Sociální normy a socialistická morálka: ochrana veřejného pořádku na československém venkově 80. let 20. století

The study deals with public order protection in the Czechoslovak countryside in the decade before the fall of the communist government in 1989. It focuses on the contact between the local community’s shared social values and the principles governed by the socialist state at the local level. It discusses the care for good reputation and the reflection of social hierarchy and stereotypical views based on it in notes from meetings of public order commissions of local and national committees. It puts the care for a decent municipality at the end of the 1980s into the broader contexts of social changes as a reaction to industrialization and modernization. The author concludes that principles of social control in late socialism did not contradict the social values of rural communities. The analysis of archive sources also shows the influence of the inefficiency of the state socialist administration in being able to care for public order.