‘Watch out for politics’: exit, voice and other strategies of discontent in late Czech socialism

Abstract

The manner in which mass loyalty in socialist and other post-totalitarian societies is maintained is still a matter of discussion. To contribute to the debate this article studies strategies of discontent in late Czech socialism as described in 60 oral history narratives of three groups of narrators (communist functionaries, dissidents and ordinary people). Drawing on a modified version of Hirsch’s exit–voice–loyalty model, the study reveals an important characteristic of the expression of discontent in this post-totalitarian society – the strategic distinction between political and non-political behaviour. Labelling discontent as either a political or non-political matter was a key trait of power plays.

Keywords:

• socialism
• post-totalitarian society
• strategy of discontent
• content analysis
• narrative
• oral history

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Centre of Oral History at Czech Academy of Sciences for providing us with oral-biographical interviews. We would also like to thank Lída Svobodová for the cooperation and help during the research.

Notes

1. More detailed information about the corpus of biographical interviews could be found on website of Centre of Oral History (http://www.coh.usd.cas.cz/en). Most of the interviews were published (Vaněk and Urbášek 2005, Vaněk 2009).

Additional information

Funding

Funding. This work was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic [grant number P404/10/0790].