Czech Responses

Abstract

Notions like ‘independent society’, ‘the second culture’, ‘unofficial literature’, ‘samizdat’, ‘independent initiatives’, ‘parallel structures’, ‘the self-organisation of society’, ‘social self-defence’, etc. have their origin in totalitarian communist systems. They characterise conflicts between independent thought and behaviour, and the totalitarian state, which demands control over all aspects of social life. In democratic and authoritarian systems autonomous institutions of social life are a fact of life: in totalitarian systems, such institutions must struggle to establish themselves.