Velvet Revolutions

Velvet Revolutions PDF Author: Miroslav Vanek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199342733
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 brought about the collapse of the authoritarian communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia, marking the beginning of the country's journey towards democracy. Though members of the elite have spoken about the transition to democracy, the experiences of ordinary people have largely gone untold. In Velvet Revolutions, Miroslav Vanek and Pavel Mücke examine the values of everyday citizens who lived under so-called real socialism, as well as how their values changed after the 1989 collapse. Based on 300 interviews, Vanek and Mücke give voice to everyone from farmers to managers, service workers to marketing personnel, manual laborers to members of the armed forces. Compelling and diverse, the oral histories touch upon the experience - and absence - of freedom, the value of family and friends, the experience of free time, and perceptions of foreign nations. Data from opinion polls conducted between 1970 and 2013 factor into the book's analysis, creating a well-rounded view of the ways in which popular thoughts, trends, and attitudes changed as Czech society transitioned from communism to democracy. From this rich foundation, Velvet Revolutions builds a multi-layered view of Czech history before 1989 and during the subsequent period of democratic transformation.

Velvet Revolutions

Velvet Revolutions PDF Author: Miroslav Vanek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199342733
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 brought about the collapse of the authoritarian communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia, marking the beginning of the country's journey towards democracy. Though members of the elite have spoken about the transition to democracy, the experiences of ordinary people have largely gone untold. In Velvet Revolutions, Miroslav Vanek and Pavel Mücke examine the values of everyday citizens who lived under so-called real socialism, as well as how their values changed after the 1989 collapse. Based on 300 interviews, Vanek and Mücke give voice to everyone from farmers to managers, service workers to marketing personnel, manual laborers to members of the armed forces. Compelling and diverse, the oral histories touch upon the experience - and absence - of freedom, the value of family and friends, the experience of free time, and perceptions of foreign nations. Data from opinion polls conducted between 1970 and 2013 factor into the book's analysis, creating a well-rounded view of the ways in which popular thoughts, trends, and attitudes changed as Czech society transitioned from communism to democracy. From this rich foundation, Velvet Revolutions builds a multi-layered view of Czech history before 1989 and during the subsequent period of democratic transformation.

Velvet Revolutions

Velvet Revolutions PDF Author: Miroslav Vanek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199342741
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 brought about the collapse of the authoritarian communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia, marking the beginning of the country's journey towards democracy. Though members of the elite have spoken about the transition to democracy, the experiences of ordinary people have largely gone untold. In Velvet Revolutions, Miroslav Vanek and Pavel Mücke examine the values of everyday citizens who lived under so-called real socialism, as well as how their values changed after the 1989 collapse. Based on 300 interviews, Vanek and Mücke give voice to everyone from farmers to managers, service workers to marketing personnel, manual laborers to members of the armed forces. Compelling and diverse, the oral histories touch upon the experience - and absence - of freedom, the value of family and friends, the experience of free time, and perceptions of foreign nations. Data from opinion polls conducted between 1970 and 2013 factor into the book's analysis, creating a well-rounded view of the ways in which popular thoughts, trends, and attitudes changed as Czech society transitioned from communism to democracy. From this rich foundation, Velvet Revolutions builds a multi-layered view of Czech history before 1989 and during the subsequent period of democratic transformation.

The Czech Republic

The Czech Republic PDF Author: Robert C. Cottrell
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 0791082555
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Get Book

Book Description
Looks at the history of the borders in the Czech Republic as a result of political, territorial, and economic disputes, and discusses the Velvet Revolution.

Lost Unicorns of the Velvet Revolutions:Heterotopias of the Seminar

Lost Unicorns of the Velvet Revolutions:Heterotopias of the Seminar PDF Author: Miglena Nikolchina
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823242994
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book

Book Description
Concerned with the institution of "the seminar," a meeting for philosophical face-to-face oral discussion outside of the confines of Communist academia, which evolved into social movements on the street in the Eastern Europe of the 1980s and 1990s.

Putin's ʻpreventive Counter-revolutionʼ

Putin's ʻpreventive Counter-revolutionʼ PDF Author: Robert Horvath
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415694213
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book

Book Description
This text examines the preventive counter-revolution undertaken by the Putin leadership in response to political instability - the colour revolutions - in the former post-Soviet republics and their potential to destabilise Russia itself.

