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The paper discusses two key aspects of the second presidency of Edvard Beneš: his involvement in the 1948 Coup in Czechoslovakia, and also the portrayal of both president Beneš and the February 1948 political crisis in history textbooks. The first part tackles president Beneš’s strategy in handling the governmental crisis and its limitations with regard to domestic as well as foreign affairs. The paper simultaneously examines the strategy of the Communist Party alongside that of the non-Communist Parties, the resignation of cabinet ministers of the latter having ultimately triggered the crisis. The second part provides a thorough analysis of primary and secondary school history textbooks published both during the so-called ‘Normalisation’ period (1969–1989) and the post-1989 democratic era. The aim of the analysis is to establish which issues related to the 1948 events were considered important and which facts, on the other hand, were being deliberately misinterpreted or suppressed. The author also addresses the questions of how much space in the history curriculum has been provided for individual crisis’ participants, how historical reality is being constructed and how the key players – Edward Beneš and Klement Gottwald – are being represented.
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In his partly comparative study, the author focuses on a specific chapter in Czechoslovak-Yugoslav relations in the 20th century, namely contacts of the exile governments of both countries after their occupation by the German army in March 1939 (remnants of Czechoslovakia) and April 1941 (Yugoslavia). Supported by document from Prague’s and Belgrade’s archives, he recalls circumstances of the German occupation of Yugoslavia and compares the formation of the Czechoslovak and Yugoslav political representations in exile, the different ways they took to London, the problems they encountered during early years in exile, and their positions in London’s exile community. The study shows how the restoration of mutual relations between the two representations was burdened by historical animosities, although Belgrade and Prague had been allies since 1919, both being members of the Little Entente; President Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), in particular, was long reproaching Yugoslav politicians for abandoning Czechoslovakia at the time of the Munich crisis in the autumn of 1938. However, some Yugoslav representatives, on the other hand, disliked the fact that the Czechoslovak government had not supported them in the conflict with Italy in 1926 and during the establishment of the king’s dictatorship three years later. Mutual relations of leading Czechoslovak and Yugoslav politicians in exile were also reflecting their respective opinions on further war developments and on relations of restored Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia to allied powers. Both exile governments were striving for help and support of Great Britain; however, they assumed, for a variety of reasons, different attitudes to cooperation with the Soviet Union. Although the relations were gradually improving, especially since 1943, when the Yugoslav government declared that it did not acknowledge the Munich Agreement, their courses drifted apart while both were still in exile, and only Czechoslovak exile representatives returned home as winners, while their Yugoslav counterparts in London had to “beat a retreat”, yielding to Tito’s Communists, and most of them stayed in exile.
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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 inventions and innovations movement in Czechoslovakia, which developed here on a massive scale with state support after the communist coup of 1948, has so far received little attention in historical research. The study examines how this movement was reflected and publicized on the pages of the Inventor and Innovator (Vynálezce a zlepšovatel) journal, which was published from 1969 to 1990 by the Czechoslovak Scientific and Technical Society (until 1989). The authors focus principally on three levels: firstly, the normative definition of inventions and innovations in the legislation during the period of state socialism and its institutional anchorage; secondly, the creation of the image of an ideal inventor and innovator on the pages of the journal; and, thirdly, the changing emphasis in the presentation of this movement and its subordination to economic efficiency. They also pay attention to the criticism of the administrative obstacles faced by the movement during this period, its insufficient results and the lack of coordination within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. By analysing the content of the journal, the authors show how the inventions and innovations movement was supported as part of the scientific and technical revolution and economic rationalization, and how it was defined, on the one hand by the claims arising from socialist moral economy, and on the other by economic pragmatism. Where as the first view subordinated individual ambitions and performance to the obligations towards society in general and made the innovators movement a moral obligation of all workers, the second perspective was primarily about the contribution of the inventions and innovations proposals to economic savings, innovations and, preferably, patents and licenses which could be used in the export of products and technologies as a source of foreign currency. In this respect, individual motives of economic profit were fully accepted, and the journal also provided guidance to inventors and innovators on how to exercise their right to just reward, even in legal disputes with industrial enterprises as employers. As is evident from the published articles, the trend went from the moral concept of the early 1970s to the economic emphasis of the 1980s, especially in the period of perestroika, with inspiration also sought in the management approaches of the “crises years” of 1967–1969. The authors come to the conclusion that some of the inventors and innovators started using this activity as a long-time source of additional income, turning it into “a small socialist business” (drobné socialistické podnikání) within the law. This created conditions for a fairly smooth transition to the capitalist economy in the 1990s, and the inventions and innovations movement therefore became one of the sources of transformation continuity in Czechoslovakia before and after 1989.
