Public spheres in Soviet-type societies PDF Download

Author: Gábor Tamás Rittersporn
Publisher: Peter Lang Pub Incorporated
ISBN: 9783631383278
Category : History
Languages : de
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Der Band versammelt Beiträge zu vielfältigen Erscheinungsformen von Öffentlichkeit in Gesellschaften sowjetischen Typs. Die Tragfähigkeit eines flexiblen Öffentlichkeitsbegriffs wird anhand von Einzelstudien zur Sowjetunion, zu den ostmitteleuropäischen Staaten und zu China erprobt. Es ergibt sich ein heterogenes und vielschichtiges Bild der Ausprägungen und Entwicklungen verschiedener Sphären von Öffentlichkeit. Deutlich wird, daß eine lediglich Defizite aufzeigende Kontrastierung zum bürgerlichen Öffentlichkeitsmodell zur Analyse staatssozialistischer Herrschaft nicht geeignet ist. Die Beiträge des Bandes erschließen zunächst die gesellschaftliche Relevanz von Öffentlichkeiten in Sowjetstaaten aus der Binnenperspektive der vorgestellten Einzelfälle. In einem zweiten Schritt werden in der komparativen Zusammenschau allgemeinere Strukturen von Öffentlichkeit in sowjetischen Systemen in den Blick genommen. The volume tests a flexible terminology that may serve to describe and analyze the notion of public sphere in state socialist dictatorships. A heterogeneous picture emerges from case studies on Soviet, East European and Chinese issues. A closer look makes clear that the public sphere in Soviet-type regimes cannot be understood as merely lacking most of the features associated with the Habermasian model. It is necessary to explore the meaning of public space in different social, political and national contexts to work out a comparative perspective. This perspective may constitute a framework for general conclusions about spheres of public action in Soviet-type societies.

Author: J?rgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745692338
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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This major work retraces the emergence and development of the Bourgeois public sphere - that is, a sphere which was distinct from the state and in which citizens could discuss issues of general interest. In analysing the historical transformations of this sphere, Habermas recovers a concept which is of crucial significance for current debates in social and political theory. Habermas focuses on the liberal notion of the bourgeois public sphere as it emerged in Europe in the early modern period. He examines both the writings of political theorists, including Marx, Mill and de Tocqueville, and the specific institutions and social forms in which the public sphere was realized. This brilliant and influential work has been widely recognized for many years as a classic of contemporary social and political thought, of interest to students and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities.

Author: Václav Štětka
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031544897
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Author: Matt Killingsworth
Publisher: ECPR Press
ISBN: 1907301275
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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As well as promoting debates about liberal democracy, the dramatic events of 1989 also bought forth a powerful revival in the interest of the notion of civil society. This revival was reflected mainly in two broad tracts of literature. The first was primarily focused on the events surrounding the Solidarity movement in Poland and the tumultuous events of 1980-81. The second was concerned with the ‘Velvet Revolutions’ more broadly. Following the events of 1989, there appeared a number of works sharing the common central argument that civil society played a key role in the overthrow of these Communist regimes in 1989

Author: Melanie Ilic
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134023626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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This book examines the social and cultural impact of the 'thaw' in Cold War relations, decision-making and policy formation in the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev. It highlights the fact that many of the reform initiatives generally associated with Khrushchev personally, and with his period of office more generally, often had their roots in the Stalin period both in their content and in the ways in which they were implemented. Individual case studies explore key aspects of Khrushchev's period of office, including the introduction of the 1961 Communist Party Programme and popular responses to it, housing policy, the opening up of the Soviet Union to the West during the 1957 youth festival, public consultation campaigns and policy implementation in education and family law, the boost given to voluntary organisations such as women's councils and the trade unions, the reshaping of the internal Soviet security apparatus, the emergence of political dissent and the nature of civil-military relations as reflected in the events of the workers' uprising in Novocherkassk in 1962. The findings offer an important new perspective on the Khrushchev era.

Author: Manfred Zeller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786725312
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Following Stalin's death in 1953, association football clubs, as well as the informal supporter groups and communities which developed around them, were an important way for the diverse citizens of the multinational Soviet Union to express, negotiate and develop their identities, both on individual and collective levels. Manfred Zeller draws on extensive original research in Russian and Ukrainian archives, as well as interviews with spectators, 'hardcore ultras' and hooligans from the Caucasus to Central Asia, to shed new light onto this phenomenon covering the period from the height of Stalin's terror (the 1930s) to the Soviet Union's collapse (1991). Across events as diverse as the Soviet Union's footballing triumph over the German world champions in 1955 and the Luzhniki stadium disaster in 1982, Zeller explores the ways in which people, against the backdrop of totalitarianism, articulated feelings of alienation and fostered a sense of community through sport. In the process, he provides a unique 'bottom-up' reappraisal of Soviet history, culture and politics, as seen through the eyes of supporters and spectators. This is an important contribution to research on Soviet culture after Stalin, the history of sport and contemporary debates on antagonism in the post-Soviet world.

