Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule by Kevin McDermott , Matthew Stibbe (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 163 already generated in thisfield.Overall, though, Ilic has produced an interest ingvolume based on important and original research, with a welcome turn to regional history.The collection re-opens debate on significant topics, remind ing us thatwe stillhave a longway to go in our attempts to understand the scope and nature of Stalin's Terror. Department of History MiriamDobson University of Sheffield McDermott, Kevin and Stibbe, Matthew (eds). Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges toCommunist Rule. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2006. xiv + 210 pp. Notes. Index. ?19.99: $29.95 (paperback). Revolution and Resistance inEastern Europe is a new collection which seeks to give a succinct reassessment of the crises of Communist rule and its final demise in the light of new archival research and post-Communist historio graphy. The collection divides into three sections: 1) the early crises in the Communist regimes of the late 1940s and early 1950s, covered in chapters on the Soviet-Yugoslav split;working class protest in theGDR in 1953 and the events of 1956 in Poland and Hungary; 2) the contrasting experiences of Communist regimes to the 1970s and 1980s,which comprises case studies of Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland and 3), assessments of the 'revolutions of "89"', inCzechoslovakia, theGDR, Hungary and Poland. In some cases, as with Dennis Deletant's discussion of Ceau?escu's Romania or Kieran Williams's analysis of Czechoslovak 'normalization', contributions distil exten sive research already published elsewhere. In other instances, contributions by younger scholars engage with more specific issues for the first time. James Krapfl, for example, analyses shiftingnarratives of revolution during Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution in terms of archetypical literary genres. RevolutionandResistance inEastern Europe succeeds admirably in itsprincipal objective of offering an accessible, up-to-date research-based overview of the decline and fall of key East European Communist regimes. In general, the contributions add subtlety and complexity to our understanding of the period rather than challenging dominant interpretations head-on. Deletant, for example, notes that despite the image of Romania as a passive, compliant and atomized society, contrasting with the rebellious nations of Central Europe, pockets of armed resistance did exist and there were recurrent outbreaks of industrial and popular protest. However, although courageous individual dissidents did speak out against the regime and therewas a small element ofHungarian language samizdat, the broader truth thatRomania lacked a politically minded intellectual opposition capable of thinking through the Communist experience is confirmed. Similarly,Williams points out that the fragmented evidence we have of Czechoslovak public attitudes under Communism suggests considerable interest in politics, despite massive disengagement from the politics of the regime and outward social passivity. The collection's only real weakness is arguably what itcould, but does not, address. First, the book's focus on regime crises and socio-political flashpoints 164 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 2OO9 is a somewhat conservative one. Almost two decades after the collapse of Communism, it seems surprising that the freeing up of research conditions should not have resulted in greater consideration of theday-to-day functioning of regime and society during 'normal' times.Of the pieces in the collection only Williams's critical consideration of 'normalization' touches on such themes. Second, beyond the familiar pairing of Hungary and Poland in Johanna Granville's chapter on 1956 and Nigel Swain's discussion of their 'negotiated revolutions' in 1989, there is little effective comparison. The editors' introduction offers a fairly standard four-fold typology of forms of resistance to Communist rule: armed struggle, popular protest, intellectual dissent and within-system effortsat reform. But their argument that, beyond this, national diversity precludes further effortsat generalization is not fully convincing. Some phenomena highlighted, such as, for example, the role of working class protest in puncturing regime stability in cases as diverse as the GDR, Romania and Poland, clearly invite comparative discussion. Similarly, Tony Kemp-Welch's conclusion ? a solid but somewhat out-of-place reflection on the relative importance of Soviet and Western policy towards Communist Eastern Europe ? also misses the opportunity for a more searching cross-national perspective. Finally, as the foreword by former Czech ambassador to the UK (and historian) Pavel Seifter notes, inmuch of contemporary Central and Eastern Europe memories...