post-socialism

The Normativity of a Nation: A Case Study of Slovene Historians in Early Post-socialism

Konovšek,Tjaša

This paper focuses on an issue many would consider a minor episode in Slovene historiography. A public discussion took place on the pages of Delo, one of the central Slovene newspapers in 1993, where some of the most prominent historians debated the relationship between the nation, politics and history, eventually roughly establishing two different world-views: one connected to past experiences and the other focused on the unknown of the future.

The Genesis of Political Distrust Towards the “Sixty-Eighters” in Czech Politics Over the Course of 1989

Andělová, Kristina

This article focuses on the genesis of political distrust against the so-called sixty-eighters—former reform communists—after 1989, outlining in detail the political trajectories of the Prague Spring communist actors. These politicians—the so-called socialist opposition—represented an important part of the Czechoslovak democratic opposition in the 1970s and 1980s. Even though many of the reform communists also stood at the inception of Charter 77, non-communist dissent was politically distrustful of the socialist opposition, centred around the journal Listy.

The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club in the PostCommunist Czechoslovak Book Market

Loučová, Petra

In the final issue of the clandestine Lidové noviny from December 1989, Václav Havel bid farewell to the newspaper’s samizdat era in his “Goodbye samizdat” editorial: “Goodbye samizdat Lidové noviny, goodbye conspiracies, goodbye interrogations! Hello printer, hello new readers, hello freedom!” A few months later the press began to report about an extraordinary project by the Liberated Samizdat Club and its promise to literally “return to samizdat” by self-publishing the first editions of previously unpublished books.

Space, Paper, Transition/ality at Bolzanova 7. The Dissolution of the Czech Samizdat Scene and the Growth of Zine Culture in the 1990s

Tharp, Martin

The present contribution takes a relatively unconventional angle for its investigation of the abrupt shift in Czech unofficial journalistic culture from severely repressed samizdat before November 1989 to significant social force in the first years of the subsequent decade. It takes as its locus the Prague office building at the address Bolzanova 7, a former Czech Rail property assigned to the samizdat-based independent journalistic agency Informační servis at the end of 1990.

Music Samizdat as Zines? The Case of “Ot Vinta” from Soviet Latvia

Daugavietis, Jānis

The conceptual problem this article aims to research is how zines (of the Western or “the first world”) and music samizdat (of socialist countries or “the second world”) should be analysed. Thus far, they have been regarded as separate phenomena; however, do these two forms of underground literature differ so greatly that they should be analysed using different theoretical approaches? The subject of the paper, От Винта (Ot Vinta), is a Russian-language music samizdat from the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic which was published in the late Soviet period.

Self-publishing and Building Glocal Scenes: Between State Socialism and Neoliberal Capitalism

Michela, Miroslav
Šima, Karel

In this article we introduce the theme of special issue focusing on sel-publishing activities In Central and Easter Europe from 1980s to 2000s. The articles presented in this issue offer an interdisciplinary view on the history of independent publishing in both the late socialist and post-socialist periods. We would like to enrich the scholarly debate beyond the dichotomies of communism/capitalism, socialism/post-socialism, East/West and samizdat/fanzine, respectively.

Why Fanzines? Perspectives, Topics and Limits in Research on Central Eastern Europe

Šima, Karel
Michela, Miroslav

While we strive to develop existing research on fanzines in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), this article provides an introduction to the discussion about of fanzines and the specific historical contexts of CEE. This thematic issue aims to open a debate about CEE subcultures and alternative-press practices in the context of the relationship between the local and the global in contemporary history.

Czech Sci-fi Fanzines in the Era of Late Socialism and Early Post-socialism

Kudláč, Antonín

Fanzines have been among the most significant means of communication for the subculture of fans and “users” of the fantastic arts, so-called sci-fi (SF) fandom, since the birth of the genre. This is also the case in Czechoslovak (later Czech and Slovak) fandom, for which fanzines primarily represented the activities of SF clubs. The community of Czechoslovak fans mostly belonged to the “grey zone” of late socialist society, where fandom members were more or less tolerated.

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