The Sovietization of Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on the Postwar Period (review)

Even if the concept of Sovietization is a bit tired and worn, the moment is a propitious one to revisit the many dimensions of the imposition of Soviet-style institutions, culture, politics, and "life itself " on the countries of Eastern Europe that fell under Moscow's sway after World War II. Part of the story is what is called "self-Sovietization," the process by which East European leaders and bureaucrats for their own reasons and on their own initiative modeled their behavior and policies on those of their Soviet "big brothers." "To learn from the Soviet Union means to learn how to be victorious," went the famous East German mantra. E. A. Rees, one of the editors of the volume under review, does a particularly good job in the introduction of breaking down Sovietization into its many component parts. However, the essays in the volume, some better, some not quite so good, generally do not seize the possibilities at hand for engaging in multiple archival research in Eastern Europe and Russia. They therefore tend to tell us much more about the particular time, place, and subject in Eastern Europe—and as such do offer "new perspectives on the postwar period," be it the Czechoslovak auto industry (Valentina Fava) or the origins of communist Hungarian historiography (Péter Apor)—than about the process of Sovietization itself.

The collection also suffers a bit, as do many edited volumes of this sort, from a catch-as-catch-can approach to what is included. The book begins with a general piece by Tarik Cyril Amar on Sovietization as "civilizing mission" in western Ukraine, although the bulk of the volume focuses on East-Central Europe, where the problems of Sovietization have some similarities to but are essentially quite different from those of territories considered part of the Soviet Union. The book includes sections on Technological Sovietization, Consumerism and Leisure, Sovietized Rituals, Sovietization of Religion, and the Sovietization of Historiography, all interesting and important subjects. But why are these subjects included and not others? Within the sections are very specific, though quite interesting, essays. In the section on religion, for example, we find a chapter about religious denominations in Romania in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Anca Maria Sincan) and another about the Communists and Catholics in Slovenia and Yugoslavia (Matja Rezek). There seems to be no principle for selecting the topics.

The remaining essays in the volume, which might appeal to individual readers, are as follows: Matthias Uhl on Sovietization and "missile-ization" of the Warsaw Pact; Marcello Anselmo on market research in East Germany in the 1960s and 1970s; David Crowley on amateur film and photography in Poland and East Germany; Sibylle Mohrmann on images of Russians in postwar Soviet films in Berlin; Balazs Apor on the cult of Mátyás Rákosi in Hungary; Petr Roubal on the Czechoslovak "Spartikiads"; Árpád von Klimó on the Sovietization of Hungarian historiography in the early 1950s; and Maciej Gorny on postwar Czechoslovak and East German historiography.

A couple of essays deserve special mention. Roman Krakovsky's fascinating piece on changing itineraries of the May Day ritual in Czechoslovakia tells an intricate story about the symbolic meaning of parade routes and the dilemma of crowd control. A particularly important moment in his discussion is the decision by the authorities in 1974 to move the May Day procession route from the center of Prague to the Letna esplanade to ensure their control over the crowd and the space. This is a fine example of microhistory that illuminates the larger problems of Communist rule. Jan C. Behrends's excellent essay on the League of Polish-Soviet Friendship during the Stalinist period more directly tackles the problems of Sovietization by using the archives of the friendship society to reconstruct its many problems in attracting Polish adherents. The aborted postwar attempt by Moscow to develop a new Sovietized version of pan...