Download or read book The Cultural Policy of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1956 written by Jana Neumannova and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cinema in Service of the State written by Lars Karl and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The national cinemas of Czechoslovakia and East Germany were two of the most vital sites of filmmaking in the Eastern Bloc, and over the course of two decades, they contributed to and were shaped by such significant developments as Sovietization, de-Stalinization, and the conservative retrenchment of the late 1950s. This volume comprehensively explores the postwar film cultures of both nations, using a “stereoscopic” approach that traces their similarities and divergences to form a richly contextualized portrait. Ranging from features to children’s cinema to film festivals, the studies gathered here provide new insights into the ideological, political, and economic dimensions of Cold War cultural production.
Download or read book Communist Parties Revisited written by Rüdiger Bergien and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2018-01-31 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ruling communist parties of the postwar Soviet Bloc possessed nearly unprecedented power to shape every level of society; perhaps in part because of this, they have been routinely depicted as monolithic, austere, and even opaque institutions. Communist Parties Revisited takes a markedly different approach, investigating everyday life within basic organizations to illuminate the inner workings of Eastern Bloc parties. Ranging across national and transnational contexts, the contributions assembled here reconstruct the rituals of party meetings, functionaries’ informal practices, intra-party power struggles, and the social production of ideology to give a detailed account of state socialist policymaking on a micro-historical scale.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism written by S. A. Smith and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of Communism on the twentieth century was massive, equal to that of the two world wars. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historians knew relatively little about the secretive world of communist states and parties. Since then, the opening of state, party, and diplomatic archives of the former Eastern Bloc has released a flood of new documentation. The thirty-five essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of scholars, draw on this new material to offer a global history of communism in the twentieth century. In contrast to many histories that concentrate on the Soviet Union, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism is genuinely global in its coverage, paying particular attention to the Chinese Revolution. It is 'global', too, in the sense that the essays seek to integrate history 'from above' and 'from below', to trace the complex mediations between state and society, and to explore the social and cultural as well as the political and economic realities that shaped the lives of citizens fated to live under communist rule. The essays reflect on the similarities and differences between communist states in order to situate them in their socio-political and cultural contexts and to capture their changing nature over time. Where appropriate, they also reflect on how the fortunes of international communism were shaped by the wider economic, political, and cultural forces of the capitalist world. The Handbook provides an informative introduction for those new to the field and a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship for those seeking to deepen their understanding.
Download or read book The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation written by Bradley F. Abrams and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The material effects of World War II, in combination with Eastern Europe's disappointingly undemocratic interwar history, placed radical social change on the postwar agenda across the region and shaped the debates that took place in immediate postwar Czech society. These debates adopted both a cultural form, in struggles over the meaning of the recent past and the nation's position on the East-West continuum, and a directly political form, in battles over the meaning of socialism. The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation examines the most important and politically resonant fields of historical and cultural debate in Czech society immediately after World War II. Bradley Abrams finds that communist public figures were largely successful in controlling debate over the nation's recent past--the interwar First Republic and the experiences of Munich and World War II--and over its location on the East-West continuum. This success preceded and was mirrored in the struggles over the political issue of the times: socialism. The communists engaged their political foes in the democratic socialist and Roman Catholic camps, and, surprisingly, found significant support from a major Protestant church. Abrams's careful reading of major publications re-creates a postwar mood sympathetic to radical social change, questioning the standard view of the communists' rise to power. This book not only contributes to the specific literature on Czech history, but also raises questions about the relationship between war and radical social change, about the communist takeover of the region, and about the role of intellectuals in public life.
