Download or read book Dissidents in Communist Central Europe written by Kacper Szulecki and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph traces the history of the dissident as a transnational phenomenon, exploring Soviet dissidents in Communist Central Europe from the mid-1960s until 1989. It argues that our understanding of the transnational activist would not be what it is today without the input of Central European oppositionists and ties the term to the global emergence and evolution of human rights. The book examines how we define dissidents and explores the association of political resistance to authoritarian regimes, as well as the impact of domestic and international recognition of the dissident figure. Turning to literature to analyse the meaning and impact of the dissident label, the book also incorporates interviews and primary accounts from former activists. Combining a unique theoretical approach with new empirical material, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary history, politics and culture in Central Europe.

Download or read book The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East Central Europe written by Barbara J. Falk and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In addition to the huge list of written sources from samizdat works to recent essays, Falk's sources include interviews with many personalities of those events as well as videos and films."--Jacket.

Download or read book Human Rights and Political Dissent in Central Europe written by Jakub Tyszkiewicz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines to what extent the positive atmosphere created by the Helsinki Accords contributed to the change in political circumstances seen in the countries of Central Europe, under Soviet domination. It focuses in particular on - firstly - a consequent new impetus to bolster human rights in international politics, as Western democracies - especially the US - integrated human rights concerns into its foreign policy relations with Soviet Bloc countries and - secondly – how this Western embrace of human rights seemed to create new incentives for increased dissident activity in Central and Eastern Europe and from 1976 onward. Finally, the book reminds us of the significant role of the Helsinki Accords in developing democratic practices in Eastern European societies under Soviet domination in 1975-1989 and in creating the conditions for the peaceful transition to democratic government in the years that followed. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of the history of communism, post-Soviet, Russian, and central and East European politics, the history of human rights, and democratization.

Download or read book Worlds of Dissent written by Jonathan Bolton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-13 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Worlds of Dissent analyzes the myths of Central European resistance popularized by Western journalists and historians, and replaces them with a picture of the struggle against state repression as the dissidents themselves understood, debated, and lived it. In the late 1970s, when Czech intellectuals, writers, and artists drafted Charter 77 and called on their government to respect human rights, they hesitated to name themselves "dissidents." Their personal and political experiences--diverse, uncertain, nameless--have been obscured by victory narratives that portray them as larger-than-life heroes who defeated Communism in Czechoslovakia. Jonathan Bolton draws on diaries, letters, personal essays, and other first-person texts to analyze Czech dissent less as a political philosophy than as an everyday experience. Bolton considers not only Václav Havel but also a range of men and women writers who have received less attention in the West--including Ludvík Vaculík, whose 1980 diary The Czech Dream Book is a compelling portrait of dissident life. Bolton recovers the stories that dissidents told about themselves, and brings their dilemmas and decisions to life for contemporary readers. Dissidents often debated, and even doubted, their own influence as they confronted incommensurable choices and the messiness of real life. Portraying dissent as a human, imperfect phenomenon, Bolton frees the dissidents from the suffocating confines of moral absolutes. Worlds of Dissent offers a rare opportunity tounderstand the texture of dissent in a closed society.

Download or read book Thinking Through Transition written by Michal Kope?ek and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood both as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy?as well as the older political traditions?and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.

Download or read book The Universe Behind Barbed Wire written by Miroslav Marinovič and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ukrainian dissident Myroslav Marynovych recounts his involvement in the Brezhnev-era human rights movement in the Soviet Union and his resulting years as a political prisoner in Siberia and in internal exile.

Download or read book East German Dissidents and the Revolution of 1989 written by C. Joppke and published by Springer. This book was released on 1994-11-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to the dissident movements of Eastern Europe, the East German movement remained committed to the 'revisionist' reform of the communist regime. This book tries to explain why. It is argued that the peculiarities of German history and culture prevented the possibility of a 'national' opposition to communism. As a result, East German dissidents had to remain in a paradoxical way 'loyal' to the old regime.

Download or read book Staging Postcommunism written by Vessela S. Warner and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre in Eastern and Central Europe was never the same after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the transition to a postcommunist world, “alternative theatre” found ways to grapple with political chaos, corruption, and aggressive implementation of a market economy. Three decades later, this volume is the first comprehensive examination of alternative theatre in ten former communist countries. The essays focus on companies and artists that radically changed the language and organization of theatre in the countries formerly known as the Eastern European bloc. This collection investigates the ways in which postcommunist alternative theatre negotiated and embodied change not only locally but globally as well. Contributors: Dennis Barnett, Dennis C. Beck, Violeta Decheva, Luule Epner, John Freedman, Barry Freeman, Margarita Kompelmakher, Jaak Rahesoo, Angelina Ros ̧ca, Ban ̧uta Rubess, Christopher Silsby, Andrea Tompa, S. E. Wilmer

