No. III.
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Zdeněk Vašíček
An Historian Who Refused to Testify:
The Story of Jan Tesař
Jiří Hoppe
A British View of the ‘Prague Spring’
Material
Pavel Žáček
Staatssicherheit vs Státní bezpečnost:
Concerning the Terminology of the Security Forces of Two Soviet-bloc States
Discussion
Igor Lukes
Two Documents on an Eternal Theme:
Czechoslovak-Soviet Relations in the 1930s
Reviews
Stanislav Kokoška
Still Relevant:
A History of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Jiří Pešek
Murder and Theft:
New facts on the Nazi Murder of Inhabitants of Eastern Europe
Jiří Pešek
Expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe after WW II
Vlastimil Hála
A Probe into an Unusual Dictatorship
Marie Černá
Of Nasty Teachers, Pioneer Neckerchiefs, Mrs Adamcová’s Cabbage Soup, and Many Other Things
Milan Otáhal
A Remarkable Primary Source on the History of ‘Normalization’
Oldřich Tůma
Two New Publications on the Internal German Border
Milan Otáhal
Hungarian Goulash Socialism from a Bohemian Point of View:
A Thought-Provoking Work on Kádárism
Documents
Petr Luňák
‘We’ll Be in Lyon in Nine Days’:
A Deployment Plan from 1964 for the Czechoslovak Armed Forces in the Event of War
Annotations
Bibliography on Contemporary History
Articles from Slovak scholarly journals and edited essay volumes published in 1996–2000
Archive of Contemporary History
František Koudelka
Husák’s Fall, 1987:
Documents on the Separation of the Office of the President of the CSSR from the Office of CPCz General Secretary and the Rise of Miloš Jakeš to the Head of the CPCz
Summaries
The Story of Jan Tesař
Zdeněk Vašíček
Jan Tesař (1933) is an important figure in contemporary Czech historiography. His work has focused on the history of the Czech resistance at home during World War II and on the history of Czechoslovakia after the war. He read history at Prague and was a researcher in both the History Institute of the Czechoslovak Army and the Historical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After the Soviet intervention of 1968 and the ultimate defeat of the Prague Spring reformers in 1969, Tesař was systematically involved in the underground opposition and provided the impetus for many conceptual solutions to the crisis of the opposition. He initiated, among other things, the setting up of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS). This work, however, led to seven years’ imprisonment. The article published here concerns this period of his life.
In 1980 Tesař emigrated first to Germany and then to France, where he published the journal Dialogy, which included many articles by him on topics from history and political science. The first volume of Tesař’s work has just been published under the title Mnichovský komplex: Jeho příčiny a důsledky [The Munich Complex: Its Causes and Consequences] (Prague, 2000).
A British View of the ‘Prague Spring’
Jiří Hoppe
The reaction of the United Kingdom to the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968 was at first reserved. It perceived events in Czechoslovakia, at least till early May, as an attempt at emancipation from command-control in the economic sphere. The Czechoslovak Communists, in the British view, mainly wanted to reform foreign-trade policy: the West was to supply the goods and technology and Czechoslovakia intended to pay for this by becoming (like Romania) the enfant terrible of the Soviet bloc.
A substantial re-evaluation of the British view of the Prague Spring took place in May 1968 in connection with the conference of UK ambassadors to the countries of Eastern Europe. These UK diplomats respected the rather more liberal policy of the new Czechoslovak leadership, yet they claimed also that Czechoslovakia remained orientated solely towards Moscow. The plans of the Czechoslovak leadership, who (according to the British Ambassador to Czechoslovakia) wanted to combine Soviet- type socialism with democracy, seemed to the British to be naive and misguided.
As the Soviet Union and its allies stepped up their pressure on Czechoslovakia, particularly in early July, the British Government began to explore ways to intervene effectively to the benefit of the reformers. The first step the British took, thanks in part to the interest of the British public, was to issue a statement on events in Czechoslovakia. The British Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, in a debate on foreign affairs in the Lower House of Parliament, on 18 July 1968, said that each country had to decide for itself about how to organize its own internal affairs and, consequently, only the citizens of Czechoslovakia could sort things out in their own country. Stewart also considered making a sharp public protest against Soviet behaviour towards Czechoslovakia. He realized, however, that in the given political constellation of forces, this sort of gesture would only be grist to the mill of Soviet propaganda. He therefore limited himself to information talks with the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom and, after consultations with the British ambassadors to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia, he abandoned any initiative of support. A similar position was adopted by all the other great Western powers, including the USA; Czechoslovakia therefore could henceforth count on the help only of Romania and Yugoslavia.
