Political Terror in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union
Author: Robert Kent Evanson
Publisher:
Published: 1979
Total Pages: 606
ISBN-13:
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The Prague Spring 1968
Author: Jarom¡r Navr til
Publisher: Central European University Press
Published: 1998-01-01
Total Pages: 656
ISBN-13: 9789639116153
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"In addition to revealing the events surrounding the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is the first book to document a Cold War crisis from both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is based on unprecedented access to the previously closed archives of each member of the Warsaw Pact, as well as once highly classified American documents from the National Security Council, CIA, and other intelligence agencies." "Presented in a highly readable volume, the book offers top-level documents from Kremlin Politburo meetings, multilateral sessions of the Warsaw Pact leading up to the decision to invade, transcripts of KGB-recorded telephone conversations between Leonid Brezhnev and Alexander Dubcek." "To provide a historical and political context, the editors have prepared essays to introduce each section of the volume. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information for the reader." "The editors have a unique perspective to offer to foreign audiences since they are members of the commission appointed by Vaclav Havel to investigate the events of 1967-1970."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Black Book of Communism
Author: Stéphane Courtois
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 920
ISBN-13: 9780674076082
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the accomplishments of communism around the world. The book is the first attempt to catalogue and analyse the crimes of communism over 70 years.
Empire of Friends
Author: Rachel Applebaum
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2019-04-15
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 1501735586
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends, Rachel Applebaum shows how the Soviet Union simultaneously promoted a policy of transnational friendship with its Eastern Bloc satellites to create a cohesive socialist world. This friendship project resulted in a new type of imperial control based on cross-border contacts between ordinary citizens. In a new and fascinating story of cultural diplomacy, interpersonal relations, and the trade of consumer-goods, Applebaum tracks the rise and fall of the friendship project in Czechoslovakia, as the country evolved after World War II from the Soviet Union's most loyal satellite to its most rebellious. Throughout Eastern Europe, the friendship project shaped the most intimate aspects of people's lives, influencing everything from what they wore to where they traveled to whom they married. Applebaum argues that in Czechoslovakia, socialist friendship was surprisingly durable, capable of surviving the ravages of Stalinism and the Soviet invasion that crushed the 1968 Prague Spring. Eventually, the project became so successful that it undermined the very alliance it was designed to support: as Soviets and Czechoslovaks got to know one another, they discovered important cultural and political differences that contradicted propaganda about a cohesive socialist world. Empire of Friends reveals that the sphere of everyday life was central to the construction of the transnational socialist system in Eastern Europe—and, ultimately, its collapse.
The Cambridge History of Communism
Author: Norman Naimark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2017-09-21
Total Pages: 700
ISBN-13: 9781107133549
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe second volume of The Cambridge History of Communism explores the rise of Communist states and movements after World War II. Leading experts analyze archival sources from formerly Communist states to re-examine the limits to Moscow's control of its satellites; the de-Stalinization of 1956; Communist reform movements; the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance; the growth of Communism in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on world Communism. Chapters explore the cultures of Communism in the United States, Western Europe and China, and the conflicts engendered by nationalism and the continued need for support from Moscow. With the danger of a new Cold War developing between former and current Communist states and the West, this account of the roots, development and dissolution of the socialist bloc is essential reading.
Political Terrorism
Author: A.J. Jongman
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-28
Total Pages: 700
ISBN-13: 1351498614
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhile there is no easy way to define terrorism, it may generally be viewed as a method of violence in which civilians are targeted with the objective of forcing a perceived enemy into submission by creating fear, demoralization, and political friction in the population under attack. At one time a marginal field of study in the social sciences, terrorism is now very much in center stage. The 1970s terrorist attacks by the PLO, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Japanese Red Army, the Unabomber, Aum Shinrikyo, Timothy McVeigh, the World Trade Center attacks, the assault on a school in Russia, and suicide bombers have all made the term terrorism an all-too-common part of our vocabulary.This edition of Political Terrorism was originally published in the 1980s, well before some of the horrific events noted above. This monumental collection of definitions, conceptual frameworks, paradigmatic formulations, and bibliographic sources is being reissued in paperback now as a resource for the expanding community of researchers on the subject of terrorism. This is a carefully constructed guide to one of the most urgent issues of the world today.When the first edition was originally published, Choice noted, This extremely useful reference tool should be part of any serious social science collection. Chronicles of Culture called it a tremendously comprehensive book about a subject that any who have anything to lose--from property to liberty, life to limbs--should be forewarned against.
Terror And Communist Politics
Author: Jonathan R Adelman
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-09
Total Pages: 380
ISBN-13: 1000314359
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom the Great Purges in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s to the bloody elite purges in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s to the mass terrorism in Cambodia in the middle 1970s, the role of terror and the secret police in Communist politics has been powerful and highly visible. This book reviews the surprisingly sparse literature on the subject and presents new studies of secret-police forces and the political use of terror in the USSR, China, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Cambodia. The focus of each country study is the nature and extent of internal terror and repression, the range of external intelligence functions, and the effect of secret-police interference in internal policymaking processes. The book ably fills a void in the literature by providing needed case studies as well as a theoretical framework for understanding secret-police activity.
The Soviet Union and Terrorism
Author: Roberta Goren
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2024-04-12
Total Pages: 249
ISBN-13: 104000637X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Soviet Union and Terrorism (1984) examines the extent of Soviet involvement in international terrorism, and the aims and objectives of Soviet foreign policy. It looks at the evidence of changing Soviet attitudes to terrorism from 1917 to the 1980s evidenced in official and semi-official pronouncements, and it brings together evidence from the field of terrorist operations which points to a high degree of Soviet involvement. The Soviet Union is shown to be playing a dangerous game, sponsoring activities which it cannot hope to control, and leading to effects which it cannot predict. Nevertheless, it continues to play because it gains from the political and military disruption to the countries affected by terrorist activities.
The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation
Author: Bradley F. Abrams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 380
ISBN-13: 9780742530249
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe material effects of World War II, in combination with Eastern Europe's disappointingly undemocratic interwar history, placed radical social change on the postwar agenda across the region and shaped the debates that took place in immediate postwar Czech society. These debates adopted both a cultural form, in struggles over the meaning of the recent past and the nation's position on the East-West continuum, and a directly political form, in battles over the meaning of socialism. The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation examines the most important and politically resonant fields of historical and cultural debate in Czech society immediately after World War II. Bradley Abrams finds that communist public figures were largely successful in controlling debate over the nation's recent past--the interwar First Republic and the experiences of Munich and World War II--and over its location on the East-West continuum. This success preceded and was mirrored in the struggles over the political issue of the times: socialism. The communists engaged their political foes in the democratic socialist and Roman Catholic camps, and, surprisingly, found significant support from a major Protestant church. Abrams's careful reading of major publications re-creates a postwar mood sympathetic to radical social change, questioning the standard view of the communists' rise to power. This book not only contributes to the specific literature on Czech history, but also raises questions about the relationship between war and radical social change, about the communist takeover of the region, and about the role of intellectuals in public life.
Democracy's Defenders
Author: Norman L. Eisen
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2020-04-07
Total Pages: 250
ISBN-13: 0815738226
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA 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.
