No. IV.
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Contents
Articles
Françoise Mayerová and Zdeněk Vašíček
Past and Present, Memory and History
Bedřich Loewenstein
Historicism and Cultural Pessimism:
The Nineteenth-century Idea of Progress Reconsidered
Jiří Suk
The Arrival of Foucault in Bohemia:
The ‘Archaeological’ and ‘Genealogical’ Methods from the Perspective of an Historian
Jan Horský
Historiographical Understanding and Justification
Discussions
Jan Křen
Concerning Historical Terms, Mastering the Past, and European History:
Three Comments for Further Discussion
Vít Smetana
Dejmek’s Magnum Opus under the Microscope
Miloš Havelka
Puzzled by Provincial ‘Realism’
Materials
Antonín Benčík
The Karel Hoffmann Case versus the Historians:
The View from the Telecommunications Authority in August 1968
Reviews
Jana Čechurová
Which Émigrés Were against Beneš
Miloš Calda
Twentieth-century Totalitarianisms Compared
Lukáš Pachta
French Fascism:
A Phenomenon Still Denied
Petr Koura
An ‘Adventure Story’ about the Fall of Democracy in Austria
Jiří Friedl
Did the Poles Intend to Attack Czechoslovakia?
The Polish Army and Czechoslovakia between the Munich Agreement and the Occupation
František Novák
Switzerland as a Dealer in Looted Art during the Second World War
Jan Růžička
How Not to Write about the Brezhnev Doctrine
Lukáš Babka
Not Quite a Breakthrough:
A Biography of Ceauşescu in the Context of Czech Writing on the History of Romania
Tomáš Vilímek
Closely Listening and Looking at the Past: The German Periodical Horch und Guck
Past and Present, Memory and History
Françoise Mayer and Zdeněk Vašíček
Although contemporary history has always been part of historiography, with the ascent of philological-historical criticism it long found itself on the margins of historians’ appreciation and interest. In the twentieth century, however, contemporary history became an increasingly strong field, gradually equipped with the necessary methods and theories. It is not by chance that this process occurred while historiography as a whole was undergoing a thorough change and was seeking new approaches and orientations. It is even fair to say that both movements actually constitute a single movement, in which a new basic paradigm of history is slowly emerging (although it has not yet been properly considered) — simply because we are beginning to see its prerequisites in an entirely new light, such as the ideas of the past, present, and memory. Historians had — to some extent or other — previously realized the conditionality of understanding the past by means of the present. (Burckhardt, for example, claimed that history depends on what in the past is essential to our present.) It is, however, only with the newly conceived history of the present and its results to date that this relationship can be understood more complexly.
The current article attempts to provide an outline for considering these relations. In doing so it considers the horizontal axis: the present ->the past ->memory ->history (the subject, sources, framework, the produced results) ->the history of the present. The vertical axis in this consideration is then formed by the common opposition to all the links: they are, among other things, change and structure, diachrony and synchrony, isophenomenology and isochronology, major and minor history, and the relationship between the scope of the field of vision and its magnification. In the space delimited by these axes the authors have tried, as concisely as possible, to capture the essence of contemporary discussion about the basic problems of historiography in general. The article concludes with a summary of contemporary history in various countries.
Historicism and Cultural Pessimism:
The Nineteenth-century Idea of Progress Reconsidered
Bedřich Loewenstein
This essay is a chapter from a forthcoming work on the history of the idea of progress in European thought. In it the author considers the relativization of the concept of progress in historicism, as it crystallized in the works of the historian Leopold von Ranke and the philosopher Johann G. Droysen. This movement was intensified in the work of the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt in the subjectivization of historical criteria, the idea of the historicity of cultures substituting for universal history permeated with meaning, and in ascribing the leading principle in history to will instead of reason. Before Burckhardt the prospects of decadence had already emerged, materializing in the terrifying vision of the ascent of the barbarian masses, wars, and the totalitarian state. Friedrich Nietzsche then became the true prophet of decadence, scorning the ‘weakling’s doctrines of optimism’, and in his diagnoses of the times undermines the pillars of Modernism, including historicism, to allow the strong individual to stand with his radical value system above the plebeian masses. An important part of his radically critical thinking consists in the attempt to use the Classical model of ‘eternal recurrence of the same’ in order to dislodge the Judeo-Christian idea of progress. An attempt, typical of the late nineteenth century, to find a counterweight to the spiritual depletion of civilization was articulated in the ‘philosophy of life’ and Wilhelm Dilthey and others prescribed empathy and the mutual experience of the historical objectivization of life to understand the unique as the only meaningful aim of the humanities. The author concludes with a consideration of the purpose of the revolution of historicism and its connection with the idea of decline.
