Proměny diktatury v proměnách pohraničí
The Transformation of a Dictatorship in the Transformation of the Border Areas

Summary/Abstract: Mrňka, Jaromír. Svéhlavá periferie: Každodennost diktatury KSČ na příkladu Šumperska a Zábřežska v letech 1945–1960. Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2015, 218 pp., ISBN 978-80-87912-34-8.The title of this publication translates as ‘The stubborn periphery: Everyday life under the dictatorship of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, as seen in the examples of the Šumperk and Zábřeh districts from 1945 to 1960’. According to the reviewer, it demonstrates how much a regional perspective can contribute to the research of important historical topics. The author, according to the reviewer, endeavours to explain the transformations at the regional level in governing and in the operation of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in connection with the transformation of the border areas from the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the 1960s, using the examples of the districts of Zábřeh and Šumperk in north-west Moravia. The author focuses on local society and their mentality in its ethnic and social diversity. By contrast, the reviewer finds the depiction of imperious rule by directive to be superficial, although, admittedly, this was not the author’s focus.

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