Making Sense of Dictatorship: Domination and Everyday Life in East Central Europe after 1945

Description

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. Cover Front matter Title page Copyright page TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures List of Acronyms Foreword Editors’ Note PART ONE: SINNWELT AND EIGEN-SINN Socialism as Sinnwelt: Communist Dictatorship and its World of Meaning in a Cultural-Historical Perspective Neither Consent nor Opposition: Eigen-Sinn, or How to Make Sense of Compliance and Self-Assertion under Communist Domination PART TWO: AUTHORITIES AND DOMINATION Policeman Nicolae: The Story of One Man’s Life and Work in the Socialist Republic of Romania (1960–89). The East German Reporting System: Normality and Legitimacy Through Bureaucracy Late Communist Elites and the Demise of State Socialism in Czechoslovakia (1986–89) PART THREE: EVERYDAY SOCIAL PRACTICES AND SINNWELT Local Self-Governance, Voluntary Practices, and the Sinnwelt of Socialist Velenje 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 Single Mothers, Lonely Children: Polish Families, Socialist Modernity, and the Experience of Crisis of the Late 1970s and 1980s “Since Makarenko the Time for Experiments has Passed”: Peace, Gender, and Human Rights in East Berlin during the 1980s PART FOUR: INTELLECTUAL AND EXPERT WORLDS AND (DE-)LEGITIMIZATION Problems with Progress in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia: The Example of Most, North Bohemia Authentic Community and Autonomous Individual: Making Sense of Socialism in Late Socialist Hungary The “Will to Publicity” and its Publicists: Curating the Memory of Czechoslovak Samizdat Dissident Legalism: Human Rights, Socialist Legality, and the Birth of Legal Resistance in the 1970s Democratic Opposition in Czechoslovakia and Poland Contributors Translators. Index. Back cover