The Arrival of Foucault in Bohemia:
The ‘Archaeological’ and ‘Genealogical’ Methods from the Perspective of an Historian
Jiří Suk
The article seeks to characterize the ‘archaeological’ and ‘genealogical’ methods, as discussed and practised by the French thinker Michel Foucault in his renowned works from the 1960s and 1970s. It considers Foucault’s treatment of history, from the early attempt to identify within it the ‘other’ (hidden) history, which was not written by sovereign Reason (Histoire de la folie a l’âge classique [1961 and 1972]). He tries to understand and define `archaeological’ as a method of revealing the discursive structures and epistemes of contemporaneous knowledge beginning with the era of the Enlightenment (Les Mots et les choses [1966] and l’Archéologie du savoir [1969]); and eventually also the ‘genealogical’ as a means of analysing knowledge and power (Surveiller et punir [1975]). Apart from the chief works named here, the article also considers Foucault’s shorter essays and interviews. It tries as well to state ways in which Foucault’s concepts can be an inspiration to Czech modern and contemporary history today.
Historiographical Understanding and Justification
Jan Horský
In theoretical terms, the author seeks to clarify ‘understanding’ and ‘ethical justification’ as two modes of dealing with history, and to judge them from the point of view of the competence of the historical sciences. Methodological analysis of the approaches of the historical sciences in the twentieth century, according to him, has demonstrated that knowing or understanding has taken place within a plurality of initial values. That has determined the plurality and coordinative relation of subjects of historical research and the plurality of conceptions of the facts being researched (the plurality of history). Nineteenth-century objectivist holistic conceptions were rejected. With regard to the recent ‘historical dispute’, which took place among Czech historians, it is appropriate here to consider the idea that historical knowledge can lead even to moral justification. From the point of view of the historical sciences the historian can legitimately attempt to understand historical actors in the sense of transposing their situation on to the junction of perspectives of processes and structures. If, however, we accept Weber’s conception of the competence of science, we must admit that this historiographical understanding cannot assume the nature of a moral justification. From the point of view of religious or lay ethics, each individual Self, the author concludes, has the ability to step aside from history. If the historical sciences consider their possibilities with critical-analytical modesty, he writes, then they must admit that there are numerous levels of human history, which they are unqualified to comment on.
Discussion
Concerning Historical Terms, Mastering the Past, and European History:
Three Comments for Further Discussion
Jan Křen
The author first points out the correlations, shifts, and contexts of meanings of some key historical (and political) concepts: Nazism and National Socialism, Communism and Socialism, national and international, and the names of countries and states. In his second comment he summarizes the process of coming to terms with the past of the Second World War on the sides both of the victors and of the vanquished, especially in the case of the Czech Republic and Germany, and considers the historicization of this phenomenon. Lastly, he considers the synthetic outlines of European history, which were established as a relatively new framework of historical interpretation next to traditional national and world histories.
Dejmek’s Magnum Opus under the Microscope
Vít Smetana
The author presents a thorough review of Jindřich Dejmek’s Nenaplněné naděje: Politické a diplomatické vztahy Československa a Velké Británie (1918–1938) [Dashed hopes: Czechoslovak-British political and diplomatic relations, 1918–38] (Prague: Karolinum, 2003) and also responds briefly to Dejmek’s reaction to another negative review of his work.
