Communism and Dissent in Eastern Europe

History 452

Professor Eagle Glassheim

Spring 2005

Professor E. Glassheim               Email:  eglasshe@princeton.edu                                   

Office:  G-26 Dickinson            Office Hours:  Tues. 12-1 and 4:30-5:30

Course Description:

In the first half of the twentieth century, communism offered a seductive vision of modernity and a society free of want.  This attraction reached its height after 1945, as Stalin’s Red Army liberated East Central Europe from Nazi occupation, and Soviet-supported regimes took power throughout the region.  This seminar will consider the tremendous appeal of communism and the subsequent disillusionment among intellectuals in Eastern Europe.  In the face of Communist repression, East European dissidents developed a powerful critique of politics and the state.  We will focus on the emergence and influence of this self-styled “anti-politics,” a movement that helped topple Communism in 1989 and has had a profound influence on the post-Communist reconstruction of Eastern Europe.

Ordered Books:

Ivan T. Berend, Central and Eastern Europe 1944-1993 (Cambridge, 1996).
Padraic Kenney, Carnival of Revolution (Princeton, 2002).
Czeslaw Milosz, Captive Mind (Vintage, 1990).
Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath (Cambridge, 1997).

Many of the shorter readings below (marked with an asterisk) will be available in a course pack available for purchase at Pequod in the U-Store.  You can download the following two dissertations for free at Proquest (dissertation abstracts online in the Princeton library list of databases):
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/search

Timothy Dowling, “Stalinstadt/Eisenhüttenstadt: A Model for (Socialist) Life in the German Democratic Republic, 1950-1968” (Ph.D., Tulane University, 1999).
Katherine Lebow, “Nowa Huta, 1949-1957: Stalinism and the Transformation of Everyday Life in Poland's 'First Socialist City'” (Ph.D., Columbia University, 2002).

The ordered books will be available on reserve in Firestone Library.

Course Mechanics and Assignments:

§         Weekly discussions and occasional films (2-3 total)
§         Two short papers combined with class presentations
§         One 15-20 page term paper

Grading:

Course grade:

Course Outline:

I.                   Communist Utopias

Week 1 (Feb. 1, 3) The Rise of Communism in East Central Europe: War and Rebirth

Week 2 (Feb. 8, 10) The Captive Mind: The Appeal of Communism

Week 3 (Feb. 15, 17) Communist Modernity: Industrialization and the Socialist City

II.                Communist Dystopias

Week 4 (Feb. 22, 24) High Stalinism: Show Trials and Thermidor

Week 5 (Mar. 1, 3) Mastering the Land: Environmental Control and Catastrophe

Week 6 (Mar. 8, 10) Everyday Life

III.  Reform and Revolution

Week 7 (Mar. 22, 24) Hungary 1956

Week 8 (Mar. 29, 31) Czechoslovakia 1968

IV.              Dissent

Week 9 (Apr. 5, 7) Intellectuals: Havel and Charter 77

Week 10 (Apr. 12, 14) Intellectuals: Michnik and Konrad

Week 11 (Apr. 19, 21) Dissent from Below

Week 12 (Apr. 26, 28) Idealism and Anti-Politics: The Revolutions of 1989

History 452
Glassheim
Spring 2005

Reading Packet Contents

1. Bradley Abrams, “The Second World War and the East European Revolution,” East European Politics and Societies 16, no. 3 (2002): 623-64.
2. Bradley Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Czech Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 89-103, 199-221.
3. Zdenek Mlynar, Nightfrost in Prague (New York: Karz, 1980), 1-6.
4. Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star (New York: Penguin, 1986), 52-74.
5. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 87-117.
6. Anders Aman, Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe during the Stalin Era (New York: MIT Press, 1992), 147-156, 161-164.
7. Gale Stokes, ed., From Stalinism to Pluralism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 66-77, 100-106.
8. Krystyna Kersten, “The Terror, 1949-1954,” in A. Kemp-Welch, ed., Stalinism in Poland, 1944-1956 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 78-94.
9. Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star (New York: Penguin, 1986), 105-143.
10. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 193-222.
11. John Kramer, “Energy and the Environment in Eastern Europe,” in Joan DeBardeleben, ed., To Breathe Free: Eastern Europe's Environmental Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1991): 57-79.
12. Petr Pavlinek and John Pickles, Environmental Transitions: Transformation and Ecological Defence in Central and Eastern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2000), 84-126.
13. F.W. Carter, “Czechoslovakia,” in Francis W. Carter and David Turnock, Environmental problems in Eastern Europe (London ; New York: Routledge, 1993): 63-88.
14. Eagle Glassheim, “Ethnic Cleansing, Communism, and Environmental Devastation in Czechoslovakia’s Borderlands, 1945-1989,” forthcoming in Journal of Modern History: 1-24.
15. O. Vidlakova, Landscape and Man in Socialist Czechoslovakia (Prague: Orbis, 1977), 62-80.
16. Raymond Dominick, "Capitalism, Communism and Environmental Protection: Lessons from the German Experience," Environmental History, 3, no. 3 (July 1998): 311-32. 
17. Alf Ludtke, ed., The History of Everyday Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 3-30.
18. Jan Palmowski, “Building an East German Nation: The Construction of a Socialist Heimat, 1945-1961,” Central European History 37, no. 3 (2004): 365-399.
19. Gyorgy Litvan, ed.  The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (New York: Longman, 1996), entire.
20. “2000 Words” in Robin Alison Remington, ed., Winter in Prague: Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 196-207.
21. Vaclav Havel, Living in Truth (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1990), 36-122, 136-157.
22. Charter 77, “Let the People Breathe,” East European Reporter, vol. 2, no. 4 (1987): 15-20.
23. György Konrád, Antipolitics : an essay, 1st ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 91-101, 113-116, 133-147, 191-207, 227-233.
24. Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), ix-xlii, 2-24, 76-99, 134-148, 160-168.
25. Timothy Garten Ash, “Does Central Europe Exist?” in George Schopflin and Nancy Wood, eds., In Search of Central Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 191-215.
26. Michael Waller, “The Ecology Issue in Eastern Europe: Protest and Movements,” Journal of Communist Studies 5, no. 3 (1989): 303-328.
27. Barbara Jancar-Webster, “The East European Environmental Movement and the Transformation of East European Society,” in Environmental Action in Eastern Europe, ed. Barbara Jancar-Webster (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), 192-219.
28. Judit Galambos, “An International Environmental Conflict on the Danube: The Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dams,” in A. Vari and P. Tamas, eds., Environment and Democratic Transitions, 176-226.
29. Frank Pohl, Protest Against Environmental Pollution in Northern Bohemia, RFE Research 13,3 (21 January 1988): 49-53.
30. Duncan Fisher, “The Emergence of the Environmental Movement in Eastern Europe and Its Role in the Revolutions of 1989,” in Environmental Action in Eastern Europe, ed. Barbara Jancar-Webster (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), 192-219.
31. Barbara J. Falk, The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe : Citizen Intellectuals and Philosopher Kings (Budapest ; New York: Central European University Press, 2003), 313-364.