Books published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co KG

Am Beispiel der Sowjetunion, Polens, der Tschechoslowakei, Ungarns, Rumäniens, Bulgariens, der DDR sowie der Sonderfälle Jugoslawien und Albanien analysieren die Autoren des Bandes drei Forschungsfelder, die für Bestand und Stabilität der staatssozialistischen Systeme von zentraler Bedeutung waren: die Staatsparteien als monopolistische Herrschaftsträger, die Sozialpolitik als wichtigstes Medium der Herrschaftslegitimation und die Rolle von Opposition und Widerstand infolge des Scheiterns autokratischer Regimelegitimierung.

Retrospectively, the Prague Spring appears to have been a coherent but unsuccessful experiment in finding a synthesis of Western democracy and socialism. However, this perspective ignores that different groups and individuals participated in these developments and shaped the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia with their completely varying professional, generational, national, and gender-specific experiences. What appears retrospectively as a goal-oriented reform movement or as an "interrupted revolution" looked in the eyes of the protagonists rather like the situation in a laboratory, where they worked on new syntheses with uncertain results. The volume focuses on the protagonists' ideas of politics, society, and their reform plans. Of particular interest is the question which new thoughts about the interrelation of politics, science, economics, and arts were developed in Czechoslovakia.