Muriel Blaive is currently Elise Richter Fellow at the University of Graz in the Department of Sociology. She was previously advisor to the director for research and methodology and researcher at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (Prague.) She is a socio-political historian of postwar, communist, and post-communist Central Europe, in particular of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. She graduated from the Institut d'études politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris and wrote her PhD in history at Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.
Abstract : Ever since the 1920 Trianon Treaty that dismantled the former Hungarian empire, Komárn... more Abstract : Ever since the 1920 Trianon Treaty that dismantled the former Hungarian empire, Komárno's significance in Slovak and Hungarian symbolic politics has exceeded that of a town merely at the border with the former ruler-nation. Instead, it has represented the entire Hungarian community in Slovakia. On the basis of oral history interviews analyzed against the background of local and state-level politics in Slovakia and in Hungary, this article considers the way Komárno Hungarians and Slovaks perceive themselves in their bi-ethnic environment. It contrasts the local, everyday cohabitation with the instrumentalization of the national question in Budapest and Bratislava. It shows how the continued dynamic development of the bi-ethnic community is undermined by the politicization of the national question, which in itself is seen as a part of the post-communist legacy: as if the fading contours of the physical border after the fall of the Iron Curtain had to be replaced by a symbolic border of language and nationality.
This article applies James Scott's anthropological analysis of domination practices to the field ... more This article applies James Scott's anthropological analysis of domination practices to the field of Czechoslovak communist studies. In the first part, the article retraces the epistemology, as well as the use and abuse, of the term "totalita(rianism)" in the Czech public sphere in relation to the communist past. In the second part, it contrasts the "totalita" theory to the results of two oral, microhistorical studies that investigated life under communism: the first one was undertaken in the Czech town of České Velenice at the border to Austria, the second in the Slovak town of Komárno at the border of Hungary. Through their answers, the interviewees expose the current history politics practiced in Prague as a political discourse that has little in common with everyday practices of communist rule. Far from presenting themselves as unilateral heroes or victims, the interviewees leave no doubt to the fact that the "border between good and bad" passed within each and every individual—or as Václav Havel put it, people did not support or oppose the system, they became the system.
En s’attachant à l’étude d’une ville le long du rideau de fer, cet article jette un nouveau jou... more En s’attachant à l’étude d’une ville le long du rideau de fer, cet article jette un nouveau jour sur les formes de l’adhésion populaire aux régimes socialistes d’Europe de l’Est. En scrutant la frontière dans sa réalité quotidienne, Muriel Blaive montre combien les phénomènes de longue durée ont parfois prévalu en Europe centrale sur la divi- sion Est-Ouest, les dirigeants communistes tchécoslovaques instrumentalisant le nationalisme tchèque et la peur du « danger allemand » pour asseoir leur autorité.
By focusing on a city at the edge of the Iron Curtain, this paper sheds new light on the forms of... more By focusing on a city at the edge of the Iron Curtain, this paper sheds new light on the forms of popular loyalty to the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe. By examining everyday reality along the border, Muriel Blaive shows the extent to which long- lasting phenomena sometimes prevailed in Central Europe over the East-West division, as Czechoslovakian communist leaders exploited Czech nationalism and fear of the “German threat” to establish their authority.
Abstract : Ever since the 1920 Trianon Treaty that dismantled the former Hungarian empire, Komárn... more Abstract : Ever since the 1920 Trianon Treaty that dismantled the former Hungarian empire, Komárno's significance in Slovak and Hungarian symbolic politics has exceeded that of a town merely at the border with the former ruler-nation. Instead, it has represented the entire Hungarian community in Slovakia. On the basis of oral history interviews analyzed against the background of local and state-level politics in Slovakia and in Hungary, this article considers the way Komárno Hungarians and Slovaks perceive themselves in their bi-ethnic environment. It contrasts the local, everyday cohabitation with the instrumentalization of the national question in Budapest and Bratislava. It shows how the continued dynamic development of the bi-ethnic community is undermined by the politicization of the national question, which in itself is seen as a part of the post-communist legacy: as if the fading contours of the physical border after the fall of the Iron Curtain had to be replaced by a symbolic border of language and nationality.
