Undergraduate Program in Central European Studies
(UPCES)
CERGE-EI and the School of Humanities at Charles University
Politických vězňů 7, 110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic
Tel. : +420 224 005 201, +420 224 005 133, +420 224 005 208,
Fax : +420 224 005 225
Website: http://upces.cerge-ei.cz/
The Rise and Fall of Communism in Central
Europe (Communists and Communist Ideology)
Lecturer: Jan Hanousek
Email: [email protected]
Outline of the course:
Why do so many people still support communist ideas? Why were totalitarian regimes so
strong, and yet fell apart relatively quickly and suddenly? This course will examine the
various dimensions of the communist society and ideology. The primary text used will be
Milan Kundera’s famous novel, The Joke, which depicts the rise of communism in 1948 and
its demise in the sixties. Through this text the following topics will be analyzed in detail:
Communist ideology, folklore, religion, economy, political trials, repression, education,
socialistic realism and cult of communist heroes, among others. Guest speakers will also talk
about their own experience with communism and communist ideology. The program will be
relatively flexible to allow for guest speakers.
Assessment and Grading
1. Class attendance – 15%
2. Active class participation
(including short commentaries/presentation on assigned topics) – 25%
3. Reflection papers, readings plus discussions – 30 %
4. Final paper – 30%
Reflection paper(s) are due in the middle of the course. Final papers (maximum length 3,000
words) are due in week 12.
A brief sketch of the topics covered:
Week 1: Reading and discussing major text of communist ideology Manifesto of the
Communist Party
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848, available on-line
at:
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Read parts I and II carefully (I: Bourgeois and Proletarians and II: Proletarians and
Communists). You can skip part III.
See also the movie “Animal farm” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047834/)
Europe after 1945, Effect of Soviet liberation of the Czechoslovakia.
Week 2: Read part 1 of Kundera’s book (Ludvik).
Folklore and its use by communists. The hands of the Communists. Folklore is one of
the most powerful propaganda ... folklore to strengthen communism. Additional
reading on Folklore and Defense Educational Act (for example:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/538177) . Folklore versus Jazz. [Guess speaker!]
Week 3: Early communism in Central and Eastern Europe. Czechoslovakia and Eastern
Europe after 1948. Fascination by communist ideas. Fast growing communist party (numbers
of communist party members). 20th party general assembly - Decay from fascination to
cynics.
The victims of the period – independent farmers, war fighters from West army, former
middle class (lawyers, small businessmen, priests).
The Joke, Part 2 – Helena: will discuss interesting phenomena. Let me use The Joke
quotation as a motivation for one line of discussions: “It's as if the Party was a human
being...to confide in at a time when I have nothing to say to anyone," the desperately lonely
Helena confesses. She cannot stand the thought of having her life split in two -- by admitting
that the party (and thus her life over the past 20 years) was inhuman and thereby being forced
to adopt a new set of values. In Helena, Kundera has set forth the main psychological blocks
at work in the neo-Stalinist mind.
Week 4: Communist carnivals May Day, Great October Socialistic Revolution, Victorious
February (lantern parade) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%27_Day],
Role of carnivals – revolutionary (contra revolutionary), a way to change the things for a few
days. Sport carnivals like Spartakiáda were also used for a mass gymnastics displays
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_gymnastics) which were held every five years at the
Strahov Stadium in Prague, Czechoslovakia, when the country was under Communist rule.
The first event of this name was held, however, already in 1921 (Sokol), and its initiator Jiří
Chaloupecký is credited as the inventor of the name[
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEOAy-emrmk (with subtitles),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g31XyMCl9o&feature=related]
Week 5: Collectivization, nationalization, ownership under socialism
Week 6: Communist oppression: Book (and movie) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, [Cerni baroni (Black barons) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103934/]
Week 7: Communist culture and Socialistic realism, Socialistic realism: Will discuss its
roots, comparison with Nazi arts, etc. Cult of communist leaders.
http://www.thirdreichruins.com/kunsthaus1.htm
Week 8: Songs, jokes and communist humor. [Use of satire in communist propaganda –
Dikobraz and Krokodil (magazines)] , radio Yerevan jokes, cynics of (anti) communist
humor.
Humor as tiny contra-revolution, humor as a way to resist.