Reports on the Soviet-led intervention in progress in Czechoslovakia caught British foreign policy off guard. Immediately, on 21 August 1968, press agencies were carrying the statement of condemnation by the British Government, and the next day the British Government met to consider the intervention and the influence that events in Czechoslovakia would have on British security interests. According to Stewart there was no evidence of a threat of general war in Europe, which is why the Soviet Government, from the beginning of the intervention, hurried to assure the West of the limited aims of its intervention and there was no indication that it would act contrariwise. Regarding Czechoslovakia, Stewart proposed that the British Government should consider how much it was in the British interest to help Czechoslovakia in some way, even at the risk of meddling in the affairs of other states. The realist view prevailed in the cabinet debate, which had been held with an eye to the policy of détente.
Though later, towards the end of 1968, rather sober assessments of the Czechoslovak situation prevailed in Britain, the British Government drew relatively far-reaching conclusions from the Soviet intervention. The United Kingdom fully recognized the priority Europe held in a potential global conflict and also increased the number of units ear-marked for the European theatre of NATO. It also tried to achieve the full use of the geopolitical unity of Europe, which would continue to be of common interest. From this premise followed the joint policy of the NATO states towards the Soviet bloc.
Staatssicherheit vs Státní bezpečnost:
Concerning the Terminology of the Security Forces of Two Soviet-bloc States
Pavel Žáček
Taking up the thread from two articles by German historians in the last number of Soudobé dějiny the author of the present article aims to explain some differences in terminology connected with the work of the security forces of the German Democratic Republic (the Stasi) and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (the StB). He provides a brief introduction to chief differences in the organization, secret operative administration, and operations of the agents of the two secret-police organs of two states once relatively important within the Soviet bloc.
Owing to favourable research conditions in Germany today, study of the Stasi is considerably more advanced than is Czechs’ study of the StB, which is fair to describe as being in its initial stage. This situation, however, now enables us a timely comparison of some important terminology of the security forces, which can effectively prevent possible mistakes of form and even of fact and help researchers to avoid the subsequent confusion that can so easily arise.
Researchers must proceed with caution, particularly when concerned with the basic working methods of Soviet-type secret police, which include the enlistment and running of a network of agents. Following the same Soviet model the State Security Forces in Czechoslovakia (the Státní bezpečnost or StB) used secret collaborators (tajní spolupracovníci or TS) and the Stasi in East Germany used unofficial collaborators (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter der Abwehr or IM). From the more thorough categorization of the IMs and also from the considerably higher number of such collaborators in the late 1980s, it is clear that the Stasi system of mass secret collaboration was superior to that of the StB.
Two Documents on an Eternal Theme:
Czechoslovak-Soviet Relations in the 1930s
Igor Lukes
The article discusses the veracity of two documents pertaining to the Czechoslovak-German crisis of 1938. The first one purports to be a note from Nicolae-Petrescu Comnen, Romanian Foreign Minister, to Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, of September 1938. The alleged note authorized a transfer of Red Army ground troops via Romania to Czechoslovakia at the height of Prague’s conflict with the Third Reich. The author reaffirms his old conviction that the Kremlin had never intended to provide the Beneš Government with unilateral and militarily meaningful assistance. He joins Hugh Ragsdale, Milan Hauner, and others in rejecting the document as unauthentic.
The other document is a transcript of a speech delivered by a comrade Zhdanov before the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCz) on 20-21 August [1938]. The speaker told the audience that Hitler represented an historic opportunity for Communist parties everywhere, especially in Czechoslovakia. He elaborated on the standard Leninist-Stalinist thesis that wars between nations may evolve into wars among classes and argued that the Czechoslovak conflict with the Nazis would grow into a war against capitalism.
Viewed formally, it remains unclear whether the speech was delivered in 1938, since the year (though not the day and month) was pencilled in at a later date; it is not certain that the event took place in Prague because no location is mentioned; and, finally, it is impossible to determine whether the speaker was the Zhdanov from Stalin’s Politburo or another emissary with the same name. But the speech itself accurately reflects the thinking of the Soviet foreign-policy establishment in the late thirties. It organically fits in the context provided by other evidence. It embodies the line of the 7th Congress of the Comintern of 1935; it reflects what Commissar Litvinov told Arnošt Heidrich in Geneva, in May 1938, and what Minister Alexandrovsky stated at the Soviet Legation in Prague in November 1938; it follows closely the strategy outlined in the authoritative Voyennaya Mysľ in September 1938; and it is in tune with what Gottwald stated before the Comintern in December 1938 as well as to President Beneš in September 1945.
The author rejects Hauner’s suggestion that the Zhdanov document was fraudulently altered by a member of the CPCz apparat in the fifties on the grounds of the cui bono principle. After all, it presents the Soviet Union in the worst possible light: Zhdanov instructed the CPCz leaders to form a nation-wide front to defeat Hitler, at which point they were to turn their guns on their erstwhile allies and fellow Czechoslovak citizens. In the ensuing civil war against the Czech bourgeoisie, the CPCz was to be assisted by the Red Army in unleashing ‘the second wave of proletarian revolutions’.