Armenia’s Velvet Revolution

Armenia’s Velvet Revolution PDF Author: Anna Ohanyan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178831719X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
In April 2018, Armenia experienced a remarkable popular uprising leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan and his replacement by protest leader Nikol Pashinyan. Evoking Czechoslovakia's similarly peaceful overthrow of communism 30 years previously, the uprising came to be known as Armenia's 'Velvet Revolution': a broad-based movement calling for clean government, democracy and economic reform. This volume examines how a popular protest movement, showcasing civil disobedience as a mass strategy for the first time in the post-Soviet space, overcame these unpromising circumstances. Situating the events in Armenia in their national, regional and global contexts, different contributions evaluate the causes driving Armenia's unexpected democratic turn, the reasons for regime vulnerability and the factors mediating a non-violent outcome. Drawing on comparative perspectives with democratic transitions across the world, this book will be essential reading for those interested in the regime dynamics, social movements and contested politics of contemporary Eurasia, as well as policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of democracy assistance and human rights in an increasingly multipolar world.

Democracy's Defenders

Democracy's Defenders PDF Author: Norman L. Eisen
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815738226
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book

Book Description
A behind-the-scenes look at how the United States aided the Velvet Revolution Democracy's Defenders offers a behind-the-scenes account of the little-known role played by the U.S. embassy in Prague in the collapse of communism in what was then Czechoslovakia. Featuring fifty-two newly declassified diplomatic cables, the book shows how the staff of the embassy led by U.S. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black worked with dissident groups and negotiated with the communist government during a key period of the Velvet Revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Soviet rule. In the vivid reporting of these cables, Black and other members of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Prague describe student demonstrations and their meetings with anti-government activists. The embassy also worked to forestall a violent crackdown by the communist regime during its final months in power. Edited by Norman L. Eisen, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014, Democracy's Defenders contributes fresh evidence to the literature on U.S. diplomatic history, the cold war era, and American promotion of democracy overseas. In an introductory essay, Eisen places the diplomatic cables in context and analyzes their main themes. In an afterword, Eisen, Czech historian Dr. Mikuláš Pešta, and Brookings researcher Kelsey Landau explain how the seeds of democracy that the United States helped plant have grown in the decades since the Velvet Revolution. The authors trace a line from U.S. efforts to promote democracy and economic liberalization after the Velvet Revolution to the contemporary situations of what are now the separate nations of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

A Velvet Revolution

A Velvet Revolution PDF Author: John Duberstein
Publisher: Morgan Reynolds Publishing
ISBN: 9781931798853
Category : Czech Republic
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Vaclav Havel spent most of his life as a dissident playwright in Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia. Born in 1936, Havel was a young child during World War II, as the Nazis occupied and brutalized Czechoslovakia. After the war, his country, along with the rest of Eastern Europe, fell under the control of the Soviet Union. A short period of liberalization in 1968, which came to be called the Prague Spring, was quickly ended by a brutal military crackdown. Havel's works, which were mostly protests against totalitarianism written in the form of absurdist drama, were officially banned in 1971. Frustrated by restrictions on his writing, Havel began to direct his anger toward political action. Then, in a climactic event that shocked the world, Czechoslovakia's Communist dictatorship collapsed in 1989 in what became known as the Velvet Revolution, and Havel, the country's most famous dissident, was made president. During a sometimes rocky tenure, Havel worked to bring stability to his country and presided over the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia into two democratic republics. Detailing one of the twentieth century's most unusual but dynamic political figures, this new biography of Vaclav Havel tells his intriguing and inspiring story for a new generation of readers. Book jacket.

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia PDF Author: NA NA
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137079754
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Get Book

Book Description
A decade ago, playwright dissident Václav Havel led an almost bloodless revolution against Czechoslovakia's hardline communist regime. In the years that followed, the country split apart into two independent Czech and Slovak states, each taking radically different paths to reform. This book examines the core issues at work in the last decade, focusing on the political, economic, and philosophical underpinnings of the reform process.

A Cardboard Castle?

A Cardboard Castle? PDF Author: Vojtech Mastny
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155053693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 786

Get Book

Book Description
This is the first book to document, analyze, and interpret the history of the Warsaw Pact based on the archives of the alliance itself. As suggested by the title, the Soviet bloc military machine that held the West in awe for most of the Cold War does not appear from the inside as formidable as outsiders often believed, nor were its strengths and weaknesses the same at different times in its surprisingly long history, extending for almost half a century. The introductory study by Mastny assesses the controversial origins of the "superfluous" alliance, its subsequent search for a purpose, its crisis and consolidation despite congenital weaknesses, as well as its unexpected demise. Most of the 193 documents included in the book were top secret and have only recently been obtained from Eastern European archives by the PHP project. The majority of the documents were translated specifically for this volume and have never appeared in English before. The introductory remarks to individual documents by co-editor Byrne explain the particular significance of each item. A chronology of the main events in the history of the Warsaw Pact, a list of its leading officials, a selective multilingual bibliography, and an analytical index add to the importance of a publication that sets the new standard as a reference work on the subject and facilitate its use by both students and general readers.