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This article focuses on the long-term trends in the development of social policy between the First World War and the mid-1950's. The author begins by summarizing the main ideas of his own previous articles and books. He emphasizes the continuity and discontinuity in the general conception of Czechoslovak social policy in this period. He also considers conceptual questions, particularly those that would help to explain how the basic terms are employed in historical analysis. The article moves between the two poles of the construction of causality – structural explanation and voluntaristic explanation. The content of the article can be aptly summed up in a neat metaphor: from Bismarck by way of Beveridge to Stalin. In personified form, this shortcut expresses the long-term development of Czechoslovak social policy: from an emphasis on principles of merit, characteristic of the traditional German and Austrian social insurance schemes, by way of a considerably more egalitarian national insurance from 1948 (strongly influenced by the British system), to the Soviet model of social security, which developed from 1951 to 1956. The article also considers important changes in social legislation in the Czechoslovak Republic in this period, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
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Kertzer, David I.: Papež a Mussolini: Tajemství papeže Pia XI. a vzestup fašismu v Evropě. Translated from the English original by Radka Knotková. Brno: Jota, 2017, 534 pp. including annexes with illustrations, ISBN 978-80-7565-102-0. In his book titled "The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius IX and the Rise of Fascism in Europe" (original edition: New York and Oxford, Random House Publishing Group and Oxford University Press 2015), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the category of biographies and autobiographies in 2015, the American historian examines, in particular, diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Italian Fascist regime at the time of the pontificate of Pius IX (1922–1939). In the reviewer’s opinion, he follows their changes, from initial sympathies to disputes and a calculated compromise to cool mutual tolerance out of necessity after the outbreak of the war, against a wide backdrop of political and religious events in the inter-war world, making use of his rich historical erudition, readable style, and attention to attractive details to produce a plastic picture of the topic. At the same time, his work can be read as parallel biographies of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) and Pius XI (1857–1939), whom the author blames (in the reviewer’s opinion in a rather exaggerated manner) for co-responsibility for the rise of Fascism.
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Hinsey, Ellen and Tomas Venclova. Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova. Rochester (New York), University of Rochester Press, 2017, xvi + 405 pp., ISBN 9781580465861. The reviewer characterizes the publication as a book of confessions and recollections, in which Ellen Hinsey, an independent American researcher, questions Tomas Venclova, a writer, poet, translator, leading Lithuanian intellectual and Professor Emeritus of Slavic languages and literature at the Yale University. In his answers, Venclova summarizes and takes stock of his eighty-year life story, which was primarily associated with political events and the artistic, mainly dissident, community of the former Soviet state. However, the book of interviews also finds room for a more distant Lithuanian history with the country’s complex and equivocal political and ethnic situation, linguistic excursions into the nation’s past, or deliberations over phenomenon of exile. In the last part of the book, Venclova gets the reader acquainted with the life of the Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian diaspore in the United States, and does not evade even controversial issues of the current Lithuanian politics.
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The author analyzes in detail the extensive biography of the Slovak Communist politician Gustáv Husák (1913–1991) who, ups and downs notwithstanding, ultimately became the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1969 and the President of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic six years later. In doing so, he focuses mainly on chapters from the book "Gustáv Husák" by Michal Macháček (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2017) which deal with Husák’s activities in the Slovak Republic during the WWII, when he gradually joined the anti-fascist resistance and later participated in the Slovak National Uprising, and in post-war Czechoslovakia, when he, a top-ranking representative of the Slovak Communist Party, was actively participating in the struggle for power culminating in February 1948. He generally appreciates Michal Macháček’s extraordinarily extensive research of sources (including Russian archives) which the latter undertook, ample information on Husák’s political career and private life, convincing nature of most interpretations that Macháček presents, as well as accuracy and aptness of his characterizations. At the same time, though, he notes some factual errors and inaccuracies, provides missing historical contexts, and shows how the biographer – perhaps much too often – followed Husák’s self-styled renditions of various historical events and episodes.
