Download or read book Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe in the Era of Normalisation 1969 1989 written by Kevin McDermott and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection represents the first comprehensive volume in English on the crucial, but under-explored, late period in the history of East European communism. Focusing on developments in Czechoslovakia from the crushing of the Prague Spring in August 1968 to the ‘Velvet Revolution’ of November 1989, the book examines a broad range of political, social and cultural issues, while also analysing external perceptions and relations. It explores the concept of ‘normalisation’ in historical context and brings together British, American, Czech and Slovak experts, each with their own archival research and particular interpretations. Overall, the anthology aims to assess the means by which the Prague Spring reforms were repealed and how Czechoslovakia was returned to a ‘normal’ communist state in line with Soviet orthodoxy. Key themes include the Communist Party and ideology; State Security; Slovak developments; ‘auto-normalisation’; women and gender; cultural and intellectual currents; everyday life and popular opinion; and Czechoslovakia’s political and cultural relationship with the USSR, the GDR, Poland and Yugoslavia. The volume sheds light on the process of decay of the Czechoslovak communist regime and the reasons for its ultimate collapse in 1989.
Download or read book Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe in the Era of Normalisation 1969 1989 written by Kevin McDermott and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The post-1968 'normalisation' era in Czechoslovakia is usually dismissed as 'grey', yet, until Gorbachev, it represented the Soviet-sanctioned archetype for 'real socialism'. This superb collection, with its unprecedented range of analysis and themes, disperses the grey to reveal vibrant complexity and in so doing fills a real gap in the historiography." -Nigel Swain, Lecturer, University of Liverpool, UK This edited collection represents the first comprehensive volume in English on the crucial, but under-explored, late period in the history of East European communism. Focusing on developments in Czechoslovakia from the crushing of the Prague Spring in August 1968 to the 'Velvet Revolution' of November 1989, the book examines a broad range of political, social and cultural issues, while also analysing external perceptions and relations. It explores the concept of 'normalisation' in historical context and brings together British, American, Czech and Slovak experts, each with their own archival research and particular interpretations. Overall, the anthology aims to assess the means by which the Prague Spring reforms were repealed and how Czechoslovakia was returned to a 'normal' communist state in line with Soviet orthodoxy. Key themes include the Communist Party and ideology; State Security; Slovak developments; 'auto-normalisation'; women and gender; cultural and intellectual currents; everyday life and popular opinion; and Czechoslovakia's political and cultural relationship with the USSR, the GDR, Poland and Yugoslavia. The volume sheds light on the process of decay of the Czechoslovak communist regime and the reasons for its ultimate collapse in 1989. Kevin McDermott is Professor Emeritus of Modern East European History at Sheffield Hallam University. Matthew Stibbe is Professor of Modern European History at Sheffield Hallam University. They have jointly edited five previous volumes of essays on post-1945 Eastern Europe.
Download or read book Spring in Winter written by Gwyn Prins and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compilation of scholarly studies addressing the nature and causes of the 1989 revolutions in Eastern European countries. Including a preface by the Czechoslovakian president, Vaclav Havel, contributors include such well-known figures as John Kenneth Galbraith.
Download or read book Informers Up Close written by Mark A. Drumbl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Informers are generally reviled. After all, 'snitches get stitches.' Informers who report to repressive regimes are particularly disdained. While informers may themselves be victims enlisted by the state, their actions cause other individuals to suffer significant harm. Informers, then, are central to the proliferation of endemic human rights abuses. Yet, little is known about exactly why ordinary people end up informing on--at times betraying--other people to state authorities. Through a case-study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945-1989) that draws from secret police archives, oral histories, and a broad gamut of secondary sources, this book unearths what fuels informers to speak to the secret police in repressive times and considers how transitional justice should approach informers once repression ends. This book unravels the complex drivers behind informing and the dynamics of societal reactions to informing. It explores the agency of both informers and secret police officers. By presenting informers up close, and the relationships between informers and secret police officers in high resolution, this book centres the role of emotions in informer motivations and underscores the value of dignity and reconciliation in transitional reconstruction. This book also leverages research from informing in repressive states to better understand informing in so-called liberal democratic states, which, after all, also rely on informers to maintain law and preserve order.
