“The Past is Still Alive”: The Czech anti-Austrian Resistance as Symbol and Matter of Politics (1918–1925)
“The Past is Still Alive”: The Czech anti-Austrian Resistance as Symbol and Matter of Politics (1918–1925)

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines the ways in which the heritage of the Czechanti-Austrian resistance was used in the political practice of the First Czechoslovak Republic between 1918 and 1925. It focuses on the question of what specific aspects from the history of the anti-Austrian resistance during the First World War were used by individual political actors in their public activity and in the rivalry between political parties. These tendencies in theearly period of the existence of the Czechoslovak Republic are examined with regard to the formation and establishment of the “Maffie” narrative, which after 1918 was supposed to symbolise and efficiently present the activities of the anti-Austrian resistance in the Czech lands. On the examples of the political campaigning of the Czechoslovak National Democratic Party led by Karel Kramář and the Czech National Socialist Party headed by Václav Klofáč, the authors analyse their different approach and often contradictory interpretation of the events of the “national revolution” of 1914-1918. The paper also presents the limitations of this presentation, as well as the gradual decrease of the instrumentalisation of the heritage of the Czech anti-Austrian resistance in the Czechoslovak political practice, which became fully evident as soon as the mid-1920s.

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