Download or read book Europe s Intellectuals and the Cold War written by Nancy Jachec and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-31 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1950, nearly 300 of Europe's leading artists, philosophers and writers formed an international society intended to end the Cold War. The European Society of Culture was composed of many of Western Europe's best-known intellectuals, including Theodor Adorno, Julien Benda, Albert Camus, Benedetto Croce, Andre Gide, J. B. Haldane, Karl Jaspers, Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, Henri Matisse, Francois Mauriac, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Albert Schweitzer, among many others; over the next twenty years it would also include many luminaries from the East, such as Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, Ilya Ehrenburg and Georg Lukacs. Pioneering the earliest political discussions between intellectuals in Eastern and Western Europe that would serve as a model for the activities of the better-known CCF in its efforts to end communism, the ESC went on to create an informal but powerful, 1,600 member-strong cultural and political network across the world in pursuit of dialogue between the Marxist East and the liberal West, and in pursuit of peace and shared cultural values. Here, in this first, comprehensive history of the SEC's early years, Nancy Jachec demonstrates the influence its members had not only on preventing the isolation of Europe's eastern states, but on enabling the flow of people, publications and ideas from the West into the East, thus playing a vital role in introducing the ideals of human rights and cultural rights in the East in the run-up to the signing of the Helsinki Accords of 1975. She also shows the profound impact that the SEC had on the development of post-colonial theory through the exchanges it organised between European and African intellectuals, directly shaping the expectations statesmen like Leopold Sedar Senghor, revolutionaries like Frantz Fanon, and institutions such as Unesco would have of culture in newly emerging countries.
Download or read book The Prague Spring 1968 written by Jarom¡r Navr til and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In addition to revealing the events surrounding the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is the first book to document a Cold War crisis from both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is based on unprecedented access to the previously closed archives of each member of the Warsaw Pact, as well as once highly classified American documents from the National Security Council, CIA, and other intelligence agencies." "Presented in a highly readable volume, the book offers top-level documents from Kremlin Politburo meetings, multilateral sessions of the Warsaw Pact leading up to the decision to invade, transcripts of KGB-recorded telephone conversations between Leonid Brezhnev and Alexander Dubcek." "To provide a historical and political context, the editors have prepared essays to introduce each section of the volume. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information for the reader." "The editors have a unique perspective to offer to foreign audiences since they are members of the commission appointed by Vaclav Havel to investigate the events of 1967-1970."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Communism A Very Short Introduction written by Leslie Holmes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of communism was one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. This Very Short Introduction examines the history behind the political, economic, and social structures of communism as an ideology.
Download or read book Civil Society in Communist Eastern Europe written by Matt Killingsworth and published by ECPR Press. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As well as promoting debates about liberal democracy, the dramatic events of 1989 also bought forth a powerful revival in the interest of the notion of civil society. This revival was reflected mainly in two broad tracts of literature. The first focused primarily on events surrounding the Solidarity movement in Poland and the tumultuous events of 1980-81. The second was concerned with the Velvet Revolutions more broadly. Following the events of 1989, there appeared a number of works sharing the common central argument that civil society played a key role in the overthrow of these Communist regimes in 1989. Killingsworth's book presents three broad arguments, all of which reject the way civil society has been applied in the analysis of opposition and dissent in totalitarian Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland. First, it argues that the totalitarian nature of Soviet-type regimes means that it was not possible for a genuine civil society to exist. Second, the civil society paradigm, as it has been applied to opposition and dissent in Soviet-type regimes in Eastern Europe, lacks analytical rigour. Thirdly, the book argues that the dominant liberal interpretation of dissenting opposition in Soviet-type regimes is politically and morally flawed.
Download or read book The Cultural Politics of the German Democratic Republic written by G. Ann Stamp Miller and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2004 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the intricate connection between the political structure of the East German government and cultural politics. Specifically, it focuses on the relationship between the government agencies and three authors. It explores the difficulties the writers encountered in the 1960s with the government of East Germany and how their works did or did not conform to the cultural policy established by the GDR regime in 1951. The government believed that it was imperative for authors and artists to adhere to the literary policy of social realism prescribed by the East German Ministry of Culture. An author's works were expected to conform to the political ideology of Marxism. The Ministry of Culture expected writers to depict the society through the glorification of Marxism. The East German cultural functionaries evaluated a piece of literature more for the author's devotion to the political doctrine than the aesthetic quality of the work. If works did not conform, the government agencies such as the Ministry of Culture could apply pressure to the authors in many forms: censorship, silencing, fines, prosecution, surveillance and, for extreme cases, expatriation. This study assesses three prominent writers of the former East Germany: Wolf Biermann, a lyricist; Christa Wolf, a novelist; and Heiner Müller, a dramatist. The analysis is based on the political content of the authors' works and how the West German and East German critics evaluated them. Government documents from German State Archives revealed the sensitive nature of the political and writer conferences of the GDR. The study analyzes how the writers' interpretation of socialism increasingly deviated from that of the East German regime. Over time, the writers chose to express themselves in a different manner and thus, encountered problems and conflicts with the Ministry of Culture.
