Making Sense of Dictatorship

Domination and Everyday Life in East Central Europe After 1945

Celia Donert, Ana Kladnik, Martin Sabrow (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

296 Seiten

2022
Central European University Press (Verlag)
978-963-386-427-2 (ISBN)

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How did political power function in the communist regimes of East Central Europe after 1945? Making Sense of Dictatorship addresses this question with a particular focus on the acquiescent behavior of the majority of the population until, at the end of the 1980s, their rejection of state socialism and its authoritarian world.

The authors refer to the concept of Sinnwelt, the way in which groups and individuals made sense of the world around them. The essays focus on the dynamics of everyday life and the extent to which the relationship between citizens and the state was collaborative or antagonistic. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of life in this period, including modernization, consumption and leisure, and the everyday experiences of “ordinary people,” single mothers, or those adopting alternative lifestyles.

Empirically rich and conceptually original, the essays in this volume suggest new ways to understand how people make sense of everyday life under dictatorial regimes.

Dr Celia Donert is University Lecturer in 20th Century Central European History, since c. 1900 at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. Ana Kladnik is Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana. Martin Sabrow was from 2004 to 2021 Director of the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam and Professor of Recent and Contemporary History at Humboldt University, Berlin.

List of Figures

List of Acronyms

Foreword

Pavel Kolář and Michal Kopeček

Editors’ Note

Ana Kladnik and Celia Donert

PART I. Sinnwelt and Eigen-Sinn

Socialism as Sinnwelt: Communist Dictatorship and its World of Meaning in a Cultural-Historical Perspective

Martin Sabrow

Neither Consent nor Opposition: Eigen-Sinn, or How to Make Sense of Compliance and Self-Assertion under Communist Domination

Thomas Lindenberger

PART II. Authorities and Domination

Policeman Nicolae: The Story of One Man’s Life and Work in the Socialist Republic of Romania (1960–89)

Ciprian Cirniala

The East German Reporting System: Normality and Legitimacy Through Bureaucracy

Hedwig Richter

Late Communist Elites and the Demise of State Socialism in Czechoslovakia (1986–89)

Michal Pullmann

PART III. Everyday Social Practices and Sinnwelt

Local Self-Governance, Voluntary Practices, and the Sinnwelt of Socialist Velenje

Ana Kladnik

Modern Housekeeping Worlds; or, How Much is Thirty Percent Really? Eigensinnige Consumer Practices and the Hungarian Trade Union’s “Washing Machine Campaign” of 1957–58

Annina Gagyiova

Single Mothers, Lonely Children: Polish Families, Socialist Modernity, and the Experience of Crisis of the Late 1970s and 1980s

Barbara Klich-Kluczewska

“Since Makarenko the Time for Experiments has Passed”: Peace, Gender, and Human Rights in East Berlin during the 1980s

Celia Donert

PART IV. Intellectual and Expert Worlds and (De-)Legitimization

Problems with Progress in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia: The Example of Most, North Bohemia

Matĕj Spurný

Authentic Community and Autonomous Individual: Making Sense of Socialism in Late Socialist Hungary

Péter Apor

The “Will to Publicity” and its Publicists: Curating the Memory of Czechoslovak Samizdat

Jonathan Larson

Dissident Legalism: Human Rights, Socialist Legality, and the Birth of Legal Resistance in the 1970s Democratic Opposition in Czechoslovakia and Poland

Michal Kopeček

Contributors

Translators

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	06.08.2021
Zusatzinfo	11 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	Budapest
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	600 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
ISBN-10	963-386-427-5 / 9633864275
ISBN-13	978-963-386-427-2 / 9789633864272
Zustand	Neuware