Download or read book The Dissidents written by Peter Reddaway and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nearly forgotten story of Soviet dissidents It has been nearly three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union—enough time for the role that the courageous dissidents ultimately contributed to the communist system's collapse to have been largely forgotten, especially in the West. This book brings to life, for contemporary readers, the often underground work of the men and women who opposed the regime and authored dissident texts, known as samizdat, that exposed the tyrannies and weaknesses of the Soviet state both inside and outside the country. Peter Reddaway spent decades studying the Soviet Union and got to know these dissidents and their work, publicizing their writings in the West and helping some of them to escape the Soviet Union and settle abroad. In this memoir he captures the human costs of the repression that marked the Soviet state, focusing in particular on Pavel Litvinov, Larisa Bogoraz, General Petro Grigorenko, Anatoly Marchenko, Alexander Podrabinek, Vyacheslav Bakhmin, and Andrei Sinyavsky. His book describes their courage but also puts their work in the context of the power struggles in the Kremlin, where politicians competed with and even succeeded in ousting one another. Reddaway's book takes readers beyond Moscow, describing politics and dissident work in other major Russian cities as well as in the outlying republics.

Download or read book The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel written by Aviezer Tucker and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Foundations of Political Theory First Book Prize Honorable Mention, 2001Theory meets practice in The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel, a critical study of the philosophy and political practice of the Czech dissident movement Charter 77. Aviezer Tucker examines how the political philosophy of Jan Patocka (1907-1977), founder of Charter 77, influenced the thinking and political leadership of Vaclav Havel as dissident and president. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel is the first serious treatment of Havel as philosopher and Patocka as a political thinker. Through the Charter 77 dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, opponents of communism based their civil struggle for human rights on philosophic foundations, and members of the Charter 77 later led the Velvet Revolution. After Patocka's self-sacrifice in 1977, Vaclav Havel emerged a strong philosophical and political force, and he continued to apply Patocka's philosophy in order to understand the human condition under late communism and the meaning of dissidence. However, the political/philosophical orientation of the Charter 77 movement failed to provide President Havel with an adequate basis for comprehending and responding to the extraordinary political and economic problems of the postcommunist period. In his discussion of Havel's presidency and the eventual corruption of the Velvet Revolution, Tucker demonstrates that the weaknesses in Charter 77 member's understanding of modernity, which did not matter while they were dissidents, seriously harmed their ability to function in a modern democratic system. Within this context, Tucker also examines Havel's recent attempt to topple the democratic but corrupt government in 1997-1998. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel will be of interest to students of philosophy and politics, scholars and students of Slavic studies, and historians, as well as anyone fascinated by the nature of dissidence.

Download or read book The Haunted Land written by Tina Rosenberg and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning look at the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

Download or read book Narrating Post Communism written by Natasa Kovacevic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-05-19 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines communist and post-communist literary and visual narratives, including the writings of prominent anti-communist dissidents and exiles such as Vladimir Nabokov, Czeslaw Milosz and Milan Kundera, exploring important themes including how Eastern European regimes and cultures have been portrayed as totalitarian, barbarian and "Orientalist" – in contrast to the civilized "West" – disappointment in the changes brought on by post-communist transition, and nostalgia for communism.

Download or read book Fantasies of Salvation written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-08 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eastern Europe has become an ideological battleground since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with liberals and authoritarians struggling to seize the ground lost by Marxism. In Fantasies of Salvation, Vladimir Tismaneanu traces the intellectual history of this struggle and warns that authoritarian nationalists pose a serious threat to democratic forces. A leading observer of the often baffling world of post-Communist Europe, Tismaneanu shows that extreme nationalistic and authoritarian thought has been influential in Eastern Europe for much of this century, while liberalism has only shallow historical roots. Despite democratic successes in places such as the Czech Republic and Poland, he argues, it would be a mistake for the West to assume that liberalism will always triumph. He backs this argument by showing how nationalist intellectuals have encouraged ethnic hatred in such countries as Russia, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia by reviving patriotic myths of heroes, scapegoats, and historical injustices. And he shows how enthusiastically these myths have been welcomed by people desperate for some form of "salvation" from political and economic uncertainty. On a theoretical level, Tismaneanu challenges the common ideas that the ideological struggle is between "right" and "left" or between "nationalists" and "internationalists." In a careful analysis of the conflict's ideological roots, he argues that it is more useful and historically accurate to view the struggle as between those who embrace the individualist traditions of the Enlightenment and those who reject them. Tismaneanu himself has been active in the intellectual battles he describes, particularly in his native Romania, and makes insightful use of interviews with key members of the dissident movements of the 1970s and 1980s. He offers original observations of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea and expresses his ideas in a vivid and forceful style. Fantasies of Salvation is an indispensable book for both academic and nonacademic readers who wish to understand the forces shaping one of the world's most important and unpredictable regions.

