No. II.-III.

Bibliography on Contemporary History Bibliographical survey of articles from specialized magazines and journals published abroad between 1998 and 2001

Archive of Contemporary History
A Few of Remarks on the Historical Context (Jaroslav Cuhra)

Miroslav Pfann, Milena a Jan Šimsovi
Public discussion about the activities of Secret Police in the Association of Protestant Ministry of Bohemian Brethen in 1966

Summaries

Contributors

The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the State and the Roman Catholic Church, 1948–89

Jaroslav Cuhra

The article outlines Communist Party policy toward the Roman Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia from the time of the Communist takeover in February 1948 to the collapse of the régime at the end of 1989. It focuses in part on the response of the Church to this policy and concludes by drawing attention to other consequences, some of which have had repercussions to the present day. The article, though focusing primarily on the Roman Catholic Church, also discusses the attitude of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPCz) towards religion in general.

The author first considers the new institutional framework informing the Church-State relationship after the 1948 takeover (including the entrance of the Party and its ideology into the relationship, as well as the formation of a system of state-administered supervisory bodies) and provides a concise description of CPCz policy toward the Churches throughout this period. He argues that in its approach to the Churches (particularly the Roman Catholic Church) the CPCz was always dominated by ideology rather than by a rational attempt to avoid conflict, and that the governing party (except during the Prague Spring of 1968) was not willing to find a compromise acceptable to both sides; the CPCz insisted not only on having a monopoly on ideology, it also continued to promote its views on the gradual ‘withering away’ of religion.

The next part of the article considers the extent to which the politics of the régime changed (while maintaining this basic attitude), and it demonstrates how after the first ‘victorious’ conflict with the Roman Catholic Church the régime began to restrict the life of the Church and of religious societies in general. In the context of the 1960’s it then recalls the Communists’ fears from the modernization of the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council and the dialogue of that time between Marxists and Christians. Particular attention is paid to the period of the Prague Spring when a willingness to establish more acceptable conditions for the activities of the Church predominated in the reformist leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.

The Normalization period, the author argues, was dominated by a return to the ideological and irrational approach to the Church which was again forced into the role of a ‘doomed’ organization. Not even the growing opposition, which was expressed in the second half of the 1980’s by public addresses, did not compel the fading Communist régime to seek true consensus.

The author concludes the article by reminding the reader of both the importance of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the anti-totalitarian resistance as well as of problems that the many years of oppression brought to the Church and which continue to influence its work and position in society to the present day.

Institutionalized and Non-institutionalized Religion in the Czech post-WWII Development

Dana Hamplová

The article examines from a sociological viewpoint the development of religion in the Czech Lands in the second half of the twentieth century. It distinguishes between organized religion (Churches and religious societies) and non-organized (general faith in the supernatural). It draws both on censuses and specialized public opinion polls.

The author concludes that in the period of the Communist rule in the Czech Lands, 1948–89, the proportion of the religious Czech population dropped considerably, the number of people who went to church and the proportion of children who had religious education fell drastically. However, this was not a slow process; it was rather a sudden break in the attitude towards religion, and was connected with the Communists’ coming to power, repressive methods of the Party and atheistic propaganda. The author also points out that, though from the point of view of the proportion of the population that is of a certain confession or goes to church, Czech society can be described as highly secularized, it has a relatively strong religious potential, which could, nevertheless, surface only after the collapse of the Communist régime – in rather untraditional (occult) forms.

The Liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia in 1950

Michal Barnovský

The author concentrates on a barely researched chapter of Czechoslovak history, namely on the repression of the Churches in Czechoslovakia by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He states that in 1948, there were officially 305,645 Greek Catholics in Czechoslovakia, of which 237,245 were in Slovakia, forming a more compact whole only in eastern Slovakia. From the liberation and restoration of Czechoslovakia in May 1945 to the Communist takeover in February 1948, the authorities that were in power, including the Communists, took a favourable position towards the Greek Catholic Church. They did not interfere with its pastoral work and perceived it as an opposition to the totalitarian régime of the Slovak State in 1939–45. In the case of the Communists this attitude, which was in contrast to their antipathy to the Roman Catholic Church, was disturbed in 1947 by the suspicion that the Greek Catholics supported the Bandera gang (members of the Ukrainian Insurrection Army).

