Abstrakt
Although it is more than quarter of the century since the beginning of the transition, contemporary historians have not until very recently showed much interest in the process of transition from the state socialism to the post-socialist version of democracy. Also, the research of social sciences and humanities focusing on the Czech(oslovak) context is rather scarce.
When authors focus on the late state socialism, it is quite common to simply add a short summary about the transition period, as a certain kind of bonus at the end of book. Such simplified view and the repeated stand-point of many of these authors describe the first years of 1990s as a period of building (or more accurately restructuring) capitalism as the way from backwardness.
Thus, their interest in post-socialist history ends with the split of the Czechoslovak state in 1993. Whereas the change of political and economic environment was rapid and rather facile, the transmutation of the society - especially the shared values, beliefs and everyday practices, i.e. mind-set of individuals - was rather slow and gradual process.
This may be illustrated not only through the different strategies of public spheres' privatization that was already observed before the turn of the state socialism, but also in the deeply conservative world views of many Czechs during both the late state socialism and following the victory of liberal democracy and the capitalist mode of production. Czech consume-oriented (neo)liberal/conservative axis was supplemented by the overall verbal interest in the public sphere that cannot only be understood as a product of 1989/1990 changes but also as a result of previous vivid debates of glasnost and perestroika that had surprising impact in Czechoslovakia (who was partly isolated by its rigid Stalinist official line from the West and also from the changing East).