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The edition brings a commented selection of texts from reportage publications and travelogues of four Czechoslovak writers, which reflect their experiences gathered during their trips to and stays in “exotic” non-European regions of the Soviet Union between the two world wars. They are: Julius Fučík (1903–1943), a journalist, literary critic and columnist, Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948), a Czech-German journalist, reporter and writer from Prague, the Czech-German writer and diplomat Franz Carl Weiskopf (1900–1955), also born in Prague, and the Czech-Jewish writer, newsman and translator Jiří Weil (1900–1959). All of them were organized Communists (Weil was expelled from the Communist Party in 1935), travelling at an invitation of Soviet authorities, and their texts, which were published in Czechoslovakia and Germany between 1927 and 1937, presented a more or less idealized picture of the Soviet reality with a propagandistic air. The selected texts capture the authors’ impressions mainly from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but also from other regions of Soviet Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Altai Mountains. Julius Fučík and Jiří Weil were specifically interested in the Czechoslovak cooperative of emigrant workers and farmers, Interhelpo, established in 1925 and operating until the late 1930s off the town of Frunze (now Bishkek).
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The extensive two-tome monograph titled "With the eagle and the lion", with subtitles "Stories of Czech military chaplains from the 17th century until the Great War" (Prague and Ústí nad Labem: Epocha and Univerzita J. E. Purkyně, 2018) and "Stories of Czech military chaplains during the dramatic 20th century" (Prague: Epocha and Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2019), deals with on a topic that has not been, until now, in the focus of attention of Czech historians, namely on transformations of the military spiritual service in the Czech Lands since the 17th until the mid-20th centuries. The author, Martin Flosman, concentrates on military chaplains in the Austrian, or Austro-Hungarian army, among Czechoslovak legionnaires, and also in the Czechoslovak Army in the period of the First Republic, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and first years of the post-war “people’s democracy” until the disbandment of the spiritual service in the army by the Communist regime in 1950. Although primarily interested in Roman Catholic chaplains, he does not leave aside Greek Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant priests, field rabbis, or imams, and analyzes their diverse duties. The reviewer appreciates the multitude of sources, whether published or not, the author’s comprehensive approach and coverage, and his perceptive description of the fate of military chaplains on battlefields, particularly during both world wars. The work allows to perceive the duty of military chaplains as a multifaceted phenomenon over three and a half centuries, and its gripping presentation, including many biographic medallions of priests, makes it open for a broad audience of readers.
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The case study describes dramatic lives of siblings Gerta (Gertruda) Freundová and Harry (Hermann) Freund in the context of the inter-war Communist movement. Born in 1908 (Harry) and 1909 (Gerta) into a middle-class, ethnically mixed (with German, Jewish and Czech identities) in Prague, they both were devoted under the influence of their mother, Terezie Freundová (1885–1982) to Communist ideals since their youth. Gerta was active in the Communist Student Fraction (Kostufra), became a dancer and ran a private dancing school in Prague. In 1932, she married Alexander Yakovlevich Arosev (1890–1938), a Soviet revolutionary, diplomat and writer, who was the Soviet Union’s plenipotentiary representative in Czechoslovakia (before diplomatic relations between the two countries were established). She then followed him to Moscow, where Arosev became the chairman of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (Vsesoyuznoe obshchestvo dlya kulturnoy svyazi s zagranitsey – VOKS), whose mission was to arrange trips and visits of Western intellectuals and artists to the USSR. However, Arosev fell into disfavor during the Great Terror and the couple was arrested in the summer of 1937. Gerta was accused of espionage, sentenced to death, and executed in December 1937, Arosev followed her in February 1938. Harry Freund soon started sympathizing with the so-called Left Opposition in the Soviet Union and was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia for criticizing its bolshevized leadership. He founded a radical left opposition platform under the name “Leninist Opposition” strongly opposing the centralized Stalinistic course of the Communist movement, but also the alternative faction represented by Lev Davidovich Trotsky (1879–1940). After the demise of the First Republic in the autumn of 1938, Harry Freund with his group went underground, was arrested and imprisoned for several months. When released, he joined the resistance movement in the occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and perished in January 1944 while being arrested. Freund’s mother was the only survivor of the family the remaining members of which died in concentration camps. The author’s narration presents hitherto unknown biographic facts concerning the Freunds and also reveals a tragic link between their fates, showing that it was Harry’s opposition activities which provided alleged evidence on his sister’s espionage to Stalin’s repressive bodies. It also captures the place of Freund’s “Leninist Opposition” on the radical left-wing scene of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, and describes its political activities, opinion clashes and ideological dogmatism. It also shows how fatal the Trotskyist stigma was for non-conformist members of the Communist movement and how symptomatically the fate of both protagonists reflects the turbulent evolution of the domestic radical left-wing movement and Czechoslovak-Soviet relations during the inter-war period.
