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Islam in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Between Churchification and Securitization

elements of Stalinism, while national tendencies in socialism were repressed. In this sense, Soviet security strategy was the determinant of domestic and foreign policies of communist Europe and it could work both as a threat and protection for those under its jurisdiction (p. 12). Reynolds claims that the imposition of a uniform socialism by the USSR on its Eastern European subordinates created a problem of legitimacy for national governments. The more powerful communist parties of Hungary and Czechoslovakia became, the less they were concerned about their legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion (p. 200). In Hungary especially, show trials led to the removal of many politicians from power; some were even sentenced to death, regardless of the public support behind them. In addition to this, Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ at the twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party legitimised Hungarian communist leaders’ silent judgement of the Stalinist regime (p. 34). De-Stalinisation prepared the ground for the uprising which was seen as a national, democratic movement by the Hungarian government that was seeking a ‘restoration of order’ in the country (p. 50). However, the Soviet regime labelled the uprising as ‘counter-revolution’ backed by capitalist forces, and military intervention was presented as inevitable to end the threat against the regime. By eliminating the political actors who supported reform, Moscow effectively brought the official Hungarian view into line with its own counter-revolutionary rhetoric. The book represents Czechoslovakia as a Warsaw Pact member state where Stalinist purges and deStalinisation occurred simultaneously. The demand for reform was obvious: ‘[the] waters of historical reconstruction and revision had been dammed up for so much longer in Czechoslovakia than elsewhere’ (p. 202). At the same time, it was important for the leaders of Czechoslovakia to show how their proposed reforms were different from those that had driven the Hungarian uprising, in order to preemptively refute the allegations of counter-revolution that would lead to Soviet intervention. The reform process was under the control of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (pp. 110–14). However, from the perspective of Moscow, what was happening in Prague was a new tactic by Western imperialists, another counter-revolution, as had happened in 1956 (p. 155). In other words, the events in 1956 were used as a ‘rhetorical case for intervention’ (p. 167). The author underlines that it was only Hungary among the Warsaw Pact members that considered the Czechoslovak case as a ‘socialist revival’, given its own recent memories (p. 170). Overall, the book offers a comparative analysis of the events of 1956 and 1968. It is a detailed piece of archival work that provides an insight into how the past is constructed and its meaning contested to justify the claims of decision-makers and to define the present. It is also an important reminder to the reader that similar discursive tools have become commonplace in contemporary Western democracies.