A second society

a theoretical framework

pp. 157-176

in: Harald G. Skilling, Samizdat and an independent society in Central and Eastern Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1989

Abstract

The crushing of the Prague Spring by military force was a turning point in Soviet and East European politics, and also in the efforts, both in the East and West, to interpret the nature of communist systems.¹ During the 1960s the concept of "totalitarianiim", which had dominated thinking in the 1940s and 1950s, gave way to alternative models of communist society. The term "totalitarianism" was hardly used in Central and Eastern Europe itself, as intellectuals and political activists were encouraged by the decline of total control over the individual and society and were hopeful that a pluralistic system might emerge as a result of actions taken within the system. Simultaneously, in the West many scholars discarded the totalitarian concept and advanced a plethora of alternative paradigms better able, it was thought, to explain the change and diversity within the communist world since 1956. The violent interruption of what seemed almost a revolutionary change in Czechoslovakia produced a resurgence of the concept of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and to some degree a backlash in Western political science by those who felt that their conception of the realities was vindicated by events.