A radical change in the state policy towards the Greek Catholic Church, as the author argues, took place in the period from Summer 1948 to May 1950. At that time, the Communist régime labelled this church the most reactionary of all and from 1949, followed the Soviet model and prepared to liquidate it by returning Greek Catholics to the ‘faith of their fathers’ – Eastern Orthodoxy. In this effort, the régime was also assisted by the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia, coordinated with the Eastern Orthodox Church in Russia; the course of events was, furthermore, influenced by Soviet Communists. The author points out that the role and interests of the individual parties in this process have not yet been completely clarified. In Ferbruary 1950 the Operation P (for pravoslávie, i.e. Eastern Orthodox) began. Committees for the return to the Eastern Orthodox Church were set up in the districts and towns inhabited by Greek Catholics. The operation culminated on April 28th, 1950 with the staged assembly of Greek Catholics in Prešov, which proclaimed the abolishment of the Uzhorod Union of 1646 and reunification with the Eastern Orthodox Church. From that point on, from the point of view of the régime, the Greek Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, though the entire operation was in contradiction to both the Constitution, which proclaimed freedom of religion, and the Canonical Law. The majority of the Greek Catholic priests and congregations did not come to terms with the imposed Eastern Orthodoxy. The Greek Catholic Church was not allowed until the democratization process of the Spring of 1968.

Persecution of the Roman Catholic Church in Slovakia, 1959–63

Róbert Letz

The subject of this study is a rather short, though not yet researched period of the intensified antagonism of the Communist régime in Czechoslovakia towards the Churches, which replaced the first signs of liberalization. Favourable international and domestic political conditions for such a change in the policy of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia occurred in early 1957: A new wave of persecution was also influenced by the hard-line anti-religious course in the Soviet Union, which arrived after Nikita S. Krushchev took the supreme office of state.

The renewed oppression against priests and other Christians was to frighten and break all those who understood the mission of Christians and the Church in an active way. Most priests were imprisoned in the late 1950’s in the labour camp at Leopoldov (in July 1959 there were 123 such camps); other priests and lay activists ended up in prisons throughout the country, and later they were concentrated at Valdice near Jičín. For propagandist reasons the Party leadership declared an amnesty in May 1960, which only camouflaged the continuing religious and political oppression. Though ninety-one members of the Church hierarchy, priests and monks were released, a large number of other priests and believers, including the bishops Ján Vojtaššák, Vasiľ Hopko and Pavel P. Gojdič, remained in prison. During the preparations of the presidential amnesty and afterwards, many other arrests were made, followed by court trials of religious activists.

The most affected of all were the monks and priests. The article systematically traces the repression of the religious Orders of the Jesuits, Verbists, Capuchins, Consolata Missionaries, Redemptorists, School Brothers, Lazarists and Sisters of Charity, which was to paralyze their activities and primarily, the acceptance of new candidates. It also documents cases of oppression of priests in the pastorate, who were accused mainly of obstructing the socialization of villages and of corrupting the young people. As it turned out in later years, repression of religious activists did not bring the desired results but, instead, led to increasing mistrust of Christians towards the régime and its church policy.

The State and the Churches in the Period of Struggle for Social Reform, 1968–69

Jan Pešek

This article is a comprehensive summary of relations between the Communist régime and the Churches in the period known as the Prague Spring of 1968. It demonstrates internal political developments in Czechoslovakia and the attempts to achieve social reform after January 1968, when the conditions for the great increase in activity of all the Churches were established. The ‘guardianship of state power’ over the churches weakened considerably, and pressure from the régime apparently almost ceased to exist. The Roman Catholic Church, including the Greek Catholic Church, which was again allowed to exist, experienced a true renaissance. On the contrary, the Protestant Churches – the Church of the Augsburg Confession (Lutherans) and the reformed Christian Church (Calvinists) – and the Russian Orthodox Church tended to collapse under the weight of their own problems; the Eastern Orthodox Church seemed to have the greatest problems in consequence of the restoration of the activity of the Greek Orthodox Church, which was eliminated by force (pravoslavizovaná, that is, made Eastern Orthodox) in the early 1950’s.

The occupation of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Pact in August 1968 stopped the reforms and made space for the later policy of ‘Normalization’ (after the changes in the top authorities of the Party and state in April 1969). The Church was immediately pressed back almost into conditions that prevailed before January. ‘Normalization’ was a process that froze and conserved both open and latent problems of all the Churches, but mainly those of the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Churches, including their relations. The revival of the activity of the Churches in 1968–69, however, was too intensive to be stopped entirely and reversed, all the more if one considers the increasingly important role of many international factors which made it impossible for the Husák régime to resort completely to methods previously used in the elimination of the influence of the Churches.

