Eight anthropologists, sociologists, and historians probe the oppositional narratives created by Chinese rural intellectuals, émigré Croats, and organized dissenters such as the Djilas of Yugoslavia who constructed and maintained oppositional histories in state socialist societies. Even as the creators of official history jealously guarded the right to produce historical texts, alternative histories survived and on occasion even prospered in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. Contestation over how the past was to be represented was never fully eradicated.