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The book "Austerities and Aspirations: A Comparative History of Growth. Consumption, and Quality of Life in East Central Europe Since 1945" (Budapest, Central European University Press 2020), written by the Hungarian historian Béla Tomka, provides a “triple approach” to economic development in East-Central Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia and its successor states, and Hungary). Aiming to go beyond the perspective of economic growth alone, Tomka considers economic growth along with consumption and quality of life. Taking a comparative perspective, he assesses convergences and divergences between East-Central Europe and Western Europe. In the reviewer’s opinion, the book is a useful comparative study of various economic developments in the region, but Tomka remains rather implicit about his value judgement behind choosing certain economic indicators and does not engagewith more critical approaches to economic growth.
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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 study focuses on the hitherto neglected issue of complaints that citizens of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic made to their President and his Office between 1970 and 1989. The author describes the activities of the Complaints Department of the Presidential Office and how the complainants’ agenda evolved both quantitatively and qualitatively during the period of normalization. He presents the social, ethnic, regional and gender profile of the authors of the complaints, their motivation, common themes and the typical linguistic means the writers used. Using archival sources, he then analyses the five most numerous and important problem areas of the registered complaints, which concerned: housing and housing policy, social security, labour relations, travel abroad, education and study. He uses specific cases to illustrate the flow of communication between the complainants, the President’s Office and other bodies that commented on the issues. Additionally, he highlights the chronic social problems that were mirrored in the complaints and which the authorities of the normalization era regime failed to address effectively. Between 1970 and 1989, more than 323,000 complainants, mostly pensioners and workers, wrote to Presidents Ludvík Svoboda (1895–1979, in office 1968–1975) and Gustáv Husák (1913–1991, in office 1975–1989) asking for help in matters relating to poor housing conditions and their futile wait for an apartment, low wages or pension assessments, difficulties with an employer, discrimination in permitting travel abroad and resettlement, or the non-admission of children to secondary or higher education. Most of the writers asserted their personal interest and commented on the societal issues only if it was related to it or they could benefit from them. The President’s Office paid close attention to citizen complaints and in many cases its intervention did indeed help to bring about a redress. In the author’s view, it certainly made sense to write to the President in this regard, even though many requests went unheeded and, in particular, complaints with political overtones remained unanswered.
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This article addresses the last creative period of the poet Konstantin Biebl (1898–1951) in the late 1940s and early 1950s and explores it in a broader cultural and political context, taking into consideration the poet’s character, the genesis of his last collection of poems entitled "Bez obav" [Unafraid] (1951), as well as the unexplained circumstances of his tragic death. Biebl was one of the leading representatives of leftist avant-garde art in interwar Czechoslovakia. In the early 1940s he stopped publishing. After the Communist coup in 1948 he tried to adjust to the period’s ideological and aesthetic norms as applied to the new literature in the spirit of socialist realism, which is reflected in "Bez obav". The article focuses on the events taking place after its publication, which culminated with the poet’s suicide in November 1951. The author presents these events and the relationships between the actors in the light of previously unpublished documents from the archival collection of the poet, translator and cultural official, Jiří Taufer (1911–1986), who was one of the key figures in the cultural policy of the period and the conflicts surrounding it. The author sees the main value of these documents in their focus on František Nečásek (1913–1968), the head of the culture and press department of the Office of the President of the Republic and the holder of several other posts, whose role in these events – possibly a very important one – has so far been somewhat overlooked. The article includes an annotated edition of contemporary and later texts, mostly of a personal character and unpublished, which illustrate the context of the described events. The article concludes with a summary interpretation of these documents.
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This article addresses the last creative period of the poet Konstantin Biebl (1898–1951) in the late 1940s and early 1950s and explores it in a broader cultural and political context, taking into consideration the poet’s character, the genesis of his last collection of poems entitled "Bez obav" [Unafraid] (1951), as well as the unexplained circumstances of his tragic death. Biebl was one of the leading representatives of leftist avant-garde art in interwar Czechoslovakia. In the early 1940s he stopped publishing. After the Communist coup in 1948 he tried to adjust to the period’s ideological and aesthetic norms as applied to the new literature in the spirit of socialist realism, which is reflected in "Bez obav". The article focuses on the events taking place after its publication, which culminated with the poet’s suicide in November 1951. The author presents these events and the relationships between the actors in the light of previously unpublished documents from the archival collection of the poet, translator and cultural official, Jiří Taufer (1911–1986), who was one of the key figures in the cultural policy of the period and the conflicts surrounding it. The author sees the main value of these documents in their focus on František Nečásek (1913–1968), the head of the culture and press department of the Office of the President of the Republic and the holder of several other posts, whose role in these events – possibly a very important one – has so far been somewhat overlooked. The article includes an annotated edition of contemporary and later texts, mostly of a personal character and unpublished, which illustrate the context of the described events. The article concludes with a summary interpretation of these documents.
