Czechoslovakia played an important role within the Soviet bloc, yet its history remains underresearched. This monograph blends historical analysis of the superpowers’ foreign policies with an assessment of their impact on Czechoslovakia and its position within the Soviet bloc. The book thereby places Czechoslovakia on the map of Cold War history, i.e. the era of “mutually assured destruction” that lasted almost half a century. It provides a lucid introduction to some milestones in international Cold War history in their relation to Czecho-Slovak history. The book’s novel contribution is to explain Czechoslovakia’s domestic situation during the Cold War from the “outside.” Drawing on extensive source materials of Slovak, Czech, American, and Russian provenance, it provides a more comprehensive understanding of postwar Czecho-Slovak history while also contributing to general knowledge about the nature and impact of the Cold War.
Price: $50.00
Pages: 430
Publisher: Ibidem Press
Imprint: Ibidem Press
Series: Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
Publication Date:
28 May 2019
Trim Size: 8.27 X 5.83 in
ISBN: 9783838212852
Format: Paperback
This book presents a comprehensive survey covering all important milestones from the early post-World War II period until the first half of the 1970s from the perspective of a ‘smaller’ country in the Soviet bloc caught in the vortex of the Cold War. It will be a valuable source of information for English-reading students of Central Europe’s recent history.
Slavomír Michálek is director of the Institute of History at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. He is author or editor of, among other books, San Francisco 1945 (2015), Gustáv Husák (2013), 20 rokov samostatnej Slovenskej republiky (20 Years of Independent Slovakia, 2013), Za hranicou sloboda (Behind the Border, there Is Freedom, 2013) and Dubček (2018).
Michal Štefanský worked at the Institute of Military History in Bratislava as well as the Institutes of Political Science and History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In 1989, he was a member of the government commission for the historical analysis of the years 1967–1970. He is author of, among other books, Studená vojna a Slovensko 1946–1954/1955–1962 (The Cold War and Slovakia, 2008/2012) and Krízy režimov sovietskeho bloku (The Crises of the Soviet Bloc Regimes, 2007).
