Ľubomír Lipták ako komunistický intelektuál
Ľubomír Lipták as a communist intellectual

Author(s): Adam Hudek
Subject(s): Political history, Social history, Recent History (1900 till today), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism
Published by: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů
Keywords: Czechoslovakia; 20th century; Slovak intellectuals; Ľubomír Lipták; communist party;
Summary/Abstract: Ľubomír Lipták was in various ways a perfect example of his generation’s Czech and Slovak Marxist intellectuals. His thoughts and ideology were formed by resolute support for the communist regime in the fifties, gradual revision of previous opinions in the sixties, active participation on social reform during Prague spring and consequent forced departure from research position in the times of normalisation. Analysis of this opinion arch allows us to describe a transformation of a loyal party historian to a critically thinking communist intellectual. “Destalinisation and self-reflection” combined with gradual liberalisation of the ideology oversight resulted inevitably in criticism of the communist regime and his top representatives. The fact, that Lipták’s critical analyses of the 20th century events exceeded the issue of Czech-Slovak settlement sealed his fate in normalisation. Changes in Lipták’s relationship to regime of socialist dictatorship in the same time illustrates shift in the communist establishment’s approach to intellectual elites. At the beginning of the fifties the establishment made an effort to „breed“ its own loyal intelligence only to find out that the communist party accomplished only to unintentionally create its own critics.

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