Download or read book Red Tape written by Rosamund Johnston and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In socialist Eastern Europe, radio simultaneously produced state power and created the conditions for it to be challenged. As the dominant form of media in Czechoslovakia from 1945 until 1969, radio constituted a site of negotiation between Communist officials, broadcast journalists, and audiences. Listeners' feedback, captured in thousands of pieces of fan mail, shows how a non-democratic society established, stabilized, and reproduced itself. In Red Tape, historian Rosamund Johnston explores the dynamic between radio reporters and the listeners who liked and trusted them while recognizing that they produced both propaganda and entertainment. Red Tape rethinks Stalinism in Czechoslovakia—one of the states in which it was at its staunchest for longest—by showing how, even then, meaningful, multi-directional communication occurred between audiences and state-controlled media. It finds de-Stalinization's first traces not in secret speeches never intended for the ears of "ordinary" listeners, but instead in earlier, changing forms of radio address. And it traces the origins of the Prague Spring's discursive climate to the censored and monitored environment of the newsroom, long before the seismic year of 1968. Bringing together European history, media studies, cultural history, and sound studies, Red Tape shows how Czechs and Slovaks used radio technologies and institutions to negotiate questions of citizenship and rights.
Download or read book Marxism and Medieval Studies written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-05-02 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a unique publication as it examines the Marxist attitudes in East Central European historiography and archaeology for the first time, with an emphasis on the co-existence of Marxist and other methodologies between the 1950s and 1970s in the local historiographies in question. Its approach is to distinguish between pseudo-Marxism as an ideological tool on the one hand, and Marxism in the form of historical materialism as a way to interpret the medieval world on the other. Contributors are: Florin Curta, Piotr Guzowski, Adam Hudek, Tereza Johanidesová, Jitka Komendová, Jiří Macháček, Andrzej Marzec, Martin Nodl, Attila Pók, David Radek, Tadeusz Paweł Rutkowski, Iurie Stamati, Rafał Stobiecki, Gábor Thoroczkay, Przemysław Wiszewski, Piotr Węcowski, Martin Wihoda, and Dušan Zupka.
Download or read book The Logic of normalization written by Fred H. Eidlin and published by Fred Eidlin. This book was released on 1980 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a valuable addition to the literature related to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. The author focusses his analysis on the facotrs that determined the post-invasion "normalization" primarily in terms of the Czechoslovak response to the invasion which imparted a specific character to the aftermath of the action of the Warsaw Pact.
Download or read book Czechoslovakia Behind the Curtain written by Thomas K. Murphy and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Cold War, the West--especially in the popular media--tended to view communism as a monolithic phenomenon, with little variation throughout the Eastern Bloc. Yet culture and geography contributed to social diversity among and within communist systems. Drawing on interviews with approximately 100 Czechs and Slovaks, the author provides new perspectives on day-to-day life in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Their recollections paint a more complex picture of the life on the other side of the Iron Curtain, from the Sputnik era reforms of the early 1960s, through the tumult of the 1968 Prague Spring and the subsequent Soviet invasion, to the Velvet Revolution, the collapse of the communist regime and the formation of democratic Czechoslovakia in 1989.
Download or read book Seven Days to the Funeral written by Ján Rozner and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven Days to the Funeral is the fictionalised memoir of Ján Rozner, a leading Slovak journalist, critic, dramaturg, and translator. Rozner and his wife Zora Jesenská were champions of the Prague Spring and were blacklisted after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. When Jesenská died in 1972, her funeral became a political event and attendees faced recriminations. A painstaking account of the week after his wife’s death, Seven Days to the Funeral is a historical record of the devastating impact of the period after the invasion. Rozner wrote with brutal honesty not only about himself, his emotions and past experience but about key figures in Slovak culture, providing a fascinating cultural history of Slovakia from 1945 to 1972. It is also a moving love story of an unlikely couple. When this compelling work of autofiction was posthumously published in 2009 it catapulted the author, who had died in exile and been almost forgotten in Slovakia, to posthumous literary fame.
Download or read book Soviet Foreign Policy and the Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe written by Ronald D. Asmus and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report analyzes the collapse of Communist rule in Eastern Europe in 1989 and assesses the role of changes in Soviet foreign policy in precipitating this collapse. It finds that the preceding 40 years of economic and social failure by the Communist regimes, the illegitimacy of Communist rule, the consolidation of societal opposition, loss of confidence in the ruling elites, and the improvement in East-West relations created the conditions leading to the collapse of Communist rule. However, the change in Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev was the precipitating event. Once change began, the removal of the Communist leadership in one country led to upheavals in others. The Soviet leadership did not foresee the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe; rather, it believed that the old regimes would be replaced by reformers. It also failed to see the unification of Germany as an outcome of the collapse of the Honecker regime. In the future, Soviet influence in Eastern Europe will be diminished but will not ebb to the low levels of the pre-World War II era. Economic and mutual security concerns will continue to tie Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union (or its successor), although much more loosely than in the past.
