The World of Meaning of the Young Intelligentsia: Intimacy, Equality and Difference in Central Europe 1956-1968
Abstract
The thesis deals with thought, mentality and conceptions of the higher education students. It focuses especially on discussions and controversies between students and party, state or universities authorities and aims at frictions which spread in official discourse and arose from student demands on more space for autonomous activity.
Its main concern is the way in which these controversies were related to power transformations in the Central-European dictatorship since 1956. As an example of young intelligentsia, activists of youth and student organizations at higher education institutions in Warsaw, Prague and Bratislava have been chosen.
The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part researches on the conceptions of intimate, especially problems of youth sexuality, student marriage and living conditions of young families.
The second part deals with the conceptions of equality in relation to centralized work-placement of graduates. The power authorities in the state-socialist society laid stress on social equality of all citizens, but paradoxically it produced strong inequality at a local level and undermined work, social and transnational mobility.
The third parts researches on conceptions of difference. In this case, authorities claimed generation unity and culture uniformity for the whole society.
Their claims, however, provoked specific reaction of student activists who struggled for visibility and difference in the public space, e.g. by establishment and operation of student clubs.