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Paul Robeson (1898–1976), an African American singer, athlete, actor, and Leftist political activist, visited Czechoslovakia in 1929, 1945, 1949, and 1959. He was in contact with official Czechoslovak structures, was writing about Czech music, and learning Czech. This article focuses especially on his 1949 and 1959 visits and Robeson’s economic and artistic relations to Czechoslovakia. It also explores the broader context of relations between Czechoslovakia and the Afro-American community against the backdrop of the early Cold War, decolonization processes, and the onset of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. In doing so, it also looks at mechanism of cultural exchange within the Radical Leftist internationalist networks, including the dominant role Robeson played as the “introducer” of African American music and culture in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s, and also at views of Czechoslovak cultural intermediaries, such as writer Josef Škvorecký (1924–2012) or musicologist, journalist and music critic Lubomír Dorůžka (1924–2013), on jazz and African American spirituals, which contrasted with those of Robeson. In the Czech context, Robeson is mainly remembered through Škvorecký’s critical comments, labelling Robeson “Stalin’s Black Apostle”. US accounts of Robeson, on the other hand, have often, and until recently, presented a depoliticized version of Robeson, understating the importance of his international activities. A view of Robeson’s career based on Czech and US archival sources, as well as new studies on Robeson and the internationalist networks within which he was operating, cast doubts on both of these narratives and offer a chance to reconsider and re-evaluate this historical figure and the transnational dynamics that brought him to Czechoslovakia.
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Between 1918 and 1989, Bratislava witnessed at least four major political upheavals, formed part of different states, and its entire social, political and economic order fundamentally changed several times, as well as the position of the city – from the centre of part of Czechoslovakia to the capital of the formally independent state. The main aim of this study is to analyse the development, planning and construction of Bratislava throughout this entire turbulent period, while pointing mainly to the continuities and connections that go beyond these political upheavals. The study focuses on a largely Slovak epistemic community of architects and urban planners inspired by modernism, who were active in Bratislava or influenced its development during the researched period. The first generational cohort of these urban experts was formed by people who, since the 1920s, had drawn inspiration mainly from the environment of the Prague Czech Technical University, where they had the opportunity to become acquainted with modernism in architecture. After the Second World War, some of these figures created an important expert and academic background, from which, in the local context, emerged another extremely influential generation of architects and designers, which had a fundamental influence over the development of the city in the 1960s and 1970s. While some of them remained active well into the 1990s, it is possible to observe as early as in the normalization period (and this is the focus of the final parts of this study) how the approach towards the urban environment they represented was being gradually challenged and was becoming less important. The author analyses the relationship between the urban experts of several generations, as well as between the urban experts and other important actors who influenced the development of Bratislava. He shows how these experts built their positions and secured the continuity of their own approaches to the construction, or more generally, to the development and operation of the city. He also outlines how the ways they exercised their influence changed over the course of several decades and what factors – on the political, institutional and discursive level – strengthened or weakened this expert community.
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The review deals with an extensive book on the history of a quintessentially Czech leisure activity, the “tramping movement”, entitled "Putování za obzor: Tramping v české společnosti 1918–1989" [Wandering Beyond the Horizon: Tramping in the Czech Society, 1918–1989] (Praha, Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2020) and written by five Czech historians (Jan Randák, Jan Krško, Jan Mareš, Jan Pohunek, Jan Špringl). The movement emerged in the early twentieth century and its popularity lasted throughout the whole of the century. In the book under review, five Czech cultural historians describe the history of the tramping movement in Czechoslovakia in admirable detail and also provide supplementary material and unique pictures. The reviewer welcomes the analysis of a highly interesting and academically overlooked phenomenon and recommends a shortened version for publication in English.
