Hidden Transcripts” and Microhistory as a Comparative Tool

Two Case Studies in Communist Czechoslovakia

Bibliographic Data

ID6185885
AuthorsMuriel Blaive (0000-0002-8015-4362, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public SpheresAustria, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume40
Issue1-2
Pages74-96
Publication date2013-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEast Central Europe (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-3037 • E-ISSN: 1876-3308
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/18763308-04001007
OpenAlexW2058719630
LanguageEN
References cited7

This article applies James Scott’s anthropological analysis of domination practices to the field of Czechoslovak communist studies. In the first part, the article retraces the epistemology, as well as the use and abuse, of the term “totalita(rianism)” in the Czech public sphere in relation to the communist past. In the second part, it contrasts the “totalita” theory to the results of two oral, microhistorical studies that investigated life under communism: the first one was undertaken in the Czech town of České Velenice at the border to Austria, the second in the Slovak town of Komárno at the border of Hungary. Through their answers, the interviewees expose the current history politics practiced in Prague as a political discourse that has little in common with everyday practices of communist rule. Far from presenting themselves as unilateral heroes or victims, the interviewees leave no doubt to the fact that the “border between good and bad” passed within each and every individual—or as Václav Havel put it, people did not support or oppose the system, they became the system

Communism · Communist state · Czech · Everyday life · Microhistory · Political science · Politics · Relation (database) · Slovak · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · Law · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub