ABSTRACT
The term “second society” has naturally been suggested to us by the analogy of the “second economy,” which has been a well-established term in East European economics and sociology for more than a decade. However, the task is not as simple as that. One of the difficulties is the presumable vagueness of the second society. This vagueness may be due to the fact that—if at all—the second society has to develop its organizational principles, steering mechanisms, and networks in the hidden, informal sphere of the social space. Rather, it is whether or not there are social phenomena and processes that can be identified and classified in a consistent way as belonging to this would-be second society. In the 1950s and early 1960s, most of its manifestations were banned, persecuted, and branded as unlawful. Although later it was increasingly admitted into the legal sphere, its ideological and political acceptance has remained uncertain to this day.
