Making Sense of Dictatorship

Martin Sabrow was from 2004 to 2021 Director of the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam and Professor of Recent and Contemporary History at Humboldt University, Berlin.Ana Kladnik is Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana.Dr Celia Donert is University Lecturer in 20th Century Central European History, since c. 1900 at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.

• List of FiguresList of AcronymsForewordPavel Kolář and Michal KopečekEditors’ NoteAna Kladnik and Celia DonertPART I. Sinnwelt and Eigen-SinnSocialism as Sinnwelt: Communist Dictatorship and its World of Meaning in a Cultural-Historical PerspectiveMartin SabrowNeither Consent nor Opposition: Eigen-Sinn, or How to Make Sense of Compliance and Self-Assertion under Communist DominationThomas LindenbergerPART II. Authorities and Domination Policeman Nicolae: The Story of One Man’s Life and Work in the Socialist Republic of Romania (1960–89)Ciprian CirnialaThe East German Reporting System: Normality and Legitimacy Through BureaucracyHedwig RichterLate Communist Elites and the Demise of State Socialism in Czechoslovakia (1986–89)Michal PullmannPART III. Everyday Social Practices and Sinnwelt Local Self-Governance, Voluntary Practices, and the Sinnwelt of Socialist VelenjeAna KladnikModern Housekeeping Worlds; or, How Much is Thirty Percent Really? Eigensinnige Consumer Practices and the Hungarian Trade Union’s “Washing Machine Campaign” of 1957–58 Annina GagyiovaSingle Mothers, Lonely Children: Polish Families, Socialist Modernity, and the Experience of Crisis of the Late 1970s and 1980sBarbara Klich-Kluczewska“Since Makarenko the Time for Experiments has Passed”: Peace, Gender, and Human Rights in East Berlin during the 1980sCelia DonertPART IV. Intellectual and Expert Worlds and (De-)LegitimizationProblems with Progress in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia: The Example of Most, North BohemiaMatĕj SpurnýAuthentic Community and Autonomous Individual: Making Sense of Socialism in Late Socialist HungaryPéter AporThe “Will to Publicity” and its Publicists: Curating the Memory of Czechoslovak SamizdatJonathan LarsonDissident Legalism: Human Rights, Socialist Legality, and the Birth of Legal Resistance in the 1970s Democratic Opposition in Czechoslovakia and PolandMichal KopečekContributorsTranslatorsIndex

"Vsak izmed prispevkov, ki jo sestavljajo, na izviren in svojstven način razrešuje napetost med empirijo in teoretsko zastavljenim okvirom. A vendar je tisto, zaradi česar monografija najbolj izstopa, skupno osnovno razumevanje problematike, prisotno pri vseh avtorjih: v zgodovinopisju je malo prostora za črno-bele slike in mnogo prostora za raziskovanje različnosti, nians in nenehno spreminjajočih se pogledov."https://ojs.inz.si/pnz/article/view/4051