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The review deals with two monographs that examine the post-Stalinist period from different perspectives: "Soudruzi a jejich svět: Sociálně myšlenková tvářnost komunismu" [Comrades and Their World: The Social Mindset of Communism] by Pavel Kolář, originally published in German under the title "Der Poststalinismus: Ideologie und Utopie einer Epoche" (Köln/R. – Weimar – Wien 2016) and "„Rehabilitovat Marxe!“ Československá stranická inteligence a myšlení post-stalinské modernity" [“Rehabilitate Marx!” The Czechoslovak Party Intelligentsia and Thought in Post-Stalinist Modernity] by Jan Mervart and Jiří Růžička. The review describes both studies and focuses on their common and different features. Kolář, over five different thematic areas – the concept of history, the Communist Party, the nation, enemies and of time – attempts to grasp the “world of meaning” of the Communist Party members in Czechoslovakia, Poland and the German Democratic Republic in the period from Stalin’s death to the end of the 1960s. Mervart and Růžička examine the thinking of Marxist philosophers in Czechoslovakia in the same period, focusing on their conceptions of structure, people, nation, revolution and new subjectivity. Despite the stark differences between the actors under study and the obvious diversities in the concept of post-Stalinism, both studies seek to establish the period as a distinct historical era during which the questioning of Stalinist dogmas and the search for new possibilities of socialism were decisive. The end result is two very stimulating monographs. However, their – also common – major weakness lies in their lack of regard for the social context of the actors examined.
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"Sousedé: Česko-rakouské dějiny" [Neighbours: A Czech-Austrian History Book] edited by Václav Šmidrkal, Ota Konrád, Hildegard Schmoller and Niklas Perzi and its parallel Austrian version "Nachbarn: Ein österreichisch-tschechisches Geschichtsbuch" (Weitra, Bibliothek der Provinz 2019) is a remarkable and unique attempt by a collective of twenty-seven Czech and Austrian historians to work together on the history of Austria and the Bohemian/Czech lands (and Czechoslovakia) and their mutual relations from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book is a product of the Permanent Conference of Czech and Austrian Historians on Common Cultural Heritage, which was established in 2009, and it is conceived in a consistently reciprocal manner: all its thirteen chapters (ten chronological and three thematic) were co-authored by a Czech-Austrian duo. In addition to the overall concept, the reviewer appreciates the professional quality and reliability of the volume, its language that encourages reading, and its unusually attractive design, which visualizes the narrated history with several documentary photographs. The authorial teama voided one-dimensional assessments and the book offers a rich story of the mutual coexistence of the two countries through periods when cooperation, estrangement and disinterest alternated. The work is an important contribution to the transnational history of Central Europe and helps us to understand why the relationship between the two successor states of the Habsburg monarchy did not develop in a friendly and straight forward manner.
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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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"Na prahu studenej vojny: Československé vojenské výzvedné spravodajstvo v rokoch 1945–1946" [On the Threshold of the Cold War: Czechoslovak Military Intelligence in the Years 1945–1946] by Slovak historian Matej Medvecký comprehensively maps the functioning of Czechoslovak military intelligence in the first two years after the Second World War. The work is the result of the study of a wide range of official sources and fills a vacuum that existed in the scholarship on the topic in Czech and Slovak historiography. The book describes the structure and the essential changes which took place in the intelligence services in these two years, and elucidates their connections with the internal political changes and the new foreign orientation of Czechoslovakia. According to the reviewer, Medvecký provides new insights into the competences, routine activities and problems of intelligence officers and military diplomats of the time, and, above all, answers the most important question of why and how the prestige and importance of Czechoslovak military intelligence declined radically after the war.