Author: Sabine Lang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107024994
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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This book investigates how nongovernmental organizations can become stronger advocates for citizens and better representatives of their interests. Sabine Lang analyzes the choices that NGOs face in their work for policy change between working in institutional settings and practicing public advocacy that incorporates constituents' voices.

Author: L. Siegelbaum
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403984549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This fascinating book argues that in Russia the relations between culture and nation, art and life, commodity and trash, often diverged from familiar Western European or American versions of modernity. The essays show how public and private overlapped and shaped each other, creating new perspectives on individuals and society in the Soviet Union.

Author: Robert Hornsby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107311330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Protest, Reform and Repression in Khrushchev's Soviet Union explores the nature of political protest in the USSR during the decade following the death of Stalin. Using sources drawn from the archives of the Soviet Procurator's office, the Communist Party, the Komsomol and elsewhere, Hornsby examines the emergence of underground groups, mass riots and public attacks on authority as well as the ways in which the Soviet regime under Khrushchev viewed and responded to these challenges, including deeper KGB penetration of society and the use of labour camps and psychiatric repression. He sheds important new light on the progress and implications of de-Stalinization, the relationship between citizens and authority and the emergence of an increasingly materialistic social order inside the USSR. This is a fascinating study which significantly revises our understanding of the nature of Soviet power following the abandonment of mass terror.

Author: Gábor Rittersporn
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822980258
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Anguish, Anger, and Folkwaysin Soviet Russia offers original perspectives on the politics of everyday life in the Soviet Union by closely examining the coping mechanisms individuals and leaders alike developed as they grappled with the political, social, and intellectual challenges the system presented before and after World War II. As Gabor T. Rittersporn shows, the "little tactics" people employed in their daily lives not only helped them endure the rigors of life during the Stalin and post-Stalin periods but also strongly influenced the system's development into the Gorbachev and post-Soviet eras. For Rittersporn, citizens' conscious and unreflected actions at all levels of society defined a distinct Soviet universe. Terror, faith, disillusionment, evasion, folk customs, revolt, and confusion about regime goals and the individual's relation to them were all integral to the development of that universe and the culture it engendered. Through a meticulous reading of primary documents and materials uncovered in numerous archives located in Russia and Germany, Rittersporn identifies three related responses—anguish, anger, and folkways—to the pressures people in all walks of life encountered, and shows how these responses in turn altered the way the system operated. Rittersporn finds that the leadership generated widespread anguish by its inability to understand and correct the reasons for the system's persistent political and economic dysfunctions. Rather than locate the sources of these problems in their own presuppositions and administrative methods, leaders attributed them to omnipresent conspiracy and wrecking, which they tried to extirpate through terror. He shows how the unrelenting pursuit of enemies exacerbated systemic failures and contributed to administrative breakdowns and social dissatisfaction. Anger resulted as the populace reacted to the notable gap between the promise of a self-governing egalitarian society and the actual experience of daily existence under the heavy hand of the party-state. Those who had interiorized systemic values demanded a return to what they took for the original Bolshevik project, while others sought an outlet for their frustrations in destructive or self-destructive behavior. In reaction to the system's pressure, citizens instinctively developed strategies of noncompliance and accommodation. A detailed examination of these folkways enables Rittersporn to identify and describe the mechanisms and spaces intuitively created by officials and ordinary citizens to evade the regime's dictates or to find a modus vivendi with them. Citizens and officials alike employed folkways to facilitate work, avoid tasks, advance careers, augment their incomes, display loyalty, enjoy life's pleasures, and simply to survive. Through his research, Rittersporn uncovers a fascinating world consisting of peasant stratagems and subterfuges, underground financial institutions, falsified Supreme Court documents, and associations devoted to peculiar sexual practices. As Rittersporn shows, popular and elite responses and tactics deepened the regime's ineffectiveness and set its modernization project off down unintended paths. Trapped in a web of behavioral patterns and social representations that eluded the understanding of both conservatives and reformers, the Soviet system entered a cycle of self-defeat where leaders and led exercised less and less control over the course of events. In the end, a new system emerged that neither the establishment nor the rest of society could foresee.