This book explores the role of coercion in the relationship between the citizens and regimes of communist Eastern Europe. Looking in detail at Soviet collectivisation in 1928-34, the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Polish Solidarity Movement of 1980-84, it shows how the system excluded channels to enable popular grievances to be translated into collective opposition; how this lessened the amount of popular protest, affected the nature of such protest as did occur and entrenched the dominance of state over society.

Drawing on archival sources from Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Romania and Bulgaria, Perceptions of Society in Communist Europe considers whether and to what extent communist regimes cared about popular opinion, how they obtained their information, and how it helped them implement and maintain their rule. Contrary to popular belief, communist regimes sought to legitimise their domination with minimal resort to violence in order to maintain their everyday power. This entailed a permanent negotiation process between the rulers and the ruled, with public approval of governmental policies becoming key to their success. By analysing topics such as a Stalinist musical in Czechoslovakia, workers' letters to the leadership in Romania, children's television in Poland and the figure of the secret agent in contemporary culture, as well as many more besides, Muriel Blaive and the contributors demonstrate the potential of social history to deconstruct parochial national perceptions of communism. This cutting-edge volume is a vital resource for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates studying East-Central European history, Stalinism and comparative communism.

This book examines how the process of remembering Stalinist repression in Romania has shifted from individual, family, and group representations of lived and witnessed experiences characteristic of the 1990s to more recent and state-sponsored expressions of historical remembrance through their incorporation in official commemorations, propaganda sites, and restorative and compensatory measures. Based on fieldwork dealing with Stalinist repression and memorialization, together with archival research on the secret police (Securitate), it adopts an interdisciplinary approach to reveal the resurfacing of particular themes. As such it draws on concepts from sociology, political science, and legal studies, related to memory, justice, redress, identity, accountability, and reconciliation. A study of competing narratives concerning the meaning of the past as part of a struggle over the legitimacy of the post-communist state, Repression, Resistance, and Collaboration in Stalinist Romania 1944–1964 combines memory studies with a transitional justice approach that will appeal to scholars of sociology, heritage and memory studies, politics, and law.

This volume provides new material on the different developments of opposition groups and dissidence in various Communist countries in Eastern and Central Europe. It significantly contributes to and further develops sociological and historical insights into the development of protest and dissent within this region.

This wide-ranging collection of essays, newly available in paperback, is the first book in English to examine the impact of Stalinist terror on Eastern Europe in the years 1940 to 1956. Covering the Baltic states, Moldavia, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, the authors investigate terror both ‘from above’, in the form of elite purges and show trials, and ‘from below’ in the guise of large-scale arrests and deportations of ordinary people. Key questions addressed include the relative importance of Soviet influence versus ‘local’ factors; the persecution of particular groups, such as ‘kulaks’, church leaders, the middle-class intelligentsia and members of non-communist left-wing parties; cases where repression was more, or conversely less, intense than elsewhere; and the relevance of key events such as the Tito-Stalin split of 1948, the Rajk trial of 1949 and the Slánský trial of 1952.

It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.