The Quadragesimo anno Encyclical, Its Reception and Influence on the Czech Roman Catholic Environment the 1930’s

Jaroslav Šebek

The 1930’s in the Roman Catholic environment in Europe, argues the author in this article, was a period characterized by dynamic development of theological thought, an intensive search for new forms of pastoral activity and also by new impulses in Roman Catholic social teaching. The reason for all this was the fact that the Church sought to enlarge the circle of its followers by members of the working class. Roman Catholic social teaching focused therefore its attention mainly on questions of the relationship between the capital and labour, the problem of just wages, and in particular on the attempt to find a solution to class conflict. The theoretical basis for this was the encyclical of Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, which emphasized in particular the need for a new social order based on cooperation between employers and employees in the class-like organizations, which was to lead to the establishment of a social peace.

The author points out the important influence of the encyclical on the theory and practice of policy in Austria, a state neighbouring Czechoslovakia. He then traces its reception in the Czech Lands, both among German-speaking and Czech Roman Catholics. German Roman Catholicism was at first more likely to take the initiative in adopting the ideas of the encyclical, but did not have enough of influence to promote them to any serious extent. The Qadragesimo anno was received differently by Czech Roman Catholics and those of Moravia. The attempt to promote the ideas of class-like organization became one of the reasons for the struggle within the Czechoslovak People’s Party between the Czech wing, which supported the class structure, and the Moravian wing of the party, in 1933–34. In the second half of the 1930’s the discussion in the People’s Party ceased and reappeared mainly among Roman Catholic intellectuals and right-wing political groups. As a result of the ambiguity of the formulations the principle of the class-like structure of society was also used by authoritarian political movements which thus legitimized their efforts to destroy the parliamentary democracy in Czechoslovakia.

Cardinal Beran and His Struggle with Totalitarianism:
A Portrait

Václav Vaško

The subject of this article is the life and work of Cardinal Beran, the Archbishop of Prague (1888–1969) and his struggle with Nazism and Communism. In 1942–45, he was interned in several German concentration camps for activity ‘inimical to the Reich’. He returned home a national hero. In 1946, he became the Archbishop of Prague and strived to rectify the material and moral damage the Church had suffered as a result of the Nazi Occupation, the post-war expulsion of the Czechoslovak Germans and the subsequent plundering of the borderlands. He also confronted growing Communist aggression.

After the Communist takeover of 1948, the Church in the Czech Lands, led by Beran, refused to accept the legitimacy of the new régime. Unacceptable Communist demands resulted in the collapse of negotiations between the Church and State, which was followed by state terror. The aim of the régime was to drive a wedge between the Church in Czechoslovakia and Rome, in order to get the Church fully under Communist control. This led to a gradual destruction of the Church structure, courtroom trials and persecution of all kinds. Beran was imprisoned from 1949 till Pope Paul VI named him a Cardinal in 1965. Beran was then expelled from his homeland and replaced by František Tomášek as Apostolic Administrator of Prague (later Cardinal).

In exile, Archbishop Beran dedicated much of his time to the fellow Czech émigrés. At the Second Vatican Council, he presented a report on religious freedom, in which he pointed out the mistakes the Church had committed in this respect. In this way he made a considerable contribution to the adoption of the Declaration on Religious Freedom. Even after his death, however, a decision by Paul IV to bury him in the papal crypt of St Peter’s, prevented his remains from being sent to his native land.

A Lost Opportunity

Bedřich Loewenstein

Tomáš Pasák, Český fašismus 1922–1945 a kolaborace 1939–1945. Prepared for publication by Jana Pasáková. Prague: Práh, 1999, 486 pp. Includes a preface by Robert Kvaček and an article by Milan Nakonečný, ‘K psychologii a perspektivám českého fašismu’.

This comprehensive discussion on Czech Fascism was written mostly under Communist rule and could not be published until after the changes of the régime. It unfortunately fails to meet many of the demands of the contemporary critical history writing. The author, the late Tomáš Pasák, has not surpassed the simple approach of providing a chronicle of events, ignored the discussions on Fascism which went on elsewhere in the world, and has not asked the basic questions. In terms of interpretation, this study does not provide anything new.

