and more sophisticated application of social-contract concepts to these questions of legitimation, pacification, popular satisfaction, and the nature of everyday life under authoritarian rule.