Our Story

The journal began to publish during the Cold War as a project of the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies.  The Joint Committee was financially supported by the U.S. Department of State to promote research and language instruction related to the countries of Eastern Europe, defined as the Soviet bloc states outside the USSR, with the three Baltic countries being included in the Joint Committee’s remit. 

Funding was provided to meet the national interest of the United States for knowledge about a region vital to the bipolar world struggle and to sustain the cohort of trained researchers on the region’s histories, societies, and politics, in order to assure a steady supply of knowledge of the area.

This year, called by some the annus mirabilis, began a cascade of transformations that eventually dismantled really-existing socialism.  Persistent indigenous social movements as well as shifting geopolitical realities led to the end of the Warsaw Pact military alliance and of the political and economic structures of COMECON. In the wake of this Great Implosion, the states to the east of Russia reorganized themselves internally (with some arising in new form). 

The worrisome internal and external threats to security in the region were countered by optimistic waves of accession by east European nations into the European Union. Decisively shedding their former Soviet-bloc identification, the following joined the EU:  in 2004: Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.  In 2007: Bulgaria and Romania.  In 2013: Croatia.  Membership in NATO by these states paralleled EU accession but the timeline was not identical.  This fundamental, political and cultural reorientation conferred a new status on new EU and NATO members. They posed challenges to other nations in the region, some of whom, such as Ukraine,  eagerly desired closer association with Europe.

Twenty years after 1989, in an anniversary issue, EEPS surveyed the landscape after the implosion of the old order and the rise of democracy and market.  Articles covered these events and their impacts on the societies in the region, from the gamut of disciplinary perspectives, including not only economics, sociology, and political science but also history, philosophy, literary analysis, linguistics, and anthropology.

Research published in EEPS not only illuminated contemporary affairs in the area but also contributed to comparative knowledge of phenomena valuable to disciplinary studies of other world regions and historical periods.  Many problematic phenomena in eastern Europe – nationalism, transitions to democracy and market, populism and democratic backsliding, “competitive authoritarianism,” decolonization and decoloniality, have resonance in other parts of the world.  Studying such concepts comparatively strengthens analytical perspectives in many disciplines.

Research presented in the journal’s pages has reconsidered or recast theoretical positions long taken for granted: the close relationship between economic growth and political consolidation, for instance, or the assumption that core/periphery relationships necessarily extend from the geopolitical or economic sphere to the cultural one.

The co-editors of EEPS from 2004-2012, Ivo Banac and Irena Grudzińska Gross, presided over a significant internationalization of the journal’s submissions.  In 2012 they added “and Cultures” to the journal’s title (East European Politics and Societies and Cultures). The intention of this addition  was to make more explicit the journal’s commitment to publishing work in the humanities.

Wendy Bracewell and Krzysztof Jasiewicz, co-editors from 2013 to 2023, stayed faithful to this commitment, and further extended the journal’s scope and reach.  Comparative and interdisciplinary work thrived in their care, particularly in fields such as gender and memory studies.  Geographical coverage remained weighted to east-central Europe, though southeastern Europe was well represented.

Less obvious, perhaps, was the surge in EEPS’s international pool of authors and reviewers.  After many years as a largely US-based institution, the journal now draws on expertise from around the globe, but especially from Europe. The same can be said of its readership, which – thanks to digital publishing, both by SAGE and, importantly, by authors reposting articles in OpenAccess form – now extends across the region and to other areas of the world.

These developments of the journal EEPS had a significant impact on the field of East European Studies.  The journal widened its repertoire beyond publishing to other educational purposes: translation prizes, workshops on publishing in international journals, symposia on the practice and future of peer review, and a virtual anthology of OpenAccess articles on Ukraine for classroom use. Indeed, even the routine administrative tasks of the journal had a broadly pedagogical purpose – from peer review to discussions of article revisions with authors, to the sharing of all the reviews with the peer reviewers following a final decision. 

The journal as a forum for intellectual interchange, as well as its community-engaging activities, assumed the role of a learned society for east European studies, albeit one without a formal institutional structure.

Out of almost 2,000 submissions in the last decade, EEPS published 39 issues, composed of 487 articles contributed by 626 authors, including 27 thematic sections or special issues.

Those 626 authors came from almost 500 institutions located in 48 countries. Of the authors, 155 were based in Poland, 137 in the United States, 57 in the UK, 54 in the Czech Republic, 38 in Germany, 37 in Hungary, 24 in Romania, 16 in Austria, 15 in Canada, 13 in Sweden, 12 in Belgium, 11 in Montenegro, and 10 in Slovenia. Each of the remaining 35 countries was represented by fewer than ten scholars, among them by one each from Rwanda, South Africa, and South Korea.

The most frequent institutional affiliations of authors were the University of Warsaw (38 authors), the Polish Academy of Sciences (37), Masaryk University (22), the Jagiellonian University (18), the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (15), Charles University (15), University College London (12), and the University of Montenegro (11).

Published articles represent the full spectrum of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, from history to literary, film, and cultural studies, from anthropology and sociology to political science and economics. Their geographic interests vary from the whole area referred to as Eastern Europe (or Central Europe or East Central Europe) to groups of countries (such as the Visegrád Four, the Baltics, and the Balkans) and particular countries. As a single country or in combination with others, Poland is the subject of 215 papers, Hungary of 59, the Czech Republic of 48, Ukraine of 42, Romania of 41, Slovakia of 25, Bulgaria of 22, Belarus of 17, Yugoslavia of 12, Croatia of 10, and Bosnia-Hercegovina of 10. All other countries of the region are represented by at least one article.

The first issue of 2024 opened a new chapter for EEPSwith the assumption editorial leadership by  James Krapfl and Lavinia Stan.  Representing a new generation of scholarship on eastern Europe, Stan and Krapfl embody the internationalization of the journal’s editorial team.  Both Krapfl and Stan teach at universities outside the United States.

From its first issue in December1986 until December 2023, the journal EEPS had been sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Sponsorship entailed fiscal and fiduciary roles (negotiating contracts, legal protection, accounting and financial recordkeeping).  ACLS served as the institutional umbrella both for the journal and for the growing number of ancillary, “learned-society,” activities.

In response to the end of ACLS sponsorship, friends of the journal undertook to establish a new institutional home for the journal, and to support and expand its role as a central point of reference for community of East Europe Studies.

The new EEPS Foundation, Inc. came into existence on January 1, 2024 with the mission to support research and teaching on and in eastern Europe. The Foundation  provided an institutional home for the journal and for associated activities, with the fiscal, fiduciary, and leadership roles needed to support them.  The ACLS decision to end its sponsorship was thus both a challenge and an opportunity.  It required the EEPS-led community to self-organize, while at the same time energizing the learned-society functions that had gained momentum in the previous decad

EEPS Foundation acts as an institutional home and fiscal sponsor, primarily for the journal EEPS, but also, potentially, for other initiatives related to the EF mission, such as the Michael Heim Prize, and a variety of educational initiatives.  of promoting scholarship and education on and in eastern Europe.  One such new initiative, with which EEPS Foundation signed a Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement, is the Flying University for Ukrainian Students (FUUS).  The Flying University has an autonomous governance structure; its mission and activities are aligned with, and supportive of, the broad EF mission.