December 21, 1995 Contact: Barbara McKenna (408/459-2495)

UC SANTA CRUZ'S HUMANITIES DIVISION AND COUNTY ART MUSEUM COLLABORATE TO PRESENT DOWNTOWN LECTURE SERIES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Six faculty members from the University of California, Santa Cruz, are featured in a downtown lecture series presented jointly by the Humanities Division at UCSC and the Art Museum of Santa Cruz County at the McPherson Center for Art and History. The series offers a range of lively topics of interest to the general public.

The talks are free and open to the public and take place the second Wednesday of each month at the McPherson Center, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz. Talks run from 7 to 8 p.m. with a reception following each presentation. For more information, call the Humanities Division at (408) 459-2696 or the Art Museum at (408) 429-1964.

April 10: "Why Do Communists Win Elections in Eastern Europe?," presented by history professor Peter Kenez.

In Lithuania, Hungary, and Slovakia, former communists are stepping into top-ranking government posts, and in Russia, the faction enjoying the highest approval rating is the Communist Party. Kenez will explore the forces at play across Eastern Europe that are bringing into power representatives of the party that was once so reviled.

Kenez, who was born in Hungary, has studied the history of Russia and the former Soviet Union. His books include The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917- 1929 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917-1953 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and the autobiography Varieties of Fear: Growing Up Jewish Under Nazism and Communism (Washington, D.C.: American University Press, 1995).

Editor's note: Photos of all speakers are available on request. For interviews with speakers, contact Barbara McKenna (408) 459-2495 or mckenna@uadvance.ucsc.edu.

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