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The comprehensive publication "Čekisté: Orgány bezpečnosti v evropských zemích sovětského bloku" [The Chekists: Security Organs in the European Countries of the Soviet Bloc] by the editors Krzysztof Persak, Łukasz Kamiński, Pavel Žáček and Petr Blažek is the Czech edition of the work produced by an international team of historians, which emerged from a project run by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. The book was originally published in English in 2005 in Warsaw under the care of the two Polish editors with the title "A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe, 1944–1989". A German edition followed in 2009 in Göttingen, and finally, in 2010, the Polish translation "Czekiści: Organy bezpieczeństwa w europejskich krajach bloku sowieckiego 1944–1989", which forms the core of the Czech version. None of the editions, however, are a mere translation of the previous one. With each edition, new texts appear and existing ones are expanded and updated. The reviewer compares the different editions and presents the chapters which deal with the history of the communist secret services in the former Eastern Bloc countries (the Soviet Union, and more specifically in Estonia and Latvia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland and Romania), paying the closest attention to the Czechoslovak chapter, which is also the first synthetic treatment of the subject. Despite various partial shortcomings, including the lack of an attempt at a concluding summary, the reviewer believes that the volume as a whole provides informed readers with a generally clear, factually reliable and highly detailed picture of the origins, organization, development, multifaceted activities, crimes and victims of the secret services in the former communist European countries.
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The main purpose of this article is to discuss the views of the Jesuit Stanisław Dunin–Borkowski (1864–1934) about Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. These days, Dunin–Borkowski is a rather obscure figure despite rising to fame in the interwar period as an outstanding expert in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Thus, the secondary aim of this article is to remind ourselves of this somewhat forgotten scholar. As a researcher, writer, and pedagogue, Dunin–Borkowski was interested in numerous fields of knowledge. Among these were the natural sciences, including physics and the influence that new physical theories had on philosophical thought. This present study therefore fills a gap in the existing research about how Polish philosophers received Einstein’s theories. The example of Dunin–Borkowski also serves as a basis for discussing some of the fundamental problems of neo-scholasticism in receiving new mathematicised scientific theories.
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After the establishment of the dictatorship, several cultural societies operated in Dubrovnik, namely the Dubrovnik Philharmonic, the Dubrava Singing Association, the Sloga Serbian Singing Association, the Church Choir, the Dubrovnik Theater Association and the Workers’ Music Association Zora. These associations were the bearers of cultural activities in the city. They held music and singing concerts, drama performances, public lectures. In addition to the activities of the aforementioned associations, the cultural life of Dubrovnik was complemented by visiting theaters and choirs from Yugoslavia and abroad. On two occasions, in 1929 and 1932, all associations performed together. In 1929 the 300 th anniversary of Gundulić’s Dubravka was celebrated. A total of 300 participants took part in this mass cultural event. The second time they gathered also in large numbers was on June 17, 1932; around 220 participants gathered in Dubrovnik. These were indications of great cultural events in Dubrovnik that are still organized today in the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. The mentioned cultural activity was not limited only to the activities of music and singing choirs, but also to the revitalization of Dubrovnik’s cultural institutions – libraries, archives, museums, public lectures and guest theater performances, singing and instrumental ensembles, and prominent world musicians from Yugoslavia and abroad.
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Sociological polls and other sources, as well as electoral statistics, show that Soviet power in 1918– 1989 met the main criteria for legitimacy. In 1918–1929, the majority of voters, and in 1931–1989 over 83% of the electorate, were loyal to the Soviet regime, trusted the communists and the general course and current policy, were satisfied with the status as ordinary builders of socialism, and believed in the socialist project. Official information on turnout and voting is trustworthy, although it has serious shortcomings and likely underestimates the scale of the protest vote (failure to appear, damage to ballots, voting against). Election results were influenced by electoral laws, propaganda, and control over the course of voting. However, clean elections have never happened anywhere. The legitimacy of power in any civilized country was supported by developed propaganda, and in the USSR it was not more powerful than, for example, in the USA or Germany. The study allows us to assume that until the mid-1980s the people’s confidence in Soviet power was ensured not so much by propaganda as, first, by achievements of the USSR, which were considered by the majority of the population to be real, significant, and deserving of respect; second, by faith in the socialist project; and third, by peculiarities of political culture of the peasantry and the proletariat inherited from pre-revolutionary times. From their perspective, the people interacted with authorities and participated in management. The socialist project for only a small minority represented only a grandiose myth, a gigantic propaganda campaign, and an adventure or scam of world-historical scale.
