A behind-the-scenes look at how the United States aided the Velvet Revolution
Democracy's Defenders offers a behind-the-scenes account of the little-known role played by the U.S. embassy in Prague in the collapse of communism in what was then Czechoslovakia. Featuring fifty-two newly declassified diplomatic cables, the book shows how the staff of the embassy led by U.S. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black worked with dissident groups and negotiated with the communist government during a key period of the Velvet Revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Soviet rule.
In the vivid reporting of these cables, Black and other members of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Prague describe student demonstrations and their meetings with anti-government activists. The embassy also worked to forestall a violent crackdown by the communist regime during its final months in power.
Edited by Norman L. Eisen, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014, Democracy's Defenders contributes fresh evidence to the literature on U.S. diplomatic history, the cold war era, and American promotion of democracy overseas. In an introductory essay, Eisen places the diplomatic cables in context and analyzes their main themes. In an afterword, Eisen, Czech historian Dr. Mikul s Pesta, and Brookings researcher Kelsey Landau explain how the seeds of democracy that the United States helped plant have grown in the decades since the Velvet Revolution. The authors trace a line from U.S. efforts to promote democracy and economic liberalization after the Velvet Revolution to the contemporary situations of what are now the separate nations of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends, Rachel Applebaum shows how the Soviet Union simultaneously promoted a policy of transnational friendship with its Eastern Bloc satellites to create a cohesive socialist world. This friendship project resulted in a new type of imperial control based on cross-border contacts between ordinary citizens. In a new and fascinating story of cultural diplomacy, interpersonal relations, and the trade of consumer-goods, Applebaum tracks the rise and fall of the friendship project in Czechoslovakia, as the country evolved after World War II from the Soviet Union's most loyal satellite to its most rebellious.
Throughout Eastern Europe, the friendship project shaped the most intimate aspects of people's lives, influencing everything from what they wore to where they traveled to whom they married. Applebaum argues that in Czechoslovakia, socialist friendship was surprisingly durable, capable of surviving the ravages of Stalinism and the Soviet invasion that crushed the 1968 Prague Spring. Eventually, the project became so successful that it undermined the very alliance it was designed to support: as Soviets and Czechoslovaks got to know one another, they discovered important cultural and political differences that contradicted propaganda about a cohesive socialist world. Empire of Friends reveals that the sphere of everyday life was central to the construction of the transnational socialist system in Eastern Europe—and, ultimately, its collapse.
Описание: On 20 August 1968, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, dozens of thousands of tanks and armored vehicles, and hundreds of military aircraft of the Warsaw Pact armed forces invaded Czechoslovakia in an operation code-named Danube. It was the largest military undertaking in Europe since 1945.
Starting with a description of the history of Czechoslovakia, especially after the communist takeover of power in 1948, this volume describes the birth and development of the Prague Spring in 1968 and an attempt to reform the communist system from within. It recounts the hostility this process encountered on the part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR/Soviet Union), and its allies within the Warsaw Pact, and provoked a split in the Kremlin about solutions for the resulting 'Czechoslovak problem'. The crisis that developed throughout the spring and summer of 1968 led to the military intervention.
While paying special attention to the military and strategic aspects of the Czechoslovak crisis, this volume also provides a blow-by-blow account of its impacts upon the Czechoslovak armed forces and the Warsaw Pact. The subsequent military operation - codenamed Operation Danube - is described in all of its components, including the airborne and ground aspects, and the political operation that supported it. Within only 24 hours, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces secured the entire territory of Czechoslovakia, de-facto overrunning the local armed forces in the process. The Czechoslovak population organized nonviolent resistance, thus highlighting the political aspects of the intervention. However, it was hopelessly out of condition to prevent the ultimate downfall of the so-called 'Prague Spring', and the related hopes.
Nevertheless, the application of military power against a popularly-supported political reform marked a turning point in the Cold War, and forever changed the balance of power in Central Europe.
Guiding the reader meticulously through the details of the forces involved, their organization and equipment, Operation Danube offers a uniquely in-depth account of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and is profusely illustrated with more than 100 photos, maps, and exclusive color artworks.
Описание: This collection of interviews, diaries, and scholarly analyses is the first comprehensive look at Russian sentiments in the wake of the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. It features the reflections of Russian soldiers, dissidents, and journalists.
Описание: This collection of interviews, diaries, and scholarly analyses is the first comprehensive look at Russian sentiments in the wake of the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. It features the reflections of Russian soldiers, dissidents, and journalists.