The Changes of ‘Wild Idealism’:
The History of the Czech Fascist Organization ‘The Flag’ as Understood by Milan Nakonečný

Vlastimil Hála

Milan Nakonečný, Vlajka: K historii a ideologii českého fašismu. Prague: Chvojkovo nakladatelství, 2001, 332 pp.

The book is about the history of the well-known militant fascist organization in the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic and of the Nazi Protectorate. Besides from the factual aspect of the work, the reviewer highlights the author’s often unusual standpoint, betraying his little sympathy towards the liberal system of parliamentary democracy.

The Double Life of a Scholar in German Studies

Petr Šafařík

Bernd A. Rusinek, Zwischenbilanz der Historischen Kommission zur Untersuchung des Falles Schneider/Schwerte und seiner zeitgeschichtlichen Umstände. Düsseldorf: Nordrhein-Westfälisches Hauptstaatsarchiv 1996, 184 pp.

Ludwig Jäger, Seitenwechsel: Der Fall Schneider/Schwerte und die Diskretion der Germanistik. Munich: Fink, 1998, 360 pp.

Peter Tepe, Mehr zum Fall Schneider/Schwerte. In P. Tepe and A. Thörner (eds), Arbeiten aus dem Schwerpunkt Mythos, Ideologie, Pt. 1. Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1999, pp. 15–88.

Claus Leggewie, Von Schneider zu Schwerte: Das ungewöhnliche Leben eines Mannes, der aus der Geschichte lernen wollte. Munich: Hanser, 1998.

On the basis of several publications the reviewer tells the story on a German scholar Hanse Schneider/Schwert who got involved with the Nazi régime and after the war succeeded in creating a new identity under a false name. He succeeded in building a successful career of a renowned expert in the same field. In 1995 Dutch journalists discovered his true identity.

Bartošek’s Analysis of Repression Based on the ‘Political Prisoner Phenomenon’

Françoise Mayer

Karel Bartošek, Český vězeň: Svědectví politických vězeňkyň a vězňů let padesátých, šedesátých a sedmdesátých. Prague and Litomyšl: Paseka, 2001, 317 pp. Bibliography, filmography, index of names.

The reviewer discusses mainly the methodological difficulties arising from the way the author questioned nine Czech political prisoners, and discusses the value of their testimony.

A Two-Part History of the Communist Secret Police in Slovakia

Stanislav Sikora

Jan Pešek, Nástroj represie a politickej kontroly: Štátna bezpečnosť na Slovensku 1953–1970. Bratislava: Veda, 2000, 248 pp.

The reviewer notes that the publication is an important addition to the contemporary knowledge of activities and structure of the Secret Police. It is the first study of this kind in Slovakia.

From Capitulation to Unification

Šárka Daňková

Peter Graf Kielmansegg, Nach der Katastrophe: Die Deutschen und ihre Nation. Eine Geschichte des geteilten Deutschland. Berlin: Siedler, 2000, 734 pp.

According to the reviewer, this book is the first and successful synthesis of German post-war history (1945–1990). She points out that instead of chronicle-like description, the problems are given primary attention, and difficult thoughts are not avoided.

A Partisan Picture of Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism

Jiří Ellinger

Hynek Fajmon, Margaret Thatcherová a její politika. Brno: Barrister & Principal, 1999, 392 pp.

The reviewer finds this book inconsistent. Its factual studiousness and methods used give it a mark of scientific objectivity. Nevertheless, direct ideological interpretations of the author make of it often a party elaborate.

Struggle of Reverend Novomestský against the Seizure of the Congregation House of the Church of the Augsburg Confession in Uhrovec, Slovakia

Norbert Kmeť

The article describes how the Communist régime seized the Ecclesiastic House of the Church of the Augsburg Confession in Uhrovec, Slovakia, in 1950. The local representatives of the Communist régime had a serious interest in using the Ecclesiastic House as a cinema and for the Socialist Youth Organization in Slovakia, with the aim to eliminate Church influence. After unsuccessful attempts to transfer the Ecclesiastic House in June 1949 and February 1950 into their hands, the local Communist representatives accused Reverend Karol Novomestský of organizing a demonstration. On October 25th, 1950 the court sentenced Novomestský to one year in jail.

