Abstract
The chapter focuses on fundamental societal transformation, labelled Sovietization, which underwent Czechoslovakia together with the rest of East Central Europe. Wide scale application of Soviet models was a contested process.
Besides political opposition it also met with resistance on the part of the technical intelligentsia. Engineers did not easily adopt the Soviet model of modernization and saw it as alien.
The case of engineers working on the Danube-Oder-Elbe Canal project illustrates such struggles. One of the nine case studies within Part II: Experiment of "Crossing Frontiers, Resisting Identities", the 5th and final volume of an international research group.
Reflection on its work over the past 5 years and proposals for future analyses. The volume uses the binomial "Frontiers and Identities" as a heuristic tool for understanding the past and the present.
It is a product of the Network of Excellence CLIOHRES, supported by the EC through the 6th FP of its Directorate General for Research.