Perceptions of Society in Communist Europe: Regime Archives and Popular Opinion

317 Pages·2018·2.29 MB·English

by  Muriel Blaive

Perceptions of Society in
Communist Europe
Also available from Bloomsbury
The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution, by
Waitman Wade Beorn
Hungarian Women’s Activism in the Wake of the First World War: From Rights
to Revanche, by Judith Szapor
Perceptions of Society in
Communist Europe
Regime Archives and Popular Opinion
Edited by
Muriel Blaive
To my elder son, C., who was born when this project took roots and is now an
adult.
M.B.
Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction Muriel Blaive
Part 1 From Post-War to Stalinism
1 Secret Agents: Reassessing the Agency of Radio Listeners in
Czechoslovakia (1945–1953) Rosamund Johnston
2 Practices of Distance and Perceptions of Proximity: Trade Union Delegates
and Everyday Politics in Post-Second World War Romania Adrian Grama
3 A Case Study of Power Practices: The Czechoslovak Stalinist Elite at the
Regional Level (1948–1951) Marián Lóži
4 Policing the Police: The ‘Instructor Group’ and the Stalinization of the
Czechoslovak Secret Police (1948–1951) Molly Pucci
Part 2 From Stalinism to Real Existing Socialism
5 Constructive Complaints and Socialist Subversion in Stalinist
Czechoslovakia: E.F. Burian’s Scandal in the Picture Gallery Shawn Clybor
6 Perceptions of Society in Czechoslovak Secret Police Archives: How a
‘Czechoslovak 1956’ was Thwarted Muriel Blaive
7 Crises and the Creation of Institutions for Assessing Popular Consumption
Preferences in Communist Bulgaria (1953–1970) Martin K. Dimitrov
8 Who Is Afraid of Whom? The Case of the ‘Loyal Dissidents’ in the German
Democratic Republic Sonia Combe
Part 3 From Real Existing Socialism to the End – and Beyond
9 Did Communist Children’s Television Communicate Universal Values?
Representing Borders in the Polish Series Four Tank-Men and a Dog
Machteld Venken
10 Between Censorship and Scholarship: The Editorial Board of the
Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1969–1989) Libora Oates-Indruchová
11 ‘How Many Days Have the Comrades’ Wives Spent in a Queue?’ Appealing
to the Ceauşescus in Late-Socialist Romania Jill Massino
12 Authenticating the Past: Archives, Secret Police and Heroism in
Contemporary Czech Representations of Socialism Veronika Pehe
Bibliography
Index
Contributors
Muriel Blaive is Advisor to the Director for Research and Methodology at the
Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague. She is a sociopolitical
and oral historian of communist and post-communist Czechoslovakia/the Czech
Republic, placed in its Central European context.
Shawn Clybor received his PhD from Northwestern University. He is currently
a history teacher at Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey and manages a
private collection of Czech avant-garde books and art in New York City. He has
published on the political activism of the Czech avant-garde, 1920–1960.
Sonia Combe is Emeritus Research Associate at Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin.
Her research interests focus on intellectuals in the former GDR and communist
Europe, as well as the concentration camp experience under Nazism.
Martin K. Dimitrov is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane
University in New Orleans. His research interests focus on the origins, evolution
and demise of authoritarian regimes.
Adrian Grama is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Graduate School for East and
Southeast European Studies, University of Regensburg, Germany, where he
works on questions of social, economic and labour history in twentieth-century
Eastern Europe.
Rosamund Johnston is a graduate student of Modern European History at New
York University. Her research interests include sound studies, the history of
broadcasting, migration and propaganda.
Marián Lóži is Researcher at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes
in Prague. He is also enrolled in the doctoral programme at the Institute of
Economic and Social History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. His
main area of interest is the history of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in
the 1950s.
Jill Massino is Associate Professor of Modern European History at UNC
Charlotte. She is co-editor (with Shana Penn) of Gender Politics and Everyday
Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe (Palgrave, 2009) and author
of Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and
Postsocialist Romania (Berghahn Books, 2018).
Libora Oates-Indruchová is Professor of Sociology of Gender at the University
of Graz in Austria. Her research interests include censorship, cultural
representations of gender in state socialism and post-socialism, gender and social
change and narrative research.
Veronika Pehe is Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History,
Czech Academy of Sciences. Her work focuses on cultural memory, memory
politics and the history of the economic transformation in East-Central Europe.
Molly Pucci is Assistant Professor of Twentieth-Century European History at
Trinity College Dublin. She studies the history of communism, legal history and
the history of policing in twentieth-century Europe.
Machteld Venken currently holds an Elise Richter Fellowship at the Institute of
Eastern European History, University of Vienna. She studies European history,
migration, border regions and children.