Format:
XIV, 536 S.
,
21 cm
ISBN:
0903425017
Series Statement:
SSEES occasional papers 46
Content:
In more than forty chapters, "The Phoney Peace" treats the cultural and political history of Poland, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. Most of the chapters are based on the most recent scholarship and newly available archive material. Subjects covered include antisemitism, the beginnings of Socialist Realism, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and communist land reform. This is the first book to focus on the institutional and cultural transition in the late 1940s. The book is concerned with the brief period in Central European history after World War Two which now looks like a respite between two forms of totalitarianism: a respite, and a phoney peace. Except for émigrés who returned from Moscow or the West and except for resistance fighters, most people had somehow or other been implicated at least passively in the survival of occupation or the local Fascist regimes. After the war, suspicion was the order of the day, and suspicion could be attached to anyone, even resistance fighters, except to those men and women who had survived exile in the USSR. This book studies primarily the impact of the war on post-war politics and culture, and the manner in which the occupying powers together with indigenous forces determined cultural developments even before the final communist victory in 1948 or 1949. In more than forty chapters, The Phoney Peace, analyses different aspects of the cause of unease or unease itself. What the book discovers is that, with the exception of Western Germany and, to a degree, Austria (where the Communist Party was spectacularly unsuccessful), it was hardly a period of hope. Very few indeed regretted the military defeat of Nazism, but soon after the inhabitants of most of Central Europe realised that they had fallen into the Soviet sphere of influence and joy at liberation from Nazism or Fascism began to diminish. Very quickly it became evident that the war had not changed Stalin. His more liberal attitude to the Church and the West had been simply a survival tactic. What did change was the geopolitical situation in Central Europe, to Stalin's advantage.
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
,
"... book comprises a selection of papers, now in revised form, presented at a conference entitled Another Transition. Politics and Culture in Central Europe, 1945-1949" - Preface
Language:
English
Subjects:
History
,
Political Science
,
Sociology
Keywords:
Osteuropa
;
Politik
;
Kultur
;
Aufsatzsammlung
;
Geschichte 1945-1949
;
Ostmitteleuropa
;
Politik
;
Kultur
;
Aufsatzsammlung
;
Geschichte 1945-1949
;
Osteuropa
;
Politik
;
Kultur
;
Geschichte 1945-1949
;
Ostmitteleuropa
;
Politik
;
Kultur
;
Geschichte 1945-1949
;
Konferenzschrift
;
Aufsatzsammlung
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