After Utopia

The Husák government that came into power after the suppression of the Prague Spring formulated the goal of restoring " normality" in Czechoslovakia. It revoked prior reforms and initiated widespread " cleansing measures" and repression. Most notably, however, it lacked a clear vision for the future. The contributions in this volume show that the 1970s and 1980s were nevertheless not a time of complete stagnation. Efforts at restoration and modernization frequently existed simultaneously and counteractively. The essays discuss this contradictoriness and the often invisible dynamics of the normalization period exemplarily. A further key topic is the normalization’s echo in literature, remembrance culture, and historiography.