Download or read book The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe 1945 89 written by Sven G. Holtsmark and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a series of recent analyses spanning the whole period of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. The essays - by Western, Russian, and East European experts - present a wide and varied picture of the period. The authors use newly available materials to investigate different aspects of Soviet-East European relations - party affairs, military and political coordination, cultural and mass media policies, as well as the crises and conflicts emerging from the relationship itself.
Download or read book Eastern European Journalism written by Jerome Aumente and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text covers five topics about journalism: its roots in East/Central Europe and former Soviet Union; its role and effect leading up to the events of 1989; the transition period; the contributions, trials and tribulations from 1989-1996; and the state of journalism education in these regions.
Download or read book The East European Predicament written by Peter Summerscale and published by Gower Publishing Company, Limited. This book was released on 1982 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Multiplicity written by Justin Rosenberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume takes up the idea of ‘multiplicity’ as a new common ground for international theory, bringing together 10 scholars to reflect on the implications of societal multiplicity for areas as diverse as nationalism, ecology, architecture, monetary systems, cosmology and the history of political ideas. International relations (IR), it is often said, has contributed no big ideas to the interdisciplinary conversation of the social sciences and humanities. Yet this is an unnecessary silence, for IR uniquely addresses a fundamental fact about the human world: its division into a multiplicity of interacting social formations. This feature is full of consequences for the very nature of societies and for social phenomena of all kinds. And in recent years a research programme has emerged within IR to theorise these ‘consequences of multiplicity’ and to trace how the effects of the international dimension extend into other fields of social life. This book is a powerful indication of the contribution that IR may yet make to the human disciplines. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.
Download or read book The Lost World of Communism written by Peter Molloy and published by BBC Books. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1989 was a year of revolution: it marked the collapse of communism in Eastern and Central Europe and and an end to an entire way of life for millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Beginning in Hungary, the retreat from communism picked up speed over the summer when the Poles won an overwhelming victory in free elections over their pro-Soviet rulers. In the fall, East Germany and Czechoslovakia achieved freedom with surprisingly little violence. Only Romania, at the end of the year, witnessed a savage battle in the capital and the summary execution of the most notorious of Eastern Europe's dictators, Nicolae Ceausescu. This book collects first hand testimony of the people who lived in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania during the Cold War era, and reveals an astonishingly rich tapestry of experience that goes beyond the headlines of spies and surveillance, secret police and political corruption--in fact, many of the people remember their lives under communism as "perfectly ordinary" and even hanker for the "security" that it offered. From international figures like Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, via the shadowy figures of Eastern Europe's intelligence and security services to its "ordinary" citizens, the voices collected evoke the moods, preoccupations and experiences of a world of that vanished almost overnight.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Czech State written by Rick Fawn and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Czechoslovakia has been at the center of some of the most difficult--and tragic--episodes of modern European history: its sacrifice to Nazi Germany at Munich; the Communist Coup of 1948; and the military crushing of the Prague Spring. It has also enacted momentous change almost magically, as in the peaceful overthrow of communism in 1989, and then the negotiated end to the country in 1992. Czechoslovak history has consequently produced enduring political metaphors for our times, such as the Velvet Revolution and Velvet Divorce. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Czech State has been thoroughly updated and greatly expanded. Featuring a chronology, introductory essay, appendix, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries, this detailed, authoritative reference provides understandings of the Czechs as a people; the territory they inhabit; their social, cultural, political, and economic developments throughout history; and interactions with their neighbors and the wider world.
Download or read book Czech Security Dilemma written by Jan Holzer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the future directions of Czech international policy through an interdisciplinary analysis of both historical and current Russian-Czech relations. It analyses Czech relations with Russia based on their historical heritage underpinned by the superpower’s behaviour and interests in the Central European region. The book’s central theme is the current Czech security dilemma in which the Czech political community perceives Russia as a security threat, but also would prefer to cooperate with Russia to ensure its security. The authors give a full overview and explanation of Czech-Russian relations, while also explaining the current dilemmas within the Czech Republic’s political, cultural and economic community.
