Abstract
Paulina Bren's book is a groundbreaking cultural analysis of everyday life under communism in Czechoslovakia after 1968. It is a compact, cohesive, and entertaining account of domestic TV soap operas' role as mediator between a firm but concerned regime and an obedient but wary population. Based on communist party and TV archives, communist newspapers, and secondary literature, Bren's study offers a new narrative of “normalized” (post-1968) Czechoslovakia after Prague Spring's “socialism with a human face” was irreversibly crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion. She challenges the political tale of dissent and repression that is commonplace in the historiography despite its evident discrepancy with everyday life in all its banality. She rejects the victimization complex prompted by the armed intervention and instead casts post-1968 history along new lines. Bren introduces ordinary people as fully legitimate social actors, redefines Czech politics as an interaction between regime elites and the people (TV viewers),...
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