The Memory of the Century:
Conference Report

Andrew Bove and Michal Kopeček

The following is a report on an international conference organized last March by the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur opened the sessions with reflections on the many-sided relationship between history and memory. Historian Pierre Nora traced causes of the unusual rise of the role of memory at present. Using picture material, his colleague Reinhart Kosselleck clarified changes of monuments in the course of the last two centuries.

Other sections focused on questions of historical memory in particular areas, both geographic (memory and identity in Poland, Russia and Austria) and thematic (comparison of historical memory of Communism and Fascism, Jewish memory and the Shoah). A number of other important personalities from the academia, politics, arts and media (including Timothy Garton Ash, Richard Pipes, Adam Michnik, Joachim Gauck, Alex Boraine, Leszek Kołakowski, Yehuda Bauer and Fritz Stern) participated at the conference.

The organizers of the conference, however, did not seek to chart out »memory of the twentieth century« exhaustively; they concentrated on the most important topics characteristic for this century. Thanks to that focus and to good organization, constructive discussion and a useful exchange of views during the conference prevailed.

Archive of Contemporary History A Few of Remarks on the Historical Context
Jaroslav Cuhra

Public discussion about the activities of Secret Police in the Association of Protestant Ministry of Bohemian Brethen in 1966

Miroslav Pfann, Milena a Jan Šimsovi

The irregular supplement of Soudobé dějiny publishes edition of eleven documents with two explanatory commentaries. In August 1966, the minister of the Protestant Church of Bohemian Brethen Jan Šimsa made a public address during the ministers’ meeting in Prague describing how he was, at the beginning of the 1950’s, forced to cooperate with the Secret Police, which he refused. His testimony provoked an excited debate during which seven other ministers admitted similar experience in the 1950’s and 60’s. On the basis of this, the Association of Protestant Ministry of Bohemian Brethen addressed a protest to the Ministry of the Interior against such pressure from the Secret Police. The investigation began and eight ministers who made their cases public were invited to discuss it in the offices of the Secret Police. The ministers concerned then prepared several analyses of the negative influence of the Secret Police and their agents on the life of the Church and the minds of citizens. In March 1968, they sent one of these to the Chairman of the Federal Assembly with an appeal to the ‘representatives of the people’ to deal with it.

The core of this documentary publication prepared by Milena Šimsová and Jan Šimsa from their private archive consists of eight written reports about the investigation of the individual cases in the Secret Police offices, which were made immediately afterwards by the ministers concerned and about which they informed one another. The reports speak about the ways in which ministers were forced to cooperate with the Secret Police as well as about later reaction of this repressive instrument of the régime on such rare questioning of their procedures, a reaction in which a seeming correctness and hidden threats mixed. Historian Jaroslav Cuhra explains in his commentary broader historical context of this case, mainly from the point of the development of the relations of the Protestant Church of Bohemian Brethen and the Communist régime. He points out that bringing the taboo of cooperation with the Secret Police to the public was unique at that time, and speculates about the extent of involuntary and voluntary cooperation of members of this Church with the Secret Police. In the introduction to the edition, the minister Miroslav Pfann describes the chronology of events from Šimsa’s speech to the moment when the analysis was sent to the Federal Assembly, and highlights the psychological and moral importance of the case, mainly for interpersonal solidarity, for the internal life of the Protestant Church of Bohemian Brethen and for the ability of their members to resist the pressure of the régime in the 1970’s and 80’s.

Contributors

Michal Barnovský (1937) is a Senior Researcher at the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. His main field of study is the post-war history of Slovakia. He has published a number of works including Na ceste k monopolu moci [On the Road to the Monopoly of Power] (Bratislava, 1993) and, in collaboration with Jan Pešek, Štátna moc a cirkvi na Slovensku 1948–1953 [State Power and the Churches in Slovakia] (Bratislava, 1997).

Andrew J. Bove (1972) is a doctoral student of political science at Boston College and a teaching assistant at the Political Science Department of Wesleyan University (Philadelphia). His major scholarly interest is the history of political philosophy, liberalism, and the philosophy of the social sciences.

Jaroslav Cuhra (1971) is a Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He specializes in the history of the Church in Central and Eastern Europe after WWII. His dissertation, focuses on relations between the Vatican and the Czechoslovak régime, 1968Ä89, and is about to be published.

Šárka Daňková (1977) is a Researcher at the Institute of International Studies, Charles University, Prague. Her field is the history of Germany and Austria.

