Od ideologických šablon k pluralitě historických interpretací: Sovětská a ruská reflexe poválečných československých dějin na konci 20. století
From an Ideological Template to a Plurality of Historical Interpretations: Late-twentieth-century Soviet and Russian Reflections on Post-war...

Summary/Abstract: Title: From an Ideological Template to a Plurality of Historical Interpretations: Late-twentieth-century Soviet and Russian Refl ections on Post-war Czechoslovak History The author provides an overview of the relevant institutions, authors, and publications, which are concerned with Czechoslovak history after the Second World War. She discusses the sources they use, identifi es key research topics, and points to changes in the approach of Soviet and Russian historians regarding this area of research during the last thirty years. The milestones on this road from ideologically pre-fabricated conceptions to a diversity of interpretation were, argues the author, Gorbachev’s perestroika in the mid-1980s and, in particular, the break-up of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s. The focus of Soviet and Russian historians of post-war Czechoslovakia shifted from economic history to political and cultural history. An important role in this change was played by the declassifi cation and use of great numbers of previously unknown documents in Soviet archives. The author considers this change over three periods. For the years from the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May 1945 to Stalin’s death in March 1953, Soviet and Russian historians (women historians, incidentally, held the main positions in this field) paid the most attention to the Czechoslovak road to socialism, the role of internal and external factors in the process, the personality of Edvard Beneš, the Communist takeover of February 1948, and repression the followed the takeover. All current Russian researchers, claims the author, agree that Soviet policy towards central and south-east Europe after the war was governed by the strategy of creating a zone of Soviet-friendly states along the western frontier of the USSR, which would make an attack on the Soviet Union or its isolation impossible. The February 1948 takeover in Czechoslovakia, the key event of this period, is interpreted, in accord with this orientation, as a rightful victory, a political crisis, or a coup. In their view of the subsequent repression the historians apply the theory of totalitarianism in a conceptually striking way.

• Details
• Contents