Download or read book Communism s Shadow written by Grigore Pop-Eleches and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.
Download or read book The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 written by Günter Bischof and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays of a dozen leading European and American Cold War historians analyze the 'Prague Spring' and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in light of new documentary evidence from the archives of two dozen countries and explain what happened behind the scenes. They al...
Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.
Download or read book Cultural Policy in Czechoslovakia written by Miroslav Marek and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Czechoslovakia s Interrupted Revolution written by Harold Gordon Skilling and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For about eight months in 1968 Czechoslovakia underwent rapid and radical changes that were unparalleled in the history of communist reform; in the eight months that followed, those changes were dramatically reversed. H. Gordon Skilling provides a comprehensive analysis of the events of 1968, assessing their significance both for Czechoslovakia and for communism generally. The author's account is based on all available written sources, including unpublished Communist Party documents and interviews conducted in Czechoslovakia in 1967, 1968, and 1969. He examines the historical background, the main reforms and political forces of 1968, international reactions, the Soviet intervention, and the experiment's collapse, concluding with his reasons for regarding the events of the Prague spring as a movement of revolutionary proportions. The author's account is based on all available written sources, including unpublished Communist Party documents and interviews conducted in Czechoslovakia in 1967, 1968, 1969. He examines the historical background, the main reforms and political forces on 1968, international reactions, the Soviet intervention, and the experiment's collapse, concluding with his reasons for regarding the events of the Prague spring as a movement of revolutionary proportions. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book 1948 and 1968 Dramatic Milestones in Czech and Slovak History written by Laura Cashman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume has been published to coincide with the anniversaries of two significant milestones in Czech and Slovak history – the establishment of communist rule in 1948 and the Prague Spring of 1968 – and in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the 1989 ‘Velvet Revolution’. Given the ultimate failure of the communist system, these events and their legacy for Czech and Slovak society and politics merit continued study, particularly given the wealth of new data made available when state and Party archives were finally opened in the 1990s. The essays in this volume, by witnesses, historians and social scientists from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the USA, UK and Australia offer a reappraisal of those turbulent events. They present new and original research, based on information from archives which were not opened until after 1990 and which is not yet available to audiences who do not speak Czech or Slovak. This volume will, therefore, be of interest to both specialists and general readers who are curious to learn more about these events. This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.
Download or read book Cultural Politics of Ethnicity written by Vera Sokolova and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book maps out the history of Czechoslovak linguistic and social practices directed at Roma during the communist period. It explains how contemporary Czech society has come to understand the Romani population in terms of inherited social, medical and juridical ideas. Rather than focusing on the Roma people as an object of analysis, the book problematizes assumed notions of “Gypsiness” and “Czechness” in mainstream society by highlighting the role of different socialist discourses in constructing images of Roma as socially deviant and abnormal. By uncovering the lines of continuity in the intersections of ethnic discrimination, social deviance and citizenship from the 1950s to the collapse of communism, this book comes to terms with a variety of questions that have not yet been adequately addressed in the literature: What underlying assumptions informed the socialist regime’s understanding of “Gypsiness,” and how did these conceptions relate to notions of citizenship, equality and normality? How and why did the meaning of the terms “Gypsies” and “Roma” become imbued in popular discourse with ideas of unhealthiness and social deviance? What implications does translating perceived cultural traits and lifestyles of Roma into non-ethnic frames of reference have for understanding racism and ethnic sensibilities in the country today? The work emphasizes historical continuities between contemporary xenophobia and the strategies which the communist regime used to deal with the “Gypsy question.” Focusing on the discrepancies between written laws and policies as well as their implementation, this study exposes the intricate relationships between official beliefs, institutional policies and popular consciousness under the communist regime. For it was these relationships which together created the mechanisms of social control that facilitated discrimination of Czechoslovak Roma under the guise of social welfare.
