An!hropolog\ of Ea,! Euwrc Rn le\\ 

MA;\AGI:\G EDITOR'S NOTES: 

Robert Rotellberg. DePaul Cllil'ersi(l' 

I took over the management of th is ne\\sletter in 
1993 after David Kideckel had alread\ done 
everything to the Special Is~ue: \\ar Amon n the 
Yugoslms except to print it. After some mi~or 
editing imolving updates of articles. I had it printed 
~n.d sl: i pped i.t to the m em bersh i p list. That was my 
ImtJatlon to life as an editor. 

Ten years later. I end my stewardship of these 
newsletters with another special issue. With this one 
as with the first. Krista Harper did all the heavv ' 
editing. I just compiled the articles, insured a ­
consistent format, and sent it to the printers. Who 
says life doesn't have its little symmetries. 

I got my Ph. D. in the late 1970s when 
anthropological interest in Eastern Europe was 
wholly concerned with updating an interest in 
folklore and national ethnography to more pressing 
questions of socialist political economy, the 
transformation of agriculture under central ized 
control, and the threat of the disappearance of 
minority groups. When this newsletter started at the 
Uni~ersity of Michigan in 1981 under the editorship 
of BIll Lockwood, there were no more than twenty 
American anthropologists working in Eastern 
Europe. At the meeting of the East European 
Anthropology Group at the annual American 
anthropological Association meeting, everyone one 
of them would be in the same room. 

The newsletter served our needs in a different 
way then than it does not. We needed to know about 
the comings and goings of researchers, who had 
gotten what grants, who was working with which 
specialists in the East European museums and 
research centers, which granting agencies were 
earn1arking money for East Europe research, and 
what books had recently been published. 

I think the last time I saw everyone in the same 
room was 1988 in Washington D.C. and by then we 
had begun to sense that the breakup of Yugoslavia 
was immanent. It was a heated session. There was a 
lot of arguing among the specialists about what 
would lead to a peaceful outcome and what would 
lead to a blood bath. The next year, the East German 
state ceased to function and the dominos began to 
fall. The Hungarian, Czechoslovak, Polish, 
Romanian Bulgarian and CIS states would all 
undergo relatively peaceful transformations in the 
next few years. In January 1992, Yugoslavia ceased 

to exist. The division of that state among irs 
constituent regions was anything but peaceful. 

What happened to the [EAG was that it ne\ er 
again would we all be in the same room. The older 
scholars began to retire and ceased to attend 
meeting. Development money took several of us ou: 
of ethnographic writing and into policy work. A 
whole new generation of anthropologists entered the 
newly configured Eurasian region as scholars of 
post-socialist culture. 

My tenure as editor has coincided with the 
period from the Fall of Yugoslavia to the recent by 
Poland and the Czech Republic to enter the 
European Union. We have had to change the name 
of the journal to include the emergent states of the 
Baltic and Central Asia belt. A specialist group of 
Russian -speaking scholars established their own 
annual conference and agreed to publish papers from 
that event in our autumn number. 

I am not so narrow as to think that AEER was in 
the forefront of post socialist student in the last 
decade. There were several refereed journals whose 
collections attract more attention even among 
anthropologists. Our purpose was never to be the 
journal of record. Rather we strove to maintain Bill 
Lockwood's original vision of being a journal of the 
community of scholars. I hope you have found that 
this effort served the community well. 

The mantel now passes to the generation of post­
socialist scholars represented by the new editor, 
Barbara West and her associate editor Nancy Ries. If 
this issue is any indication of where the journal is 
going, then we can all rest assured that the 
community will continue to be well served. 

A special thank you to Eva Huseby-Darvas, who 
more than anyone supported my efforts with the 
journal and organized the EEAG meetings at AAA 
every year. Special thanks go to Michael Mezey, 
Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at DePaul, who 
supported the publication of the newsletter. Thanks 
as well to Nancy Ries, Barb West, Matti Bunzl and 
Laszlo Kurti for their contributions over the years. 
And to all my issue editors, authors, subscribers and 
fellow members of EEAG, thank you for all your 
help. 

Vol. 21. No. 12003, Page: 4