The implication of the so-called Romanian document, namely that Soviet diplomacy had in the summer of 1938 actively sought to open a corridor for the Red Army’s march to Czechoslovakia, is entirely spurious. Were it authentic we should have to revise everything we think we know about Soviet political manoeuvres in the late thirties. By contrast, the so-called Zhdanov speech represents an uncorrupted account of one aspect of Soviet international strategy at the time.
Still Relevant:
A History of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Stanislav Kokoška
Detlef Brandes, Češi pod německým protektorátem: Okupační politika, kolaborace a odboj 1939–1945. Prague: Prostor, 1999, 675 pp.
This review examines the monograph by the German historian Detlef Brandes, Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat, which came out in Czech translation last year. Though twenty-five years have now passed since the German original was first published, the book continues to be the only complete synthesis of the political history of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (March 1939 to May 1945). In six chronologically arranged sections Brandes explores in depth the policies of the Nazi German occupation, the work of the Protectorate Government, the activity of Czech fascist groups, and the development of the Czech resistance movement at home. The work distinguishes itself by displaying the author’s superb knowledge of the primary archive sources and Czech historical literature. Though some parts of the work have now become outdated (in particular the passages devoted to the home resistance), the book on the whole continues to be of high scholarly value, owing to the scope of the research and the judiciousness of its interpretations. To a considerable extent it supersedes the trilogy on the home resistance, which was compiled by Czech historians in the 1960s but was, for political reasons, left unfinished. Brandes’s monograph, argues the reviewer, constitutes a solid, fact-based handbook for the history of the Protectorate.
Murder and Theft:
New Facts on the Nazi Murder of Inhabitants of Eastern Europe
Jiří Pešek
Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungs politik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999, 1,232 pp.
The exceptionally large volume under review concerns the relationship between the economy of the Reich, war-time economic policy, and the planning and carrying out of mass murder in Eastern Europe, in particular in Byelorussia. It is however of more than merely regional importance. Gerlach shifts the study of Nazi policy in the conquered lands to a new area, and demonstrates how the liquidation of millions of people in this region had a very strong economic motivation and was planned and carried out with this clearly in mind.
Expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe after WW II
Jiří Pešek
Philipp Ther: Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956. Göttigen: Vandenhoeck-Ruprecht, 1998, 382 pp.
The author of this thorough and methodologically inspiring comparative study investigates the post-WW II expulsion of groups of inhabitants of central and Eastern Europe. He considers it the greatest forced migration of the twentieth century and also a phenomenon that changed the cultural structure of central and Eastern Europe in an exceptionally important way. He also discusses the overall problem of re-emigration and social integration, the influence of political, socio-cultural, and religious factors, and combines an international view of the subject with detailed analysis of individual cases.
A Probe into an Unusual Dictatorship
Vlastimil Hála
Sheelagh Ellwood: Franco: Člověk, voják, diktátor. Brno: Books, 1999, 272 pp. (Translated by Marie Pokorná from the English original, Franco, London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1994).
In the book under review, author Sheelagh Ellwood discusses Franco and his development in the broader context of key events in Spanish history, in particular the Spanish-American war in the late nineteenth century, the civil war in the mid-1930s, and the post-WW II developments in which Spain managed gradually to integrate itself back into Europe. The author, working from a left-wing bias, sees Franco’s role as being predominantly negative. On the whole, she succeeds in providing an objective assessment of the many-sided internal structure and complicated developments of the authoritarian régime that Franco led for almost forty years.
Of Nasty Teachers, Pioneer Neckerchiefs, Mrs Adamcová’s Cabbage Soup, and Many Other Things
Marie Černá
Milan Otáhal and Miroslav Vaněk, Sto studentských revolucí. Prague: Lidové noviny, 1999, 859 pp.
Employing the methods of oral history, the authors of this work (whose title translates as One hundred student revolutions) have focused on persons who were active as students in the November 1989 revolution. For their research, the authors assembled one hundred biographical interviews, most of which are included in the book under review. The narratives of these former students include the November events as well as the earlier years of their lives in Czechoslovakia in the period of ‘Normalization’. Apart from the edited interviews, the book contains an interpretative section in which the authors, using the compiled material, discuss select areas that helped to form the lives of the narrators, including family, elementary and secondary school, the Pioneers, and interest areas. The authors, however, fail to specify what it is they are actually concerned with in the interpretation of the individual areas and there is no clear formulation of an aim that would have guided their arguments. The observations and quotations regarding the individual areas seem to be random and marginal and appear to have been selected for no clearly logical reason. Furthermore, a number of problems are merely indicated without being developed. Nevertheless the publication provides a good deal of new information and impetus to further study. Its wealth of material contains testimony to the periods both before and after November 1989.
