This course aims to provide an introduction to oral history using the historical phenomena of the Cold War with special emphasis at ex-communist countries such as Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany, Soviet Union, and China and also actors of Western leftist groupings. Most histories emphasize major political events or structures of economic development. Professor Donald A. Ritchie, the author of the influential book Doing Oral History, once explained the core of the discipline in these telling words: we do not do oral history to confirm what we already know, but rather to question what we consider to be supposedly clear. So, our main goal will be entirely different from the usual perspectives on Cold War: we will avoid major narratives and attempt to understand the structures and meaning of the historical subjectivity of so-called „ordinary people“, living under these oppressive regimes. How was life beyond the Iron Curtain for them? In which terms they had conceptualized their life experience? How did they relate to people, ideas, and material objects from the West? Oral history understands „ordinary people“ to be much more than just „onlookers“ to the actions of major historical actors.

This course aims to provide an introduction to oral history using the historical phenomena of the Cold War with special emphasis at ex-communist countries such as Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany, Soviet Union, and China and also actors of Western leftist groupings. Most histories emphasize major political events or structures of economic development. Professor Donald A. Ritchie, the author of the influential book Doing Oral History, once explained the core of the discipline in these telling words: we do not do oral history to confirm what we already know, but rather to question what we consider to be supposedly clear. So, our main goal will be entirely different from the usual perspectives on Cold War: we will avoid major narratives and attempt to understand the structures and meaning of the historical subjectivity of so-called „ordinary people“, living under these oppressive regimes. How was life beyond the Iron Curtain for them? In which terms they had conceptualized their life experience? How did they relate to people, ideas, and material objects from the West? Oral history understands „ordinary people“ to be much more than just „onlookers“ to the actions of major historical actors.

THE COURSE OF LECTURES

4 October 2023
1) Introduction — Cold War experience through the lens of cultural and oral history
- Alistair Thompson, „Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,“ The Oral History Review 34/1 (2006): 49–70.

18 October 2023
2) USSR — The Gulag: survival and exile
- Gheith, Gulag Voices, Chapter 8 - Enumerated Units, p. 133–150.

25 October 2023
3) USSR — The cynical generation: Brezhnev years and détente
- Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers, Introduction, p. 3-15, Chapter 3 — Unconscious agents of change - Soviet Childhood Creates the Cynical Generation, p. 120–168.

1 November 2023
4) USSR — „How thirty people can share an apartment?“ - everyday communal living
- Messana, Soviet Communal Living, Introduction, p. 1–5. Chapters 1, 10, 14, 23, 25.- 
- Steven E. Harris, "I know all the Secrets of my Neighbors: The Quest for Privacy in the Era of the Separate Apartment,", in Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Borders of Socialism. Private Spheres of Soviet Russia, p. 171–190. 

8 November 2023
5) USSR — Notebooks of Evgeniia Kiseleva
- Irina Paperno, "The Notebooks of the Peasant Evgeniia Kiseleva: The War Separated Us Forever", in Irina Paperno, Stories of the Soviet Experience - Memories, Diaries, Dreams (Cornell UP: Ithaca and London, 2009): II/2, p. 118–158.

15 November 2023
6) Uchronic dreams — the post-WWII experience of communist militants in Italy
- Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, chapter 6, "Uchronic Dreams: Working-Class Memory and Possible Worlds."

22 November 2023
7) China — one girl's experience of the Cultural Revolution
- Ye Weili and Ma Xiaodong, Growing Up in The People’s Republic, Foreword, Chronology of major events, Introduction, Chapters 3, 4, and 5.

29 November 2023
8) Czechoslovakia I — the short-lived dream of the Prague Spring of 1968 and its aftermath
- Zounek et al. “You have betrayed us for a little dirty money!” The Prague Spring as seen by primary school teachers

6 December 2023
9) Czechoslovakia II — The birth of the Czechoslovak "normalization"
- Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe, edd., Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe in the Era of Normalisation 1969–1989 (Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, 2022)
- Chapter 2 (Building the Normalisation Panorama 1968–1969), Chapter 3 (The Ideological Face of Normalisation: Socialist Modernity and the 'Quiet Life').

13 December 2023
10) Czechoslovakia III — Social control during Czechoslovak "normalization"
- Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe, edd., Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe in the Era of Normalisation 1969–1989 (Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, 2022)
- Chapter 6 (Czechoslovak Security Service During Normalisation: The Appearance of Success), Chapter 9 (Shaping 'Real Socialism': The Normalised Conception of Culture).

20 December 2023
11) Czechoslovakia IV — an oral history of everyday life during "normalization"
- Miroslav Vaněk, Pavel Mücke, Velvet Revolutions. An Oral History of Czech Society (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2016).
Introduction, and Chapters 2 (Transforming the Family in Socialism) and 6 (The Meaning of Free Time: Work, Family, and Leisure).

3 January 2024
12) Written semestral test — first term
More terms for the written semestral test will be provided during January and February

Requirements to pass the course:

- at least 75% attendance
- written semestral test with four open questions, covering the topics discussed. Each answer can be awarded 0-3 points.
Test grading: 12-10 points = excellent ("1"), 9-7 points = very good ("2"), 6-5 points = good "3", less than 5 points = fail ("neprospěl/a")

Grade composition
- attendance 10%
- written semestral test 90%