| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: a_2 In his interpretatively conceived essay, the author attempts to elaborate on existing studies of the Communist notion of time, using Czechoslovak, East German, and Polish source to examine how the Communist concept of time changed during the period of de-Stalinization. In doing so, he assumes that the critical year of 1956 cannot be viewed only as the beginning of the downfall of the Communist system, but also as the birth of a new epoch with its own specific concept of time. The settling of accounts with Stalinism started by Nikita Chrushchev shook the concept of “iron laws of historical evolution” and strengthened the notion of randomness and irregularity of history. This in turn reinforced the authenticity of various historical players who no longer had to act in accordance with the “great history”. In his analysis, the author distinguishes between two levels of Communist language: binding ideological texts and statements of leaders, as well as texts of party propaganda and historiography, and their modifications in the everyday ideological language practiced, in particular, at meetings of regional, district, and company-level part organizations. Using this material, the author presents several hypotheses concerning the notion of “post-Stalinism”, to be used as a potential starting point of new thinking about the continuity and turning points in the history of Communism. The first of them is a disintegration of the notion of linear time and a strengthening of cyclic elements, which the author calls a “hybridization of time”. |
