REVIEWS 789 example, the name of the nation, which was changed in 1993 from Muslim to Bosniak — and its recent dynamics are thoroughly covered here. Izetbegović’s Party of Democratic Action (SDA) as the force that promoted Islam as the key element in a newly emerging national identity is still commanding the majority, if fragile, allegiance of Bosnia’s Muslims, but is simultaneously broadening the fissures between Bosnia’s diverse communities. Finally, Bougarel introduces some clarity with his precise terminological rendering of different streams of thought among Bosnian Muslim thinkers, identifying traditionalists, reformists, revivalists, pan-Islamists and contemporary neo-Salafists, although the use of pan-Islamism after it was internationally abandoned begs further clarification. The book is equipped with numerous useful maps and tables. UCL SSEES Bojan Aleksov McDermott, Kevin and Stibbe, Matthew (eds). Eastern Europe in 1968: Responses to the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact Invasion. Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature, Cham, 2018. xxiii + 311 pp. Abbreviations. Glossary. Chronology. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £89.99. This collection of essays offers a timely scholarly response to the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring. Although the topic has been studied extensively and from a variety of perspectives, comprehensive assessments in English that compare responses to the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 in the countries of Communist Eastern Europe are rare. The editors have also made a conscious choice to keep the focus of the volume limited to individual countries and refrain from approaching the subject from a global history perspective. This sets the work apart from recent histories of the ‘global 1968’, yet it makes significant contributions to our understanding of the repercussions of the Prague Spring in the individual countries of Communist Eastern Europe. While the volume does not present a global history of 1968, it does highlight the international — and to an extent, transnational — aspects of the Prague Spring. At the same time, it also presents new knowledge on the subject, while offering a comprehensive account of the key events in the various countries in question. As could be expected from an edited volume, the approaches of individual authors differ to a significant extent. Some focus on specific events or themes, whilst others offer a more general overview of the impact of the Prague Spring in the respective countries. Also, some chapters explore new aspects of the topic, whereas others present a synthesis of existing research on the SEER, 97, 4, OCTOBER 2019 790 subject. Although the scholarly approaches the contributors adopt are varied, the volume remains remarkably consistent, and there are several common themes that link the various chapters which analyse country-specific themes. The coherence of the volume is ensured by the attempt of individual authors to address some key issues in their chapters, including the reactions in the respectivecountriestotheWarsawPactinvasion,socialresponsestothePrague Spring and/or the military invasion, as well as the legacies of 1968. The focus on individual countries demonstrates that while the events of 1968 were connected to international — and, indeed, global — developments, the reactions of the countries of Communist Eastern Europe to the crisis were different, and the impact of the invasion on domestic social and political affairs were by no means uniform in the region. As the case studies on Hungary, Romania, Poland, the GDR and so on, show, the backlash to the Prague Spring was entangled with diverse political agendas in the individual countries. In Romania, for example, non-intervention in the military invasion to suppress the Prague Spring stabilized Ceaușescu’s rule, whereas in Hungary the invasion contributed to the moderation of the reformist agenda of the Kádár regime. The peculiar, and somewhat paradoxical situation of the GDR — the country that supported the invasion enthusiastically, but did not invade Czechoslovakia in the end, out of fear to evoke memories of the German invasion of the Sudetenland — is also highlighted in the volume, although a more extensive assessment of political debates about the East German non-intervention — maybe even a separate chapter — was needed. Some of the stories presented in the volume are relatively well-known — Poland’s reaction, Kádár’s hesitation, Ceaușescu’s appeal to Romanian nationalism, and so on — but the book presents new material and explores...
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Jun 1, 2024
Gil Karlos Ferri + 1
Open Access