Jiří Ellinger (1974) is a doctoral student of the Institute of World History at the Charles University, Prague, and a student of Academy of Diplomacy at the Institute of International Relations, Prague. He specializes in the history of Great Britain.

Vlastimil Hála (1951) is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. His work focuses on ethics in the history of philosophy. He is the author of Impulsy Kantovy etiky [The Impulses of Kant's Ethics] (Prague, 1994) and of a number of articles on the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophy (including Bolzano, Brentano, Hösle, and Habermas).

Dana Hamplová (1973) is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her work focuses on the sociology of the family and religion. She is a co-author of Představy mladých lidí o manželství a rodičovství [Young Persons Ideas on Marriage and Parenthood] (Prague, 2000), and Náboženství a nadpřirozeno ve společnosti: Mezinárodní srovnání na základě empirického výzkumu ISSP [Religion and the Supernatural: An International Comparison on the Basis of Empirical Research made by the ISSP] (Prague, 2000).

Norbert Kmeť (1971) is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Political Science of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He specializes in the political history of Slovakia after 1948 and is the author of Postavenie cirkví na Slovensku 1948–1951 [The Situation of the Churches in Slovakia, 1948–51] (Bratislava 2000).

Michal Kopeček (1974) is a Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. He focuses on the history and political philosophy of twentieth-century central Europe.

Róbert Letz (1967) teaches at the Department of Slavonic and World History at the College of Education, Comenius University, Bratislava. His research is focused on political and Church history after WWII. His publications include Slovensko v rokoch 1945–1948: Na ceste ku komunistickej totalite [On the Road to Communist Totalitarianism: Slovakia, 1945–48] (Bratislava, 1994).

Bedřich Loewenstein (1929) was a Senior Researcher at the Historical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences until 1970. Between 1979–1994 he was Professor of Modern History at the Freie Universität in (West) Berlin. He has published extensively on topics in modern European history from the eighteenth century to the present, with focus on civil society. His works published in Czech include Projekt moderny [The Project of Modernity] (Praha 1995).

Françoise Mayer (1957) is Associate Professor at the Paul Valéry University in Montpellier. Her research includes the history of Communism, and she is currently writing a book on Communism in the Czech collective consciousness after 1989.

Jan Pešek (1949) is a Senior Researcher at the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. His main field of interest is Czechoslovak and Slovak history after WWII. He has written several books on the persecution conducted by the Communist régime and on the activities of the Secret Police after February 1948, as well as on the Churches-State relations. He published Štátna moc a cirkvi na Slovensku 1948–1953 [State Power and the Churches in Slovakia, 1948–53] (Bratislava, 1997, with Michal Barnovský as co-author) and Pod kuratelou moci: Cirkvi na Slovensku v rokoch 1953–1970 [Under the Guardianship of the Authorities: The Churches in Slovakia, 1953–70] (Bratislava 1999).

Miroslav Pfann (1963) is a minister of the Czechoslovak Protestant Church in Rovečné, and a Deputy Chairman of the Society of Protestant Preachers.

Stanislav Sikora (1949) is a Senior Researcher at the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, and his main professional interest is the political history of Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 60s and the Social Democratic movement.

Petr Šafařík (1973) is a doctoral student at the Institute of International Studies, Charles University, Prague. He specializes in contemporary cultural history.

Jaroslav Šebek (1970) is a Researcher at the Historical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. He specializes in the political and social history of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1938, developments within Czech and German political parties, and in the history of the Church.

Jan Šimsa (1929) is a minister of the Czechoslovak Protestant Church in Klášter nad Dedinou and, since 1963, also in Prosetín. In 1973 the state revoked his permission to perform pastoral work. He was among the first signatories of Charter 77 and later imprisoned for several months.

Milena Šimsová (1932) graduated at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno. She specialized in the role of Christians in the resistance against the Nazi occupation, and helped to organize the archive of Přemysl Pitter and Olga Fierzová and transfer it to Prague.

Václav Vaško (1921) was a diplomat, worker and a political prisoner (1953–60), after 1989 the director emeritus of the Roman Catholic publishing house Zvon, a lecturer in the Czech Christian Academy, and a private researcher in the field of Czechoslovak Church history. His publications include Neumlčená: Kronika katolické církve v Československu po druhé světové válce [Unsilenced: A Chronicle of the Roman Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia after WWII] (Prague, 1990).

Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR

No. II.-III.

Obrazové aktuality