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Alfred Alexander Reisch’s "Horké knihy ve studené válce: Program tajné distribuce knih ze Západu za železnou oponu financovaný CIA" published by Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů – originally published in English as "Hot Books in the Cold War: The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain" (Budapest, Central European University Press 2013) – is the subject of this review. Reisch is an American political scientist of Hungarian origin, and he is also one of the protagonists of the book. The classified project of distributing books, magazines and other publications to the Eastern Bloc countries, which developed under the auspices of the Free Europe Committee (FEC) and with covert CIA funding, lasted from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s. During this time, according to Reisch, some ten million publications of various genres, from political and scientific literature to fiction, art books and dictionaries to fashion magazines, were sent across the Iron Curtain in inventive ways. The project’s organizers avoided shallow propaganda and, with the help of several covert organizations, targeted mainly intellectuals and students, opposition and regime elites and selected institutions. The reviewer admires Reisch for being the first to reconstruct, from fragmentarily preserved sources and interviews with witnesses, the history of the “mail project”, which, according to the reviewer, was one of the most successful and effective tools of American foreign policy in the Cold War. Despite some shortcomings, the book provides a wide range of previously unknown information and draws the reader into the plot like a spy novel.
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In his book "Křesťanský zápas o českou věc: Působení opata Opaska a organizace Opus bonum v československém exilu v letech 1972–1989" [The Christian Struggle for the Czech Cause: The Work of Abbot Opasek and the Opus Bonum Association in Czechoslovak Exile, 1972–1989], Petr Placák, writer, historian and columnist, deals with the history of the Czechoslovak Christian association “Opus Bonum” in exile and its main representative, the abbot of the Břevnov monastery in Prague, Anastáz Jan Opasek (1913–1999). This lay Catholic association, founded by Opasek and the theologist Vladimír Neuwirth (1921–1998) in 1972, operated in Frankfurt am Main and later in Munich as a spiritual and cultural institution which sought, through symposia, meetings and publications, to overcome the contradictions among Czechoslovaks in exile as well as between Czechs and displaced Sudeten Germans. The reviewer praises the well-arranged, readable and stylistically refined presentation. However, the author’s apparent sympathy for Opasek gives a rather one-sided impression of his work and personality. The reviewer points out the book is based mainly on Opasek’s estate and the opinions of his opponents in exile are too subdued.
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"Babičky na bigbítu: Společenský život na moravském venkově pozdního socialismu" [Grannies at a Big-Beat Party: Social Life in the Moravian Countryside in Late Socialism] by ethnologist Oto Polouček is a successful contribution to a better understanding not only of the cultural and social life of the Moravian countryside, but also of the history of everyday life during the normalization era in Czechoslovakia. The central theme of the book are the social activities of the inhabitants of Dolní Kounice, Rokytná and Petrovice in South Moravia in the 1970s and the 1980s. The reviewer particularly appreciates the oral history research, which has brought to prominence some hitherto neglected perspectives. The chapters on dance parties are especially important as they show a key phenomenon of the rural environment, including the depiction of their organization and the perspective of the organizers. The chapter describing the perception of the underground community in a smalltown is also note worthy as is the relationships of the members of this community with their peers and with the older generations. However, the lack of definitions of some of the key terms and concepts is a shortcoming of the book.
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KOVÁČ, Dušan – MICHELA, Miroslav: Na ceste k poznaniu: Dušan Kováč o slovenskom dejepisectve s Miroslavom Michelom. (Edícia Légo,sv. 2.) Bratislava, Hadart 2020, 232 s., ISBN 978-80-99941-28-2; ŁUKASIEWICZ, Sławomir – JACZYŃSKA, Agnieszka – PLESKOT, Patryk (eds.): Wasza solidarność – nasza wolność: Reakcje emigracji polskiej i świata na wprowadzenie stanu wojennego 13 grudnia 1981 (grudzień 1981 – styczeń 1982) / Your Solidarity – Our Liberty: Reactions of Émigré Poles and the World to the Imposition of Martial Law in Poland on December 13th, 1981 (December 1981 –January 1982). Lublin – Warszawa, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej 2017, 207 s., ISBN 978-83-8098-286-4; MILLER, Jaroslav: Czechoslovakia Exiled: František Váňa and Hlas domova. Prague, Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2021, 165 s., ISBN 978-80-7422-818-6; NEKOLA, Martin: Na cestě za svobodou: Češi v uprchlických táborech po únoru 1948. Praha, Euromedia Group v edici Universum 2020,192 s., ISBN 978-80-242-6639-8.
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The paper treats the penetration of the N. Marr’s so-called New Language Doctrine in Bulgaria, and the influence it had exercised on the Bulgarian linguistics. On the basis of published facts and archival documents the impact in our country of the Y. Stallin’s statements on the language in 1950 is revealed. The relations the ideology and linguistics had been entering upon, and the stages in the laying down the Marxism as a fundamental scientific ideology frame are presented. It has been determined that the ideology and the politics had become a considerable factor for the development of the scholarly life, and this had led to decisive changes in Bulgarian linguistics during the 50™ years of XX c.
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