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The struggle to limit and eliminate one of the most severe parasites in our country has a dramatic history. The disease has been known since ancient times and until the mid-60s of the twentieth century, it is invariably present in a number of the most commonly diagnosed infectious parasitic diseases. In a country like Bulgaria, whose agricultural economy was the main livelihood of the population at the end of the 19th and the middle of the 20th century, the disease was of defining significance. Historically, malaria is seen as a social "scourge" proceeding with severe illness, disability, death, and as one of the causes of economic stagnation in entire areas of the country. The article examines the history of the fight against malaria in Bulgaria, in Varna and Burgas regions. The study period covers the period from the Liberation to 1930. Emphasis is placed on the efforts of the state administration, the establishment of sanitary supervision, the activity of the health authorities and the active part of the Bulgarian population for the control and complete eradication of the disease in Bulgaria. The main legislative acts regulating the implementation of anti-epidemic measures against malaria and the main institutions working in this direction are reviwed. The experience of the Italian medics in the fight against malaria in Italy and the role of the Rockefeller Foundation for the successful training and cooperation between Bulgarian and Italian malaria specialists in the application of the Italian experience in the fight against malaria are followed.
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Infrastructure is one of the main parts of football industry in contemporary time. Pitches, stadiums, sporting goods stores, museums of different teams and clubs are very important now. These facilities began to appear in Central-Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The aim of this research is the comparison of knowledge transfer process about football infrastructure in Kharkiv and Sofia. This article shows participants and ways to disseminate knowledge about football infrastructure, location of football pitches and stadiums in two non-port cities. It also illustrates the importance of local educational institutions and businesses in disseminating such information. More generally, the comparison provides insight into the influence of the administrative status of the city and the level of its industrialization on the speed and the scale of the implementation of knowledge in practice.
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The paper analyses the futile attempts of the political elites of the independent Caucasus states created at the end of the First World War (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus) to create the united Caucasus during their presence in power and then in political emigration in the 1920s and 1930s, and also the attitude of influential European politicians towards this matter. The merits of the ‘main dreamers’ fighting for the integrity of the Caucasus – Akaki Chkhenkeli, Ali Mardan Bek Topchibashev, and Haidar Bamatov (Bamat) – have been outlined. The article discusses the factors that created fertile ground for the existence of their dream, on the one hand, and examines the real circumstances and objective reasons that hindered the realization of the ideas and actions of the historical figures working in the period under the lens. The work emphasises that, despite separate impediments (especially disagreement over boundaries and the annexationist policy of Turkey and Russia), the idea of Caucasian unity in the 1920s was based on the solid background created by the three main cultures that coexisted harmoniously over the centuries: 1. Religion - Judaism, Christianity, Islam; 2. Caucasian rule of thinking and 3. Caucasian mentality. Based on the research, we conclude that the happy future of the Caucasian people is linked to the unity of the Caucasus as it was in the case of the European Union.
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The goal of this review paper is to show the development of Bulgaria's foreign trade during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the world economy – the 1930s. The general international conditions in which foreign trade relations were developing in the world at that time are outlined and the place of Bulgaria in these relations is noted. The main focus is on the Bulgarian state foreign trade policy. As a result of the complicated conditions for foreign trade activity, the state intervened aggressively on the market. It began to use new, hitherto unknown, interventionist policies, and gradually became a decisive factor in this field. The paper shows the results of the state intervention in foreign trade and the conclusion is made that this intervention is the main factor for Bulgaria to successfully overcome the difficulties caused by the Great Depression, related to the international exchange of goods. At the end of the considered period, foreign trade of the country was on the rise.
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