This article applies James Scott's anthropological analysis of domination practices to the field ... more This article applies James Scott's anthropological analysis of domination practices to the field of Czechoslovak communist studies. In the first part, the article retraces the epistemology, as well as the use and abuse, of the term "totalita(rianism)" in the Czech public sphere in relation to the communist past. In the second part, it contrasts the "totalita" theory to the results of two oral, microhistorical studies that investigated life under communism: the first one was undertaken in the Czech town of České Velenice at the border to Austria, the second in the Slovak town of Komárno at the border of Hungary. Through their answers, the interviewees expose the current history politics practiced in Prague as a political discourse that has little in common with everyday practices of communist rule. Far from presenting themselves as unilateral heroes or victims, the interviewees leave no doubt to the fact that the "border between good and bad" passed within each and every individual—or as Václav Havel put it, people did not support or oppose the system, they became the system.
En s’attachant à l’étude d’une ville le long du rideau de fer, cet article jette un nouveau jou... more En s’attachant à l’étude d’une ville le long du rideau de fer, cet article jette un nouveau jour sur les formes de l’adhésion populaire aux régimes socialistes d’Europe de l’Est. En scrutant la frontière dans sa réalité quotidienne, Muriel Blaive montre combien les phénomènes de longue durée ont parfois prévalu en Europe centrale sur la divi- sion Est-Ouest, les dirigeants communistes tchécoslovaques instrumentalisant le nationalisme tchèque et la peur du « danger allemand » pour asseoir leur autorité.
By focusing on a city at the edge of the Iron Curtain, this paper sheds new light on the forms of... more By focusing on a city at the edge of the Iron Curtain, this paper sheds new light on the forms of popular loyalty to the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe. By examining everyday reality along the border, Muriel Blaive shows the extent to which long- lasting phenomena sometimes prevailed in Central Europe over the East-West division, as Czechoslovakian communist leaders exploited Czech nationalism and fear of the “German threat” to establish their authority.
Muriel Blaive, “The Czech Museum of Communism: What National Narrative for the Past?”, in Stephen... more Muriel Blaive, “The Czech Museum of Communism: What National Narrative for the Past?”, in Stephen Norris (ed), Museums of Communism: New Memory Sites in Central and Eastern Europe, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2020, p. 219-245.
Thinking through Transition is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter o... more Thinking through Transition is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy (aswell as the older political traditions), and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.
"It is impossible, after reading this volume, to still give any credit to those who claimed that 1989 was a revolution without ideas, or could not be a revolution because it offered no ideas. We should be grateful that a new generation of scholars—most of whom not burdened by the assumptions and affinities that have inhibited participants and contemporary observers—can look with a cool eye both at the thinking that accompanied radical change and at the sometimes bizarre amalgams that have furnished political language in the last quarter-century in East Central Europe." - Padraic Kenney, Professor of History and International Studies, Indiana University
"This is the most comprehensive and balanced intellectual history so far available of post-communist East Central Europe, and it is particularly instructive on the diversity of the field. The book is essential reading for those who want to know how the multiple transformations of the region were understood from within." - Jóhann P. Árnason, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, La Trobe University,Melbourne
in-the-stadium-of-life-normalization-was-an-olympic-pool-of-murky-waters.html 1/7 Britské listy p... more in-the-stadium-of-life-normalization-was-an-olympic-pool-of-murky-waters.html 1/7 Britské listy plně závisejí na finančních příspěvcích čtenářů. Prosíme, přispějte.
Přinášíme interview s Muriel Blaive (1) pro Institut české levice (IČL) v rámci aktivit věnovanýc... more Přinášíme interview s Muriel Blaive (1) pro Institut české levice (IČL) v rámci aktivit věnovaných 100. výročí Komunistické Strany Československa.
Depuis la fin du vingtieme siecle, les problematiques memorielles occupent dans le debat public u... more Depuis la fin du vingtieme siecle, les problematiques memorielles occupent dans le debat public une place de plus en plus centrale. Les historiens, les ethnologues et les anthropologues ont depuis longtemps developpe des questionnements sur les rapports entre les « lieux de memoire », les constructions identitaires, les usages politiques de l’histoire, son ecriture - et ses reecritures. Sociologues et politologues se sont empares de ces thematiques aiguisees par l’effondrement des regimes communistes en Russie et en Europe de l’Est, par les tensions entre constructions nationales et mondialisation, et par la relecture de l’experience coloniale. Faconne par la quete des origines et l’interpretation selective des temps longs de l’histoire, le monde present porte aussi l’empreinte des tragedies du siecle dernier : nazisme et shoah, partitions et massacres, guerres et apartheid. Pouvoirs etablis, mouvements contestataires ou collectivites dominees, les acteurs multiplient les usages de la memoire pour stimuler les mobilisations contemporaines, ou restent prisonniers d’un « passe qui ne passe pas ». Ce premier colloque des instituts francais de recherche a l’etranger donne la parole, sur ce theme des actives presences du passe, a quelques vingt-cinq chercheurs venus de treize instituts etablis en Europe, en Asie, en Amerique latine et en Afrique. A l’initiative du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres et Europeennes, ce colloque est organise par la Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, en partenariat avec le Musee du Quai Branly, le CNRS, France 24, France Culture, Radio France Internationale, le magazine L’Histoire et Transcontinentales, la revue du reseau des instituts francais de recherche a l’etranger.
