A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 by Padraic Kenney posits the idea that the fall of the communist regimes in Central Europe during 1989 was sudden. That over a three and a half year period “from the post-Chernobyl demonstrations in Poland in the spring of 1986 to the Velvet Revolution in Prague…new issues, new movements, and a new generation altered the relationship among state, opposition, and society.” Kennedy depicts this time as a carnival due to its varied “almost bewildering pluralism of movements.” The vast amount of these movements had similiare goals in mind i.e. more freedom or human rights, but the strategies, diversity, and creative initiative of the groups and individuals created an everlasting dilemma for each regime. Intellectual “humanistic critiques of state-socialist regimes” helped foster the motivation for action. Whether the issues were political or social ranging from homelessness, temperance, workers councils, cultural tradition, rock music bans, economic, nationalism to name a few, created a carnival like atmosphere in their opposition according to Kennedy. They were neither “angry nor desperate” and “broke the rules of politics” such as the antics of the Orange Alternative. Each group seemed to operate on there own initially using samizdat (self publishing) and many found support or konkretny (people who knew how to to organize a demonstration) through connections to different venues and groups. For instance the Catholic Church in Poland was a major force as a starting point for many groups through education, networking, coordination, and organization. Kennedy seems to assert that these many groups through there individual and sometime collected disregard of regime normalizations collectively was more influential to the downfall of socialism than say one large mass movement directly contesting the communist system.
Kennedy’s hypothesis differs from Stokes in that Stokes asserts that the beginning of the collapse of Eastern Europe block countries was the Prague Spring in 1968 and carried over the 20 years until the final collapse in 1989. Stokes builds his from there and follows the evolution of struggle to 1989 when the block countries transition to more democratic societies. Stokes is more organized in his structure and does not focus on as many different organizations or movements as Kennedy. Kennedy’s state his book is more of an oral history as can be seen by his source material.
I find Kennedy’s book to depict the 80’s as a huge grass roots movement in Eastern Europe. It reminds me of growing up in that era listening to hardcore/punk underground music in the U.S. and how the topics these groups brought up in their songs about the government seem similar to the Eastern block countries. I guess I should say complained about the government in their songs. The punk movement in the U.S. was all underground it seemed to me. Plus all the show flyers I remember from the 80’s were self published xerox copies. Ahh! The 80’s.
Kenney, Padraic. A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 2002.
Stokes, Gail. The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Collapse and Rebirth in Eastern Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
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