Vortrag
“Comparing European Societies under Communist Rule. A Historian’s Perspective“

The talk is a part of the symposium "Varities of Communism - Comparative Political Perspectives on Temporal and Regional Differences in Socialist Regimes".

Communism as a regime type was invented and defined between 1917 and 1921 in Russia. Its first actual transmissions to other formally independent nation states came about only with the Soviet Union becoming a world power in consequence of the victory over Nazi Germany and with regard to Europe only by way of enforced imposition.

I will discuss the extent to which the soviet model could permeate societies in these “satellites” of the USSR, how the dictatorial rule of communists on site interacted with specific national precedence of modern governance and whether the unfolding diversity of doing communism in East Central Europe in the post-Stalin era should be read as varieties of one communism or rather as yet another prove of its historic failure in Europe.

More details.