The Origins Of Postcommunist Elites : From Prague Spring To The Breakup Of Czechoslovakia Hardback

by Gil Eyal

Part of the Contradictions of Modernity series

Hardback

Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks

Description

How is it that Czechoslovakiaâ€™s separation into two countries in 1993 was accomplished so peacefullyâ€”especially when compared with the experiences of its neighbors Russia and Yugoslavia?

This book provides a sociological answer to this questionâ€”and an empirical explanation for the breakup of Czechoslovakiaâ€”by tracing the political processes begun in the Prague Spring of 1968. Gil Eyalâ€™s main argument is that Czechoslovakiaâ€™s breakup was caused by a struggle between two fractions of what sociologists call the â€œnew class,â€ which consisted primarily of intellectuals and technocrats.

Focusing on the process of polarization that created these two distinct political elites, Eyal shows how, in response to the events of the ill-fated Prague Spring, Czech and Slovak members of the â€œnew classâ€ embarked on divergent paths and developed radically different, even opposed, identities, worldviews, and interests.

Unlike most accounts of postcommunist nationalist conflict, this book suggests that what bound together each of these fractionsâ€”and what differentiated each from the otherâ€”were not national identities and nationalist sentiments per se, but their distinctive visions of the social role of intellectuals.