We are making accessible the full paper and book series, Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures & Societies (TSEECS). I kept alive and edited this series over two decades between 1999 and 2019. I loved to work with the series not the least because it was so helpful in attracting attention to the activities underlying it: the efforts organized in the Program on East European Cultures & Societies (PEECS) of the Faculties of Humanities & Social Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Never a “commercial enterprise”, the printing costs of the series were met out of the grants I received for the projects pursued within the frameworks of the Program.

PEECS was a voluntary community of research students (primarily, but not only the PhD and MA students I advised) and myself. We had regular weekly seminars that provided forum for thesis work as well as for frequent presentations by invited scholars engaged in the study of modern and contemporary East Central Europe, Russia, and Turkey in various corners of the world. Early versions of most of the works included in our series were presented and discussed at PEECS’ seminars in Trondheim or at PEECS’ conferences we organized in Trondheim and other places in Europe. I will always fondly remember each individual in the enthusiastic and highly capable group of research students, today working as scholars and professionals all over Norway and abroad. I am confident they won’t mind if I, also on their behalf, thank all the authors who contributed to this remarkable body of scholarly work represented by the set of issues of TSEECS.

Trondheim, November 2020

György Péteri

Department of Historical and Classical Studies
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
7491 Trondheim
Norway