The 1980s proved to be a tough decade for European welfare states. The post-war ‘welfare consensus’, which perhaps had never been quite so strong or coherent as many contemporary historians and commentators had assumed, was finally laid to rest. The five great spectres identified by Beveridge want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness had not been humbled by public welfare provision despite its ever growing scale and cost. At the beginning of the 1980s the OECD published a report on The Welfare State in Crisis which pointed out that as welfare state expenditure had roughly doubled as a percentage of national income in most west European countries since the late 1950s, so economic growth rates had plummeted. The European welfare states appeared to produce few positive welfare benefits, and this minimal achievement was produced at enormous cost which was to the detriment of overall economic growth and societal well-being.

The events of 1989, the annus mirabilis, have led to a great demand for new research and a re-thinking of the history of Eastern Europe. Those sources which were kept from us for years are now available, at least in part. As part of this process political scientists and historians of Eastern Europe are now concerned to fill in the gaps in our knowledge and provide the answers to urgent questions. A consequence of this situation has been a veritable flood of publications, of which eight have been chosen for review here. With two exceptions these studies have deepened our understanding of the issues involved. There are clear differences between the historians on the one hand and the political scientists on the other in terms of their starting-point and the questions they ask. Whereas the historians deal descriptively with the origins, trends and structures of the last centuries and place the revolutions of 1989/90 in their historical context, the political scientists proceed analytically and place greater emphasis on social, ethnic and economic factors. This dichotomy is demonstrated in the different problematics of the books under review.

For the first two years after the Berlin Wall came down and, as Jacques Delors put it, while the speed of history accelerated, most scholars confined themselves to journalism. Some books that did appear were rapidly overtaken by the heady pace of history, and the books under review here do not entirely escape being dated by the relentless progress of events on the European continent. Indeed, it can hardly be said that the dust has settled on German unification and the seismic events that we call the end of the Cold War. Both in the East (predictably) and in the West, unscrambling the elaborate territorial, strategic and ideological Cold War structures is bringing a re-examination of the nation state and its democratic practices; international governmental organisations; ‘Western’ values; and security issues. At one level, debate has been raging among some historians between two unsatisfactory notions: the ‘end of history’, and ‘real’ history being on the move again. At another level the German question has been returning unsteadily into focus, as historians start to pick at issues of national identity, nationalism and the nation-state. Other analysts have been trying to fit the European structures and assumptions we inherit from the Cold War years into a post-Cold War security and economic architecture. The close relationship between these strands of European history is obvious.

Polish higher education, like Poland as a whole, is in an exciting but perilous phase. The political changes of the last few years have brought new opportunities but also new expectations and constraints. Many university personnel are looking forward to a less insular, more fulfilling academic life, but there are plenty of others who feel nostalgia for a past which was ideologically inflexible but in some respects less demanding and more secure.