SP Communist Dictatorships in Europe Compared: Yugoslav and Czechoslovak Societies, 1945-1968

Sylabus

Week 1

Introduction

Postwar Eastern Europe

Week 2 War, Occupation and Building Socialism

M. Pittaway (2004) : Eastern Europe 1939-2000 (selected chapters)

Week 3

Anatomy of Dictatorship - Party, Society, and Legitimacy in the 1950s

E.A. Rees: Theories of Sovietization. In: B. Apor, P. Apor, E.A. Rees (eds.): The Sovietization in Eastern Europe. New Perspectives on the Postwar Period, New Academoa Publishing, 2008

M. Blaive: Internationalism, patriotism, dictatorship and democracy: the Czechoslovak Communist Party and the exercise of power. In: Journal of European Integration Studies, 13, (2), 2007

B. Repe: Titoism. In: Slovene History - 20th Century. Selected articles written by dr. Božo Repe. Ljubljana 2005

Week 4

Ethnic Relations (I) K. Cordell (ed.): The Politics of Ethnicity in Central Europe. Macmillan Press Ltd 2000 (selected chapters)

Week 5

Representations of Power

Apor, Behrends, Jones, Rees (eds.): The Leader cult in communist dictatorships. Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, Palgrave 2004

B. Videkanic. Celebrating Yugoslavia: The Visual Representation of State Holidays, in: Luthar, Pusnik (Eds.), 2010

R. Krakovsky: Continuity and Innovation of May Day Ritual in Czechoslovakia 1948-1964. Study of Itineraries, in: E. A. Rees, B. Apor, P. Apor (eds.), New Perspectives on Sovietisation and Modernity, Washington, New Academia Publishing, 2007.

Week 6

Ideology and Culture

E. Dobrenko and E. Naiman (eds.): The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, chapt. 1 and 5: "Socialist Realism and the Sacralizing of Space" (by K. Clark) and "The Art of Totality" (by B. Groys).

K. E. Zarecor: Manufacturing A Socialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia, 1945-1960 (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2011), chap. 3: "National in Form, Socialist in Content: Sorela and Architectural Imagery."

V. Kulić: Land of the In-between, Modern Architecture and the State in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1945-65

Week 7

Economy, Work and the Workers

E. Maskin and A. Simonovits (eds.): Planning, shortage, and transformation: essays in honor of Janos Kornai. MIT Press 2000 (selected chapters)

S. Woodward Lampland: Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995

Socialist competition: tba

Week 8

Ethnic Relations (II)

M. Režek: Political changes and the national question in Yugoslavia in the decade following the dispute with the Cominform 1948-1958, Osteuropa vom Weltkrieg zur Wende, 2007.

K. McDermott: Czech Popular Responses to the Slánský Affair. Slavic rewiev, Vol. 67, No. 4, 2008.

Week 9

Red Globalization

J. Bockman: Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism, Stanford University Press, 2011 (selected chapters)

Week 10

Gender J. Massino and S. Penn, eds. Gender and Everyday Life under State Socialism in East and Central Europe: New Scholarship from the United States and Europe since 1989. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (selected chapters)

Week 11 Consumer Cultures

Tourism, Leisure, Holidays

D. Crowley and S. Reid (eds.): Pleasure and Socialism, Northwestern University Press, 2010

Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side. A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s-1980s). Edited by H. Grandits and K. Taylor, 2010 (selected chapters)

P. Schindler:The Subculture of Weekend House Holders in Czechoslovakia: 1950-89. International Oral History Association Newsletter, Number 12:1, 2004

Week 12

Pop Culture

B. Luthar and M. Pusnik (eds.): Remembering Utopia. The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia. New Academia Publishing, 2010 (selected chapters)

P. Bren: Looking West: Popular Culture and the Generation Gap in communist Czechoslovakia. In: Luisa Passerini (ed.): Across the Atlantic: Cultural exchanges between Europe and the U.S., PIE Lang, 2000

S. P. Ramet: Rocking the State. Westview Press, 1994, p. 55 -61. Week 13 Day Trip To the Ostrava Region Week 14 Conclusion

Anotace

The course begins in the third week of semester, ergo after Oct 17!!!

The aim of the course is to analyze the mechanisms of establishment, consolidation, and signs of erosion of communist regimes between the end of the Second World War till the end of 1960s in Czechoslovakia and

Yugoslavia. Using a comparative approach, the course combines the perspectives of social and cultural history in order to explain patterns of stabilization and origins of change in postwar socialist Europe. Furthermore, the course will also explore the inner dynamics of both societies: Czechoslovak development from Stalinism to the democratisation in the 1960s; and, shifts in Yugoslav alternative to the Soviet model of socialism. The intention of the course is to link macro-context of the socialism with the everyday life and experiences of different social groups. The course will combine lectures with seminar discussions on corresponding issues based on the readings.