1. The legacy of two totalitarianisms -- 2. Historical consciousness, family stories, and nationalism -- 3. Weak nationalism in Slovakia: the precommunist period -- 4. Islands of history: the Democrats and the Nationalists -- 5. Organized forgetting: elites with no history -- 6. Nationalism without nationalists? Democracy? -- 7. Politics in a hall of mirrors
Summary
Argues that the rise to power of quasi-nationalist demagogues in many post-communist countries is the result of "organized forgetting" orchestrated by communist regimes that left these countries with little common history
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-261) and index