After setting the historical context, this paper shows that the very existence of Ceske Velenice,... more After setting the historical context, this paper shows that the very existence of Ceske Velenice, a Czech city at the edge of the Iron Curtain on the Austrian border, was the result of anti-Austrian Czech nationalism. The author then deconstructs the Czechoslovak Communist regime’s strategy to build its legitimacy on the borders of the Eastern bloc, a strategy that created, and benefited from, a historical misunderstanding. Communist ideology justified keeping the border primarily for ideological reasons (i.e., to prevent people from running away), but managed to gain widespread support among the locals by playing on the fact that they also saw it as a patriotic mission (to prevent the Austrian enemy from entering the country). The article thus concludes that membership of the Eastern Bloc was not the trigger for intra-Socialist solidarity among the inhabitants of Ceske Velenice, but the provisional cloaking of an anti-Austrian patriotism consubstantial to Czech national identity, and which has transcended all twentieth-century regimes.
Cet expose presente les resultats d'une micro-etude de la ville de Ceske Velenice (3500 habit... more Cet expose presente les resultats d'une micro-etude de la ville de Ceske Velenice (3500 habitants), localite-frontiere tcheque faisant face a la ville autrichienne de Gmund. La radicalite des bouleversements intervenus dans le mode de vie, les institutions et le poids de la frontiere s'y eleve en contraste par rapport a la lente evolution des representations et des opinions face a ces changements. Le resultat en est une perception desabusee de la situation actuelle et une privatisation generalisee de l'existence.
Jan Culik interviews the French historian Muriel Blaive about the development of civic society in... more Jan Culik interviews the French historian Muriel Blaive about the development of civic society in France and in the nations of Western Europe, in comparison to what has been happening in Central and Eastern Europe and about the reasons for the existence of intense racism, xenophobia and islamophobia in Central and Eastern Europe.
Britské listy, Regionalnitelevize.cz, Jul 15, 2021
On the occasion of the centenary of the foundation of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1921, J... more On the occasion of the centenary of the foundation of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1921, Jan Čulík discusses the role of the CzCP in the history of Czechoslovakia throughout the twentieth century with the French historian Muriel Blaive. The interview was broadcast by the Czech cable TV Regionalnitelevize.cz from 16th July 2021
Surveillance was long considered one of the main characteristics of communist rule. The ubiquitou... more Surveillance was long considered one of the main characteristics of communist rule. The ubiquitous presence of the secret police and its informants, citizens who would spy on their own family, friends, and colleagues, was one trait that was considered almost consubstantial to the exercise of communist repression. The regimes paralyzed the people by mobilizing fear: fear of repression, but also fear of the West, and fear of capitalism. But the participation of large chunks of society to this control culture, as well as its high level of conformism, progressively led to the postulate that the communist domination is no more than one particular avatar of modern society. Such an approach revives the notion of individual choice and that of social actors. As dissident thinkers underlined it, it would have been enough for people to question the official dogma, by refusing to live in a lie, for the regimes to collapse. However, surveillance practices have been studied also in Western countr...
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"It is impossible, after reading this volume, to still give any credit to those who claimed that 1989 was a revolution without ideas, or could not be a revolution because it offered no ideas. We should be grateful that a new generation of scholars—most of whom not burdened by the assumptions and affinities that have inhibited participants and contemporary observers—can look with a cool eye both at the thinking that accompanied radical change and at the sometimes bizarre amalgams that have furnished political language in the last quarter-century in East Central Europe." - Padraic Kenney, Professor of History and International Studies, Indiana University
"This is the most comprehensive and balanced intellectual history so far available of post-communist East Central Europe, and it is particularly instructive on the diversity of the field. The book is essential reading for those who want to know how the multiple transformations of the region were understood from within." - Jóhann P. Árnason, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, La Trobe University,Melbourne