Communist Parties Revisited : : Sociocultural Approaches to Party Rule in the Soviet Bloc, 1956-1991 / / ed. by Jens Gieseke, Rüdiger Bergien.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2018
• MitwirkendeR: Bahr, Andrea,; Behrends, Jan C.,; Bergien, Rüdiger,; Boyer, Christoph,; Christian, Michel,; Cohn, Edward,; Dąbek, Krzysztof,; Gieseke, Jens,; Kenney, Padraic,; Kramer, Mark,; Pannen, Sabine,; Rowell, Jay,; Sabrow, Martin,; Titov, Alexander,; Zalewski, Frédéric,
• HerausgeberIn: Bergien, Rüdiger,; Gieseke, Jens,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2018]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (383 p.)

The ruling communist parties of the postwar Soviet Bloc possessed nearly unprecedented power to shape every level of society; perhaps in part because of this, they have been routinely depicted as monolithic, austere, and even opaque institutions. Communist Parties Revisited takes a markedly different approach, investigating everyday life within basic organizations to illuminate the inner workings of Eastern Bloc parties. Ranging across national and transnational contexts, the contributions assembled here reconstruct the rituals of party meetings, functionaries’ informal practices, intra-party power struggles, and the social production of ideology to give a detailed account of state socialist policymaking on a micro-historical scale.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction Communist Parties Revisited: Sociocultural Approaches to Party Rule in the Soviet Bloc, 1956–1991 -- 1 THE PARADOX OF PARTY DISCIPLINE IN THE KHRUSHCHEV-ERA COMMUNIST PARTY -- 2 “IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO ALLOW PAST MISTAKES TO COME AGAIN” Recruitment Policy in the CPCS in the 1970s and 1980s -- 3 BEHIND CLOSED DOORS The Erosion of SED Party Life in the 1980s -- 4 THE SUCCESSIVE DISSOLUTION OF THE “UNCIVIL SOCIETY” Tracking SED Members in Opinion Polls and Secret Police Reports, 1969–1989 -- 5 ON THE WAY TO PARTY PLURALISM? The PZPR and the Reform of the Socialist Party System in 1988–1989 -- 6 COMMUNIST PARTY APPARATUSES AS STEERING ORGANIZATIONS Paths of Development in East Central Europe -- 7 THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE DEPARTMENT OF PARTY ORGANS UNDER KHRUSHCHEV -- 8 TRUE BELIEVERS BECOMING FUNDED EXPERTS? Personnel Profile and Political Power in the SED Central Commitee’s Sectoral Apparatus, 1946–89 -- 9 PATERNALISM IN LOCAL PRACTICE The Logic of Repression, Ideological Hegemony, and the Everyday Management of Society in an SED Local Secretariat -- 10 THE SED BEZIRK SECRETARIES AS BROKERS OF TERRITORIAL INTERESTS IN THE GDR -- 11 THE IDEA OF SOCIAL UNITY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE MECHANISMS OF A TOTALITARIAN REGIME IN THE YEARS 1956–1980 -- 12 FOREIGN POLICYMAKING AND PARTY-STATE RELATIONS IN THE SOVIET UNION DURING THE BREZHNEV ERA -- 13 ERICH HONECKER— THE “LEADING REPRESENTATIVE” A Generational Perspective -- 14 INSIDE THE SYSTEM The CPSU Central Committ ee, Mikhail Gorbachev’s Komanda, and the End of Communist Rule in Russia -- 15 THE IRONIES OF MEMBERSHIP The Ruling Communist Party in Comparative Perspective -- Index