Empire of friends : Soviet power and socialist internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia / Rachel Applebaum.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Applebaum, Rachel, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Socialism and culture--Czechoslovakia.

Socialism and culture.

Czechoslovakia--Civilization--Soviet influences.

Czechoslovakia.

Soviet Union--Relations--Czechoslovakia.

Soviet Union.

Czechoslovakia--Relations--Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (290 pages)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Abbreviations

Note on Translation and Transliteration

Introduction. A Tank in Prague

Chapter 1. Culture Wars

Chapter 2. "The Land of Our Destiny"

Chapter 3. The Legacy of the Liberation

Chapter 4. Socialist Internationalism with a Human Face

Chapter 5. Tourists on Tanks

Chapter 6. The Normalization of Friendship

Conclusion. The Tank Turns Pink

Notes

Works Cited

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Feb 2020)

ISBN:

9781501735585

1501735586

OCLC:

1043068297