How did political power function in the communist regimes of East Central Europe after 1945? Making Sense of Dictatorship addresses this question with a particular focus on the acquiescent behavior of the majority of the population until, at the end of the 1980s, their rejection of state socialism and its authoritarian world.

The authors refer to the concept of Sinnwelt, the way in which groups and individuals made sense of the world around them. The essays focus on the dynamics of everyday life and the extent to which the relationship between citizens and the state was collaborative or antagonistic. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of life in this period, including modernization, consumption and leisure, and the everyday experiences of “ordinary people,” single mothers, or those adopting alternative lifestyles.

Empirically rich and conceptually original, the essays in this volume suggest new ways to understand how people make sense of everyday life under dictatorial regimes.

Dr Celia Donert is University Lecturer in 20th Century Central European History, since c. 1900 at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.

Ana Kladnik is Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana.

Martin Sabrow was from 2004 to 2021 Director of the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam and Professor of Recent and Contemporary History at Humboldt University, Berlin.

List of Figures
List of Acronyms

Foreword
Pavel Kolář and Michal Kopeček
Editors’ Note
Ana Kladnik and Celia Donert

PART I. Sinnwelt and Eigen-Sinn
Socialism as Sinnwelt: Communist Dictatorship and its World of Meaning in a Cultural-Historical Perspective
Martin Sabrow
Neither Consent nor Opposition: Eigen-Sinn, or How to Make Sense of Compliance and Self-Assertion under Communist Domination
Thomas Lindenberger

PART II. Authorities and Domination
Policeman Nicolae: The Story of One Man’s Life and Work in the Socialist Republic of Romania (1960–89)
Ciprian Cirniala
The East German Reporting System: Normality and Legitimacy Through Bureaucracy
Hedwig Richter
Late Communist Elites and the Demise of State Socialism in Czechoslovakia (1986–89)
Michal Pullmann

PART III. Everyday Social Practices and Sinnwelt
Local Self-Governance, Voluntary Practices, and the Sinnwelt of Socialist Velenje
Ana Kladnik
Modern Housekeeping Worlds; or, How Much is Thirty Percent Really? Eigensinnige Consumer Practices and the Hungarian Trade Union’s “Washing Machine Campaign” of 1957–58
Annina Gagyiova
Single Mothers, Lonely Children: Polish Families, Socialist Modernity, and the Experience of Crisis of the Late 1970s and 1980s
Barbara Klich-Kluczewska
“Since Makarenko the Time for Experiments has Passed”: Peace, Gender, and Human Rights in East Berlin during the 1980s
Celia Donert

PART IV. Intellectual and Expert Worlds and (De-)Legitimization
Problems with Progress in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia: The Example of Most, North Bohemia
Matĕj Spurný
Authentic Community and Autonomous Individual: Making Sense of Socialism in Late Socialist Hungary
Péter Apor
The “Will to Publicity” and its Publicists: Curating the Memory of Czechoslovak Samizdat
Jonathan Larson
Dissident Legalism: Human Rights, Socialist Legality, and the Birth of Legal Resistance in the 1970s Democratic Opposition in Czechoslovakia and Poland
Michal Kopeček

Contributors
Translators
Index