Download or read book Ukrainian Dissidents An Anthology of Texts written by Oleksii Stus, Dmytro Finberg, Leonid Sinchenko and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology of seminal texts documents the development of the post-war anti-Soviet Ukrainian dissident movement. The collection is designed to introduce, via some crucial primary sources, Western and other non-Ukrainian readers to various forms of Ukrainian opposition to the communist regime. Stories of ideas and personal undertakings are unfolding before the reader in a vivid pulsation of texts that testify for themselves. The anthology gathers contributions from different genres. They range from poetry, public speeches, and samvydav—uncensored, self-published—texts to court speeches. They come from dissidents who were held in jails, special psychiatric hospitals (for not accepting the official ideology), and prison camps. Finally, they include self-reflections by dissidents on their personal experience of opposing the totalitarian system. This variety of contributions creates a multidimensional picture of the Ukrainian dissident movement—a generation of prominent Ukrainian public and cultural figures who, in one way or another, insisted on their freedom of speech and made history by daring to challenge the official ideology and culture. This remarkable book about the struggle for freedom has been compiled by Oleksii Sinchenko, Dmytro Stus, and Leonid Finberg. Scholarly reviewed by Myroslav Marynovych.

Download or read book A Carnival of Revolution written by Padraic Kenney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-31 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first history of the revolutions that toppled communism in Europe to look behind the scenes at the grassroots movements that made those revolutions happen. It looks for answers not in the salons of power brokers and famed intellectuals, not in decrepit economies--but in the whirlwind of activity that stirred so crucially, unstoppably, on the street. Melding his experience in Solidarity-era Poland with the sensibility of a historian, Padraic Kenney takes us into the hearts and minds of those revolutionaries across much of Central Europe who have since faded namelessly back into everyday life. This is a riveting story of musicians, artists, and guerrilla theater collectives subverting traditions and state power; a story of youthful social movements emerging in the 1980s in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and parts of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Kenney argues that these movements were active well before glasnost. Some protested military or environmental policy. Others sought to revive national traditions or to help those at the margins of society. Many crossed forbidden borders to meet their counterparts in neighboring countries. They all conquered fear and apathy to bring people out into the streets. The result was a revolution unlike any other before: nonviolent, exuberant, even light-hearted, but also with a relentless political focus--a revolution that leapt from country to country in the exciting events of 1988 and 1989. A Carnival of Revolution resounds with the atmosphere of those turbulent years: the daring of new movements, the unpredictability of street demonstrations, and the hopes and regrets of the young participants. A vivid photo-essay complements engaging prose to fully capture the drama. Based on over two hundred interviews in twelve countries, and drawing on samizdat and other writings in six languages, this is among the most insightful and compelling accounts ever published of the historical milestone that ushered in our age.

Download or read book The Origins of Postcommunist Elites written by Gil Eyal and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is it that Czechoslovakia's separation into two countries in 1993 was accomplished so peacefully -- especially when compared with the experiences of its neighbors Russia and Yugoslavia? This book provides a sociological answer to this question -- and an empirical explanation for the breakup of Czechoslovakia -- by tracing the political processes begun in the Prague Spring of 1968. Gil Eyal's main argument is that Czechoslovakia's breakup was caused by a struggle between two fractions of what sociologists call the "new class," which consisted primarily of intellectuals and technocrats. Focusing on the process of polarization that created these two distinct political elites, Eyal shows how, in response to the events of the ill-fated Prague Spring, Czech and Slovak members of the "new class" embarked on divergent paths and developed radically different, even opposed, identities, worldviews, and interests. Unlike most accounts of postcommunist nationalist conflict, this book suggests that what bound together each of these fractions -- and what differentiated each from the other -- were not national identities and nationalist sentiments per se, but their distinctive visions of the social role of intellectuals. Book jacket.

Download or read book The Greengrocer and His TV written by Paulina Bren and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia brought an end to the Prague Spring and its promise of "socialism with a human face." Before the invasion, Czech reformers had made unexpected use of television to advance political and social change. In its aftermath, Communist Party leaders employed the medium to achieve "normalization," pitching television stars against political dissidents in a televised spectacle that defined the times. The Greengrocer and His TV offers a new cultural history of communism from the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution that reveals how state-endorsed ideologies were played out on television, particularly through soap opera-like serials. In focusing on the small screen, Paulina Bren looks to the "normal" of normalization, to the everyday experience of late communism. The figure central to this book is the greengrocer who, in a seminal essay by Václav Havel, symbolized the ordinary citizen who acquiesced to the communist regime out of fear. Bren challenges simplistic dichotomies of fearful acquiescence and courageous dissent to dramatically reconfigure what we know, or think we know, about everyday life under communism in the 1970s and 1980s. Deftly moving between the small screen, the street, and the Central Committee (and imaginatively drawing on a wide range of sources that include television shows, TV viewers' letters, newspapers, radio programs, the underground press, and the Communist Party archives), Bren shows how Havel's greengrocer actually experienced "normalization" and the ways in which popular television serials framed this experience. Now back by popular demand, socialist-era serials, such as The Woman Behind the Counter and The Thirty Adventures of Major Zeman, provide, Bren contends, a way of seeing—literally and figuratively—Czechoslovakia's normalization and Eastern Europe's real socialism.