Описание: Across central and eastern Europe after World War II, the newly established communist regimes promised a drastic social revolution that would transform the world at great pace and pave the way to a socialist future. Although many aspects of this utopian project are well known - such as fast-paced industrialisation, collectivisation and urbanisation - the regimes even sought to transform the ways in which their citizens interacted with each other and the world around them. Using a unique analytical model based on an amalgam of anthropology, sociology, history and extensive archival research, award-winning scholar Roman Krakovsky here considers the Czechoslovakian attempt to 'reinvent the world' - 'time' and 'space' included - in this all-encompassing way.
Ranging from WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall, his innovative analysis variously considers the impact of Stakhanovism, the impossible-to-achieve production targets intended to assert socialism's future potential; the attempt to replace Sunday's Christian attributes with socialist ones; and the profound changes brought about to the public and private spheres, including the culture of informing and the ways this was circumvented.
Across a wide range of case studies Krakovsky demonstrates both the far-reaching extent of the communist vision and the inherent flaws and contradictions that gradually destabilised it. This in-depth perspective is vital reading for all scholars of twentieth century history and politics.
Описание: This book analyses the issue of Czech-German relations within Czechoslovakia between 1933 and 1938. Following Adolf Hitler’s accession to the office of Chancellor, the German minority in Czechoslovakia began to progressively mobilise and gradually radicalise such that the majority of them supported the Sudeten German Party in the 1935 elections and played a large part in the end of the First Czechoslovak Republic three years later.
Автор: Vysny Название: The Runciman Mission to Czechoslovakia 1938 ISBN: 0333731360 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780333731369 Издательство: Springer Рейтинг: Цена: 19564.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: Lord Runciman`s mediation in Central Europe provides a sharp insight into British policy on the eve of the Second World War. Without clear objectives - other than to avoid war - his mission did little more than pressure Czechoslovakia for concessions.
Описание: On August 20, 1968, tens of thousands of Soviet and East European ground and air forces moved into Czechoslovakia and occupied the country in an attempt to end the 'Prague Spring' reforms and restore an orthodox Communist regime. The leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev, was initially reluctant to use military force and tried to pressure his counterpart in Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, to crack down. But during the summer of 1968, after several months of careful deliberations, the Soviet Politburo finally decide that military force was the only option left. A large invading force of Soviet, Polish, Hungarian, and Bulgarian troops received final orders to move into Czechoslovakia; within 24 hours they had established complete military control of Czechoslovakia, bringing an end to hopes for 'socialism with a human face.' Dubcek and most of the other Czechoslovak reformers were temporarily restored to power, but their role from late August 1968 through April 1969 was to reverse many of the reforms that had been adopted. In April 1969, Dubchek was forced to step down for good, bringing a final end to the Prague Spring. Soviet leaders justified the invasion of Czechoslovakia by claiming that 'the fate of any socialist country is the common affair of all socialist countries' and that the Soviet Union had both a 'right' and a 'sacred duty' to 'defend socialism' in Czechoslovakia. The invasion caused some divisions within the Communist world, but overall the use of large-scale force proved remarkably successful in achieving Soviet goals. The United States and its NATO allies protested but refrained from direct military action and covert operations to counter the Soviet-led incursion into Czechoslovakia. The essays of a dozen leading European and American Cold War historians analyze this turning point in the Cold War in light of new documentary evidence from the archives of two dozen countries and explain what happened behind the scenes. They also reassess the weak response of the United States and consider whether Washington might have given a 'green light, ' if only inadvertently, to the Soviet Union prior to the invasion.
Автор: P. Vysny Название: The Runciman Mission to Czechoslovakia 1938 ISBN: 134965163X ISBN-13(EAN): 9781349651634 Издательство: Springer Рейтинг: Цена: 12577.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: Lord Runciman`s mediation in Central Europe provides a sharp insight into British policy on the eve of the Second World War. Without clear objectives - other than to avoid war - his mission did little more than pressure Czechoslovakia for concessions.
Автор: Taborsky Edward Название: Communism in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1960 ISBN: 0691625646 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780691625645 Издательство: Wiley Рейтинг: Цена: 13464.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: Czechoslovakia, once considered Central Europe`s model democracy, has been a Soviet satellite since 1948. The Communists now boast that "socialism" has defeated capitalism politically and has surpassed it in production, in living standards, and in social justice. How realistic is this picture of conditions in a country once oriented to the West? Th
Автор: Palovic Zuzana, Bereghazyova Gabriela Название: Czechoslovakia: Behind the Iron Curtain ISBN: 1948181886 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781948181884 Издательство: Неизвестно Рейтинг: Цена: 5516.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание:
Take a journey into the borderland of the red empire, during an ideological battle that saw the world ripped in half. Dare to step into communist Czechoslovakia, where the controlled 'east' and the free 'west' converged at their closest.
This is a story of ordinary people caught up in the midst of the 20th century's greatest political experiment. Through tales only told in whispers, glimpse into the everyday reality of those whose entire universe was ruled by the hammer and sickle.
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