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This edited collection represents the first comprehensive volume in English on the crucial, but under-explored, late period in the history of East European communism. Focusing on developments in Czechoslovakia from the crushing of the Prague Spring in August 1968 to the Velvet Revolution of November 1989, the book examines a broad range of political, social and cultural issues, while also analysing external perceptions and relations. It explores the concept of normalisation in historical context and brings together British, American, Czech and Slovak experts, each with their own archival research and particular interpretations. Overall, the anthology aims to assess the means by which the Prague Spring reforms were repealed and how Czechoslovakia was returned to a normal communist state in line with Soviet orthodoxy. Key themes include the Communist Party and ideology; State Security; Slovak developments; auto-normalisation; women and gender; cultural and intellectual currents; everyday life and popular opinion; and Czechoslovakias political and cultural relationship with the USSR, the GDR, Poland and Yugoslavia. The volume sheds light on the process of decay of the Czechoslovak communist regime and the reasons for its ultimate collapse in 1989. Kevin McDermott is Professor Emeritus of Modern East European History at Sheffield Hallam University. Matthew Stibbe is Professor of Modern European History at Sheffield Hallam University. They have jointly edited five previous volumes of essays on post-1945 Eastern Europe.

"This important book reassesses a defining historical, political and ideological moment in contemporary history: the 1989 revolutions in central and eastern Europe. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the authors reconsider such crucial themes as the broader historical significance of the 1989 events, the complex interaction between external and internal factors in the origins and outcomes of the revolutions, the impact of the 'Gorbachev phenomenon', the West and the end of the Cold War, the political and socio-economic determinants of the revolutionary processes in Poland, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, and the competing academic, cultural and ideological perceptions of the year 1989 as communism gave way to post-communist pluralism in the 1990s and beyond. Concluding that the contentious term 'revolution' is indeed apt for the momentous developments in eastern Europe in 1989, this book will be essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates and specialists alike."--Publisher's description

Klappentext: "After Stalin's death in 1953, his successors, most notably Nikita Khrushchev, initiated a series of reforms which had an enormous impact on the future direction not only of the Soviet Union, but of the communist states of Eastern Europe. Among other things, de-Stalinisation meant the release and repatriation of hundreds of thousands of prisoners from labour camps, penal settlements and jails across the region, many of them victims of the terror, purges and mass repression carried out during the Stalinist period. This volume focuses on the impact of the releases on Eastern European regimes and societies, and questions the extent to which the returnees were fully rehabilitated in the judicial, political, socio-economic or moral sense. The countries covered include the Soviet Union as a whole, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as four individual Soviet Republics: Ukraine, Moldavia, Latvia and Belarus"--

The history of Eastern Europe during the Cold War is one punctuated by protest and rebellion. This book offers a firm grounding in the tumultuous decades of communist rule, which is essential to understanding the contemporary politics of Eastern Europe. It provides an analysis of the varying forms of dissent in the East European socialist states