This book provides information about opinion polls carried out in communist and post-communist countries. It presents several case studies and addresses the issue of how opinion polling today differs from polling in countries under censorship, which lack pluralist media.

Contents: Klaus Bachmann/Jens Gieseke: Introduction – Jiří Šubrt: Mapping the Beginnings of Public Opinion Research in the Czech Lands after World War II – Dragomir Pantić/Zoran Pavlović: Public Opinion Research in Serbia in the Non-pluralist Period – Jens Gieseke: East German Popular Opinion. Problems of Reconstruction – Oleg Manaev: Public Opinion Polling in Authoritarian States: The Case of Belarus – Klaus Bachmann: Constructing a national myth - the case of the Warsaw Uprising in post-war Poland – Patryk Wasiak: The Appropriation of Social Opinion Survey Research by the State Apparatus in Late State-socialist Poland – Piotr Tadeusz Kwiatkowski: Martial Law in Poland from 1981 to 1983 in View of Public Opinion Polls Conducted by Official Institutions and Underground Organizations – Michał Wenzel: Estimating Trade Union Membership between 1980 and 2012 Using Polling Data – Michael Meyen: Surveys on Media Usage in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) Institutions, Validity, and Outcomes – Hans Erxleben: The Dilemma of the Party’s Own Opinion Research in the GDR. Insights from a Former SED Pollster.