Trade Unions in Central and Eastern Europe

The trade unions of Central and Eastern Europe have played differing roles in regards to the transformation and democratization processes in the former Eastern bloc states. Prior to 1989, new trade unions forming up against the existing regimes emerged in Bulgaria, Hungary and Lithuania, based on the model of Poland's Solidarnosc (Solidarity), as antipodes to the old pro-government trade unions. In a way, they were the harbingers of the societal upheavals that were soon to follow. The collapse of the communist regime introduced a period during which both old and new trade unions had to face the vast challenges of the democratization process and the rapprochement efforts made by the West. The corresponding publications by and about the trade unions allow the reader to follow and to comprehend this process of self-discovery.

The digitized full text publications constitute the core of this subject module. Their large number and relevance can be ascribed to the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's strong commitment and its publishing activities in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where the Foundation has 30 offices to support the transformation processes and to offer direct advice to the new democratic institutions and organisations.

The staff of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's offices in Central and Eastern Europe have provided us with current overviews over the respective trade union landscapes as well as with their own introductory texts written in situ.

The editorial staff of Ost-West-Gegeninformation magazine has kindly permitted us to digitize a subject-related, relevant selection of articles and to make them available on our website.

Due to the multitude of countries dealt with, this topic module has been fitted with a drop down menu in order to facilitate navigation. For each country, there will be the following standardized sub-items:

• On Topic [Zum Thema]: here, users will find an overview over the trade union landscape in the respective country and, if necessary, one or two basic introductory texts
• The Sources on the Internet [Quellen im WWW] offer country- and subject-specific link collections
• FES Full Texts [Volltexte der FES]: This section contains the full text of publications which were published by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation or with its participation
• Full Texts on the Internet [Volltexte im WWW]: These are other country- or subject-specific publications which exist as full text either on the Internet or on the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Library's server
• The Literary References [Literaturhinweise] refer to further titles which are available in the library but have not been digitized so far.

In order to view the full texts, users will require the Acrobat Reader programme, which can be downloaded free of charge on Adobe's Web Site Web-Seite der Firma Adobe.

As part of the "FES Net Source: History and Politics" [FES-Netz-Quelle: Geschichte und Politik] project, this subject module was supported by the German Research Community [Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG] and the Erich Brost Foundation.

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation Library shall not be held liable for the content and the function of links not hosted on the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's Web server.