Samizdat (i.e., the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state, esp.
formerly in the communist countries of Eastern Europe).
Week 9: Cult of communist heroes. For example, Fucik, brigades of socialistic work. As a
motivation we will read a copy of the original TIME article (1935) about a famous soviet
hero of labor, Stakhanov.
Week 10: Dissent and it history. First contra-revolutions. Will also discuss differences
between communist manifesto and anticommunist pamphlets and proclamations. [reading of
Chapter 77, anti-chapter 77, 2000 words, etc.]. Guest speaker on history and evolution of
dissent (Jan Sokol).
Week 11: Religion and communist ideology. Similarities, clashes. Party and the state. AntiSemitism in communist parties, (before processes-show trials), visit of the Institute for the
study of Totalitarian regimes, Educational system and brain washing.
Week 12: Political trials and repression. Heliodor Píka; Milada Horáková; Rudolf Slánsky
(Guest speaker).
Week 13: Communist economy, economy of shortage, Fall of the communism in CEE
countries. Sudden collapse?
Week 14: Past dependency. Communism in a post-communist country.
Course Readings (besides The Joke and One Day…)
Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless,@ sections I-VIII, XI, and XVI. [reserve: DJK50
.P68 1985]
OR, if you have already read Havel, read instead:
Jacques Rupnik, ATotalitarianism Revisited, in John Keane, ed., Civil Society and the State
(Verso, 1988), pp. 263-289.
Selected parts from:
Friedrich and Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Harvard, 1965).
Joseph Rothschild, The Return to Diversity, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1993), ch. 3-5.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, ch. 5 and passim.
Gale Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism (Oxford, 1991).
Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (Oxford, 1993).
Failed and Aborted Changes: Hungary (1956) and APrague Spring@ (1968)
Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc, ch. 10.
Charles Gati, Hungary and the Soviet Bloc, ch. 6.
Rodden, John 2009. Socialist Heroes in East German Schoolbooks, Society, 46:2, 168-174,
Doi: 10.1007/s12115-008-9184-3
Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism, ch. 19-21.
Zajda Joseph, 2009. Teachers and the Politics of History School Textbooks, in International
Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching, Springer International Handbooks of
Education, 2009, Volume 21, 5, 373-387, DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-73317-3_24
The Danger of Humor: GDR Jokes A-C," Making the History of 1989
Ben Lewis, 2006. Hammer & tickle. Prospect magazine, 20th May 2006 — Issue 122.
Christie Davis - Jokes and Their Relation to Society pp. 63-85
Oleg V. Khlevniuk - The history of the Gulag : from collectivization to the great terror pp.954
George Hodos - Show trials : Stalinist purges in Eastern Europe, 1948-1954
Steiner, Peter, 2000. Deserts of Bohemia: Czech Fiction and Its Social Context (Ithaca:
Cornell U.P., 2000);
Steiner, Peter, 2008. “On Samizdat, Tamizdat, Magnizdat and Other Strange Words Difficult
to Pronounce,” Poetics Today, 29:4 (Winter 2008), pp. 613-28.
Steiner, Peter 1998. "Poetics of a Political Trial: Working People vs. Rudolf Slánský and His
Fellow Conspirators," Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal, no. 1, 1998, pp.
69-135; abbreviated version "Justice in Prague, Political and Poetic: Some Reflections on the
Slánský Trial (with Constant Reference to Franz Kafka and Milan Kundera)," Poetics Today
21:4 (Winter 2000), pp. 653-79.
Steiner, Peter, 1994. "Ironies of History: The Joke of Milan Kundera," Fiction Updated:
Theories of Fictionality, Narratology, and Poetics, ed. C. Mihailescu, et al. (Toronto: U. of
Toronto P., 1996), pp. 197-212; abridged version in Literature & Opposition, ed. Ch. Worth,
et al. (Clayton: Monash U.P., 1994), pp. 135-51.
Bryan J. Dickerson, The Liberation of Western Czechoslovakia 1945
Documents of Soviet-American relations / edited by Harold J. Goldberg. Publisher: Gulf
Breeze, FL : Academic International Press, 1993- , Vol. 5. Especially: Immediate Response
of US to Czechoslovak Crisis. US Ambassador in Prague to Secretary of State. 26 February
1948 (298).
US Ambassador in Prague to Secretary of State. Dated April 30 1948. (309)