After the 'Socialist Spring'

After the 'Socialist Spring'

Author: George Last

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2009-03-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1845459016

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Historical analysis of the German Democratic Republic has tended to adopt a top-down model of the transmission of authority. However, developments were more complicated than the standard state/society dichotomy that has dominated the debate among GDR historians. Drawing on a broad range of archival material from state and SED party sources as well as Stasi files and individual farm records along with some oral history interviews, this book provides a thorough investigation of the transformation of the rural sector from a range of perspectives. Focusing on the region of Bezirk Erfurt, the author examines on the one hand how East Germans responded to the end of private farming by resisting, manipulating but also participating in the new system of rural organization. However, he also shows how the regime sought via its representatives to implement its aims with a combination of compromise and material incentive as well as administrative pressure and other more draconian measures. The reader thus gains valuable insight into the processes by which the SED regime attained stability in the 1970s and yet was increasingly vulnerable to growing popular dissatisfaction and economic stagnation and decline in the 1980s, leading to its eventual collapse.


Book Synopsis After the 'Socialist Spring' by : George Last

Download or read book After the 'Socialist Spring' written by George Last and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical analysis of the German Democratic Republic has tended to adopt a top-down model of the transmission of authority. However, developments were more complicated than the standard state/society dichotomy that has dominated the debate among GDR historians. Drawing on a broad range of archival material from state and SED party sources as well as Stasi files and individual farm records along with some oral history interviews, this book provides a thorough investigation of the transformation of the rural sector from a range of perspectives. Focusing on the region of Bezirk Erfurt, the author examines on the one hand how East Germans responded to the end of private farming by resisting, manipulating but also participating in the new system of rural organization. However, he also shows how the regime sought via its representatives to implement its aims with a combination of compromise and material incentive as well as administrative pressure and other more draconian measures. The reader thus gains valuable insight into the processes by which the SED regime attained stability in the 1970s and yet was increasingly vulnerable to growing popular dissatisfaction and economic stagnation and decline in the 1980s, leading to its eventual collapse.


After the 'socialist Spring'

After the 'socialist Spring'

Author: George Last

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9781845455521

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Part III-Stable Instability: Economic Stagnation and the End of TransformationChapter 7-From Ulbright to Honecker; Chapter 8-Stabilisation and Stagnation; Chapter 9-Economic Crisis and Popular Dissatisfaction-The Road to 1989; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.


Book Synopsis After the 'socialist Spring' by : George Last

Download or read book After the 'socialist Spring' written by George Last and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part III-Stable Instability: Economic Stagnation and the End of TransformationChapter 7-From Ulbright to Honecker; Chapter 8-Stabilisation and Stagnation; Chapter 9-Economic Crisis and Popular Dissatisfaction-The Road to 1989; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.


The Greengrocer and His TV

The Greengrocer and His TV

Author: Paulina Bren

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-08-15

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0801462142

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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.


Book Synopsis The Greengrocer and His TV by : Paulina Bren

Download or read book The Greengrocer and His TV written by Paulina Bren and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 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.


Making Their Place

Making Their Place

Author: Katja Guenther

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2010-04-29

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0804770727

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Offering a comparative analysis of feminist social movements in the aftermath of the collapse of state socialism, this book offers a unique opportunity to examine how shifting gender relations interact with local identities to create new understandings of gender, the state, and strategies for resistance.


Book Synopsis Making Their Place by : Katja Guenther

Download or read book Making Their Place written by Katja Guenther and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-29 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a comparative analysis of feminist social movements in the aftermath of the collapse of state socialism, this book offers a unique opportunity to examine how shifting gender relations interact with local identities to create new understandings of gender, the state, and strategies for resistance.


The Romance of American Communism

The Romance of American Communism

Author: Vivian Gornick

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-04-07

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1788735501

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Writer and critic Vivian Gornick’s long-unavailable classic exploring how Left politics gave depth and meaning to American life “Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin’s crimes became public.


Book Synopsis The Romance of American Communism by : Vivian Gornick

Download or read book The Romance of American Communism written by Vivian Gornick and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writer and critic Vivian Gornick’s long-unavailable classic exploring how Left politics gave depth and meaning to American life “Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin’s crimes became public.


Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond

Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond

Author: Friederike Kind-Kovács

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0857455869

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In many ways what is identified today as “cultural globalization” in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena of samizdat (“do-it-yourself” underground publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War, as well as the much broader circulation of cultural products instigated and sustained by these practices. By expanding the definitions of samizdat and tamizdat from explicitly political print publications to include other forms and genres, this volume investigates the wider cultural sphere of alternative and semi-official texts, broadcast media, reproductions of visual art and music, and, in the post-1989 period, new media. The underground circulation of uncensored texts in the Cold War era serves as a useful foundation for comparison when looking at current examples of censorship, independent media, and the use of new media in countries like China, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia.


Book Synopsis Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond by : Friederike Kind-Kovács

Download or read book Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond written by Friederike Kind-Kovács and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many ways what is identified today as “cultural globalization” in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena of samizdat (“do-it-yourself” underground publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War, as well as the much broader circulation of cultural products instigated and sustained by these practices. By expanding the definitions of samizdat and tamizdat from explicitly political print publications to include other forms and genres, this volume investigates the wider cultural sphere of alternative and semi-official texts, broadcast media, reproductions of visual art and music, and, in the post-1989 period, new media. The underground circulation of uncensored texts in the Cold War era serves as a useful foundation for comparison when looking at current examples of censorship, independent media, and the use of new media in countries like China, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia.


