Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule

Abstract

This collection of articles by an international group of historians, sociologists and political scientists offers an extremely useful introduction to recent research about the varieties of resistance and revolution that took place in eastern Europe after 1945. It is divided into three roughly chronological sections. The first section focuses on the Soviet-Yugoslav split of 1948, the East German uprising of June 1953, and the 1956 disturbances in Poland and Hungary. The second section looks at the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the rise of Solidarity in Poland, and grass-roots resistance in Romania. The third section examines the series of ‘revolutions’ that rocked eastern Europe in the late 1980s and considers whether or not they deserve that appellation. Almost all of the essays in this volume combine narrative sketches of these major postwar ‘flashpoints’ with overviews of the most recent literature; approximately half present new archival evidence as well. But to what extent do they modify our image of key developments beyond the iron curtain, especially with respect to resistance against Soviet hegemony and communist rule? We now know, for example, that the roots of the 1948 rift between Moscow and Belgrade did not reach as far back in time as the Yugoslavs consistently maintained. According to Leonid Gibianskii, Tito remained a loyal and steadfast Soviet ally and did not incur Stalin's wrath until very shortly before the split was made public in March 1948.