Dear colleagues,

issue 3, 2016, of "Suedosteuropa. Journal of Politics and Society" has just been published. Cristofer Scarboro (King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) is guest editor of the thematic section „Living after the Fall. Contingent Biographies in Postsocialist Space“. Diana Georgescu (London) investigates the role of public intellectuals in Romania, whose autobiographic writings articulate hegemonic representations of the socialist past. Caterina Preda (Bucharest) introduces „Project 1990“ - on the empty pedestal of the former statue of Lenin in Bucharest artists installed twenty temporary interpretations of the socialist past. Fedja Buric (Louisville, Kentucky) relies on his own diary, kept as a 14-year-old between 1993 and 1994, in an effort to study how the violent breakup of Yugoslavia impacted identities of ordinary people. Daniela Koleva (Sofia) explores the narrative strategies that her interviewees, from what she calls the „first socialist generation“ born in the 1920 and 1930s, adopted to let them present their lives as meaningfully seamless and coherent, despite the change in frame of reference.

The issue features a Dossier motivated by recent events: „Europe(an) Matters“. Erhard Busek (Vienna), former special coordinator of the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe, assesses the present European crises—the refugee crisis, the financial crisis, the Greek crisis, the Ukrainian crisis, the Brexit crisis—from a Southeast European perspective, and from the perspective of one who has worked substantively toward the stabilization of the postwar societies of the successor states of Yugoslavia in the 2000s. John Breuilly (London) outlines how the Brexit referendum came about, provides crucial background information, and analyses its results, focusing on the UK/EU relationship, the internal constitutional crisis the Brexit vote has created, and the dangers these pose for (further) de-stabilisation both of Britain and Europe. The two commentaries are completed by a public debate organized in Berlin on the eve of the Brexit referendum, in which various experts on Southeast European history and politics discussed the effects of the current crises on Europe’s southeastern periphery.

In the open section, Iris Meder takes the reader on an illustrated tour of recent publications and exhibitions on the architecture of socialist modernity in Yugoslavia, offering the journal’s first „Photographic Review“.

The journal is available in print from De Gruyter Oldenbourg and online at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/soeu.2016.64.issue-3/issue-files/soeu.2016.64.issue-3.xml?rskey=clBDAy. The book reviews are available in open access at recensio.net.

Best regards,
Sabine Rutar