Conversations with Gorbachev

Conversations with Gorbachev

Author: Mikhail Gorbachev

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2012-08-14

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0231529279

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Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that “thinking out loud” process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to “save socialism” to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.


Book Synopsis Conversations with Gorbachev by : Mikhail Gorbachev

Download or read book Conversations with Gorbachev written by Mikhail Gorbachev and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that “thinking out loud” process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to “save socialism” to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.


Heaven on Earth

Heaven on Earth

Author: Joshua Muravchik

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 1893554783

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"The search for the Promised Land took socialists in diverse directions: revolution, communes and kibbutzim, social democracy, communism, fascism, Third Worldism. But none of these paths led to the prophesied utopia. Nowhere did socialists succeed in creating societies of easy abundance or in midwifing the birth of a "New Man," as their theory promised. Some socialist governments abandoned their grandiose goals and satisfied themselves with making slight modifications to capitalism, while others plowed ahead doggedly, often inducing staggering human catastrophes. Then, after two hundred years of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in the 1990s in a fin du siecle drama of falling walls, collapsing regimes and frantic revisions of doctrine."--BOOK JACKET.


Book Synopsis Heaven on Earth by : Joshua Muravchik

Download or read book Heaven on Earth written by Joshua Muravchik and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The search for the Promised Land took socialists in diverse directions: revolution, communes and kibbutzim, social democracy, communism, fascism, Third Worldism. But none of these paths led to the prophesied utopia. Nowhere did socialists succeed in creating societies of easy abundance or in midwifing the birth of a "New Man," as their theory promised. Some socialist governments abandoned their grandiose goals and satisfied themselves with making slight modifications to capitalism, while others plowed ahead doggedly, often inducing staggering human catastrophes. Then, after two hundred years of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in the 1990s in a fin du siecle drama of falling walls, collapsing regimes and frantic revisions of doctrine."--BOOK JACKET.


The New Russia

The New Russia

Author: Mikhail Gorbachev

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-06-08

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1509503919

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After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has been in the past 25 years. Putin’s motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia’s elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal the development of Putin’s regime and the intentions behind it. He argues that Putin has significantly diminished the achievements of perestroika and is part of an over-centralized system that presents a precarious future for Russia. Faced with this, Gorbachev advocates a radical reform of politics and a new fostering of pluralism and social democracy. Gorbachev’s insightful analysis moves beyond internal politics to address wider problems in the region, including the Ukraine conflict, as well as the global challenges of poverty and climate change. Above all else, he insists that solutions are to be found by returning to the atmosphere of dialogue and cooperation which was so instrumental in ending the Cold War. This book represents the summation of Gorbachev’s thinking on the course that Russia has taken since 1991 and stands as a testament to one of the greatest and most influential statesmen of the twentieth century.


Book Synopsis The New Russia by : Mikhail Gorbachev

Download or read book The New Russia written by Mikhail Gorbachev and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-06-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has been in the past 25 years. Putin’s motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia’s elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal the development of Putin’s regime and the intentions behind it. He argues that Putin has significantly diminished the achievements of perestroika and is part of an over-centralized system that presents a precarious future for Russia. Faced with this, Gorbachev advocates a radical reform of politics and a new fostering of pluralism and social democracy. Gorbachev’s insightful analysis moves beyond internal politics to address wider problems in the region, including the Ukraine conflict, as well as the global challenges of poverty and climate change. Above all else, he insists that solutions are to be found by returning to the atmosphere of dialogue and cooperation which was so instrumental in ending the Cold War. This book represents the summation of Gorbachev’s thinking on the course that Russia has taken since 1991 and stands as a testament to one of the greatest and most influential statesmen of the twentieth century.


Restitution and Memory

Restitution and Memory

Author: Dan Diner

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9781845452209

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The myriad debates on restitution and memory, which have been going on in Europe for decades, indicate that World War II never ended. It is still very much with us, paradoxically re-invoked by the events of 1989/90 and the expansion of Europe to the east in the aftermath of the collapse of communism and economic globalization. The growing privatization and reprivatization in Eastern Europe revive pre-war memories that lay buried under the blanket of collectivization and nationalization of property after 1945. World War II did not only result in the death and destruction on a large scale but also in an a far-reaching revolution of existing property relations. This volume offers an assessment of the problematic of restitution and its close interconnection with the discourses of memory that have recently emerged.


Book Synopsis Restitution and Memory by : Dan Diner

Download or read book Restitution and Memory written by Dan Diner and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The myriad debates on restitution and memory, which have been going on in Europe for decades, indicate that World War II never ended. It is still very much with us, paradoxically re-invoked by the events of 1989/90 and the expansion of Europe to the east in the aftermath of the collapse of communism and economic globalization. The growing privatization and reprivatization in Eastern Europe revive pre-war memories that lay buried under the blanket of collectivization and nationalization of property after 1945. World War II did not only result in the death and destruction on a large scale but also in an a far-reaching revolution of existing property relations. This volume offers an assessment of the problematic of restitution and its close interconnection with the discourses of memory that have recently emerged.