Dissidents in Communist Central Europe

Kacper Szulecki is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway. He was previously a Dahrendorf Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin, Germany), a visiting researcher at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (Florence, Italy) and a researcher at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Cultural Foundations of Integration’, University of Konstanz (Konstanz, Germany).

• 1 Introduction.- 2 Who are the Dissidents?.- 3 Marxist neophytes and democratic heretics.- 4 Dissent Gains Names and Faces.- 5 Between Prague and Helsinki: setting the transnational stage for dissidence.- 6 The birth of the dissident figure, 1976-77.- 7 Molding the dissident figure.- 8 The looping effect of the dissident figure: resistance and performance.- 9 Generalization of the dissident figure.- 10 Conclusion: can dissidentism explain post-dissident politics?.

“Dissidents in Communist Central Europe is a welcome addition to the field of dissent studies and one to be recommended to all scholars with an interest in the history and practice of dissidence.” (James P. Brown, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 73 (3), March 22, 2021)“Kacper Szulecki’s book is an extremely inspiring and thought-provoking read. It can be considered one of the most important books ever published on various forms of opposition to communism. Moreover, it also provides important impulses for understanding political conflicts in the modern, interconnected world and the movements currently fighting against dictatorships.” (Jan Olaszek, H-Soz-Kult, hsozkult.de, December 8, 2020)“One of the meritsof the book is that it acknowledges the absence of women in the historiography of dissident movements in East Central Europe. As Szulecki observes, this was due not only to the persistent machismo within the opposition circles, but also to the fashioning of the dissident figure, which was mainly constructed by the Western media, public, and scholars.” (Una Blagojević, Hungarian Historical Review, Vol. 9 (2), 2020)“The book is an inspiring and engaging read. It gives much needed analytical perspective on dissidents. It also prompts us to re-think conventional historical narratives on postwar Central Europe that we have often learned from dissidents.” (Aspen Review, Issue 2, 2020)