Some historians have called this work by Dejmek the ‘book of the year’ in the field of history. The present reviewer, however, finds it has many weaknesses. He argues that the author’s narrowing down of the history of international relations almost exclusively to diplomatic history is difficult to accept in modern historiography. In his view it completely disregards analysis of the phenomena considered, inquiry into their causes, or the input of contemporary historical debates. He also points out places where Dejmek has wrongly dealt with the primary and secondary sources, used clumsy language, and misunderstood the English. The large work, according to the reviewer, is marked by the author’s bias against British policy and its representatives while always defending Czechoslovak policy.
Puzzled by Provincial ‘Realism’
Miloš Havelka
In reaction to a piece of commentary by Jiří Bílek, which cast doubt on the results of the Centre of Oral History at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, and on the method itself (‘Rozpaky nad ‘Oral history’’, Historie a vojenství, 53 (2004) 4, pp. 121 ff), the author of the current article defends oral history as a method of research in contemporary history.
Materials
The Karel Hoffmann Case versus the Historians:
The View from the Telecommunications Authority in August 1968
Antonín Benčík
Reviews
Which Émigrés Were against Beneš
Jana Čechurová
Kuklík, Jan and Němeček, Jan. Proti Benešovi! Česká a slovenská protibenešovská opozice v Londýně 1939–1945. Prague, Karolinum, 2004, 485 pp.
The reviewer calls Kuklík and Němeček’s Proti Benešovi! – Česká a slovenská protibenešovská opozice v Londýně 1939–1945 (Against Beneš! The Czech and Slovak anti-Beneš opposition in London, 1939–45) a work meriting special praise. It is based on a number of preparatory articles by the authors, and summarizes a wealth of diverse materials. Using a combination of chronological, thematic, and biographical (group) interpretations, the authors have managed for the whole period of the Second World War, to map out thoroughly and to categorize the émigré politicians in London, who one way or another defined their position in relation to Beneš and the provisional government he represented.
Twentieth-century Totalitarianisms Compared
Miloš Calda
Novák, Miroslav (ed.). Komunismus a fašismus, Prague: Institut pro středoevropskou kulturu a politiku, 2002, 276 pp.
The volume under review contains essays by a number of Western authors. In the first part they discuss François Furet’s Le Passé d’une Illusion (Paris, 1995) and in the second they debate Alain Besançon’s ‘Mémoire et oubli du communisme’ (‘Forgotten Communism’) (1998), which is included in the volume. The reviewer argues that the debate between Furet and Ernst Nolte about the historical and socio-psychological roots of the success of Communist ideology is the most important of the debates, and believes the whole volume to be a useful introduction to contemporary Western discussions about the relationship between the two decisive totalitarianisms of the twentieth century.
French Fascism: A Phenomenon Still Denied
Lukáš Pachta
Dobry, Michel (ed.). Le Mythe de l’allergie française au fascisme. Paris: Albin Michel, 2003, 459 pp.
The authors of the essay volume under review have formulated their positions in distinct opposition to the traditional views of French historiography, which denied the existence of French Fascism, arguing that society in France was immune, indeed even allergic, to it. According to the reviewer, although the debunkers of the ‘myth of immunity’ have demonstrated that it is untenable, they themselves fall prey to a similarly erroneous approach when they describe clearly Fascist tendencies and inclinations as a phenomenon fully comparable to Nazism in Germany or Fascism in Italy.
An ‘Adventure Story’ about the Fall of Democracy in Austria
Petr Koura
Jeřábek, Martin. Konec demokracie v Rakousku, 1932–1938: Politické, hospodářské a ideologické příčiny pádu demokracie. Prague, Dokořán, 2004, 242 pp.
This work depicts the dramatic period in modern Austrian history when the country went from a democratic parliamentary system to a Nazi regime. It is, according to the reviewer, based on an outstanding knowledge of the primary sources and secondary literature, vividly depicts events frequently neglected by Czech historians, and raises a number of questions that are thought-provoking both for political scientists and historians.
Did the Poles Intend to Attack Czechoslovakia?
