This course introduces the traditional and very modern theoretical views on non-democratic regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in the second half of 20th century, confronted with historical and political experience of this part of Europe after the year 1945 until the present.
The end of the Second World War and following “iron curtain” across Europe, which divided the continent for a long 44 years, was the period of Soviet Union domination in Central and Eastern Europe and the decades-long rule of communist regime in this part of the world. Political science most often defines these kinds of regimes as “totalitarian”, however, the reality is more complex, with many variations and “specific paths” (Yugoslavia, Romania), and the totalitarian “core” of most communist regimes including former Czechoslovakia during the whole period of Soviet dominance, is questioned by some authors.
The year 1989, “annus mirabilis”, the year of the downfall of the Soviet Union and communistic regimes across Central and Eastern Europe, was however not the end of non-democratic rule in the whole region. In those unstable times, when the hopes were high and democracy was not established, new leaders came to power and created very specific non-democratic regimes; Mečiar´s short rule in Slovakia , autocratic regimes that played the main role in Balkan wars in the 90s (Milošević in Serbia, Tudjman in Croatia) , Kuchma´s Ukraine and one of the last and still surviving non-democracies in Europe (Belarus under Lukashenka). The theory of non-democratic regimes and its tools, combined with knowledge of modern history and nowadays reality of concrete countries, will help us to analyze and characterize these repressive and bizarre regimes, a rarity in today’s Europe.
In the first two weeks of the course, we will focus on most influential theories of non-democratic regimes, which will be the basis for our following political science analysis of concrete countries. During this period, students will have time to choose the concrete regime from the list of topics (Week 3.-Week 12.) and make a short oral presentation (about 20 minutes) about the chosen subject at the beginning of each lesson
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