The Polish Army and Czechoslovakia between the Munich Agreement and the Occupation
Jiří Friedl
Deszczyński, Marek Piotr. Ostatni egzamin: Wojsko Polskie wobec kryzysu czechosłowackiego 1938–1939. Warsaw: Neriton, 2003, 597 pp. + appendices.
This work, based solidly on primary sources, is, according to the reviewer, a considerable contribution to Polish and Czech historiography. It reconstructs in detail the political and military relations between Warsaw and Prague in the dramatic years 1938 and 1939, providing insight into the plans and thinking of the Polish military command. The relationship of the two countries was tainted by disputes over Cieszyn/Těšín and was intensified during the Munich crisis, when the Poles annexed part of this territory. The key question, whether in autumn 1938 the Poles were preparing to attack if Czechoslovakia refused its ultimatum, is, according to the author of the work, difficult to answer with certainty. While strategic plans for this operation did exist, the relevant orders were probably never given.
Switzerland as a Dealer in Looted Art during the Second World War
František Novák
Buomberger, Thomas. Umění loupeže – loupež umění: Švýcarsko a obchod s ukradenými kulturními statky v době druhé světové války. Prague: BB Art, 2003, 414 pp. Translated from the German by Bruno Cempírek.
This Czech translation of Raubkunst, Kunstraub: Die Schweiz und der Handel mit gestohlenen Kulturgütern zur Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Zurich, 1998) by the Swiss historian and documentary maker Thomas Buomberger maps out the role of Switzerland as a land where trade flourished in art stolen by the Germans in the occupied countries during the Second World War. It focuses on several key figures in these transactions, demonstrates their collaboration with leading Nazis, and points to the unwillingness of the Swiss authorities after the war to return artworks to their original owners by arguing that they had been bona fide purchases.
How Not to Write about the Brezhnev Doctrine
Jan Růžička
Ouimet, Matthew J. The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, 309 pp.
A political analyst of the US Department of State, the author Matthew J. Ouimet conceives the Brezhnev Doctrine as a qualitatively new phenomenon in Soviet Foreign policy, and dates its demise to the summer of 1981, when the Soviet brass allegedly rose up against the idea of Soviet intervention in Poland. The author’s thesis is, however, based on a single piece of testimony and his sources are generally flimsy. The reviewer also reproaches him for an unbalanced presentation, a black-and-white view, and coming up with historical causes based on how events turned out. The whole book, the reviewer argues, is a lost opportunity and a negative example of a certain kind of work in historiography.
Not Quite a Breakthrough:
A Biography of Ceauşescu in the Context of Czech Writing on the History of Romania
Lukáš Babka
Tejchman, Miroslav. Nicolae Ceauşescu: Život a smrt jednoho diktátora. Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2004, 205 pp.
The reviewer outlines the relatively unsatisfactory state of Czech historical research on Romania and on the basis of this sees Tejchman’s Nicolae Ceauşescu: Život a smrt jednoho diktátora (N.C.: The life and death of a dictator) as the first work and one clearly needed but he has mixed feelings about the results. Tejchman, the leading expert on Romanian history in Czech circles, has used a number of his earlier works to produce the book under review and consequently, argues the reviewer, he has this time contributed little new. Moreover, since he has concentrated too much on Ceauşescu and the Ceauşescu family, Tejchman has failed to achieve his declared aim of writing a brief history of post-war Romania.
Closely Listening and Looking at the Past:
The German Periodical ‘Horch und Guck’
Tomáš Vilímek
The author provides an extensive report on Horch und Guck, a German historical-literary journal, which has been published by the Bürgerkomitee 15. Januar since 1992. The committee, located in Berlin, is made up mainly of people who took part in the East German opposition to the Communist regime and it was responsible for saving from destruction the files of the former East German secret police. The topics of the journal are mainly related to the operation of the state security forces and other organs of power, as well as the East German opposition movement and expressions of resistance to the regime. The carefully considered, richly conceived numbers of Horch und Guck (published as a quarterly since 1999) contain articles by non-German historians, including Czech ones, who write on similar topics in other countries of the former Soviet bloc.