A Remarkable Primary Source on the History of ‘Normalization’
Milan Otáhal
Olga Šulcová, Tajemství červeného křesla… a jiné příběhy. Prague: Troja, 1999, 178 pp.
The reviewer argues that the collection of short stories by Olga Šulcová, Tajemství červeného křesla … a jiné příběhy [The mystery of the red armchair and other stories], can be profitably used as a primary source for history. The author of the stories was active, after 1969, in pushing for a renewal of the reform attempts of the Prague Spring. She was consequently deprived of the opportunity to be employed in journalism and was sent to work in a factory. It was there that she made the stenographic notes of conversations with her fellow employees, which she then turned into belles lettres. These are, argues the reviewer, authentic records that contribute to our understanding of the thinking and behaviour of workers in the period of Normalization. This sort of primary source for the study of this period of contemporary history is rare and this slender volume is therefore a great contribution to that end.
Two New Publications on the Internal German Border
Oldřich Tůma
Peter Joachim Lapp, Gefechtsdienst im Frieden – Das Grenzregime der DDR. Bonn: Bernard + Graefe, 1999, 276 pp, photographs.
Monika Tantzscher, Die verlängerte Mauer: Die Zusammenarbeit der Sicherheitsdienste der Warschauer-Pakt-Staaten bei der Verhinderung von „Republikflucht“. Berlin: Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR. Řada B: Analysen und Berichte, 1 (1998), 161 pp.
The reviewer considers Peter Lapp’s publication the most thorough and clearest work so far written on the much discussed inner-German border. Monika Tantzscher’s publication is particularly interesting for its discussion of collaboration between security organs of East-bloc states, particularly that between the Stasi and the StB, to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West.
Hungarian Goulash Socialism from a Bohemian Point of View:
A Thought-Provoking Work on Kádárism
Milan Otáhal
Eva Irmanová, Kádárismus: Vznik a pád jedné iluze. Prague: Karolinum, 1998, 194 pp.
The reviewer considers Eva Irmanová’s Kádárismus: Vznik a pád jedné iluze [Kádárism: The rise and fall of an illusion] to be the most thorough analysis in Czech of one of several means of implementing Soviet-type socialism. The book, he argues, can also serve as the basis for comparison of contemporaneous developments in other countries of the Socialist bloc. In this connection, it points out the difference in approaches taken by the Communist élite after the defeat of the popular uprising in Hungary in 1956 and the failure of reform in Czechoslovakia after 21 August 1968, and it describes the various policies taken towards the reformers and also the public in the various Communist countries. The reviewer sees a certain weakness in the book, however, namely in its author’s failure to devote sufficient space to the opposition. Nevertheless, she did manage to analyze the emerging civil societies here.
‘We’ll Be in Lyon in Nine Days’:
A Deployment Plan from 1964 for the Czechoslovak Armed Forces in the Event of War
Petr Luňák
A war plan dating from 1964 was discovered by this historian in the Central Military Archive, Prague, in February 2000. He introduces the document by placing it in the context of East-bloc military thinking in the 1960s and he compares and contrasts it with NATO strategy of the same period.
Husák’s Fall, 1987:
Documents on the Separation of the Office of the President of the CSSR from the Office of CPCz General Secretary and the Rise of Miloš Jakeš to the Head of the CPCz
František Koudelka
This occasional section of Soudobé dějiny, Archive of Contemporary History, contains hitherto unpublished records of sessions of the CC CPCz Presidium (the chief organ of power in Czechoslovakia). They concern changes in the post of General Secretary of the CPCz, which were made in December 1987. As these official minutes of two key meetings are only a short and incomplete record of the talks, rather than stenographic, Soudobé dějiny is also publishing here minutes taken by Zdeněk Hoření, a participant in the talks and erstwhile Editor-in-Chief of Rudé právo, the main press organ of the CPCz. The documents are also supplemented with a transcription of Gustáv Husák’s resignation speech at a session of the CC CPCz in December 1987.
These debates of the CC CPCz Presidium were heated. On 19 November 1987, instead of the original agenda, the sole point discussed was the proposal put forth by the Premier of the Czech Republic, Ladislav Adamec, for the resignation of Husák and the election of Jakeš in his place. Husák rejected the proposal, calling it a play for power reminiscent of the methods of the 1950s (meaning the political trials in which he was sentenced to a long term in prison). In the talks, however, a majority of the Presidium supported the Adamec proposal, arguing that it would mean avoiding a reevaluation of the recent past and that Husák would voluntarily accept it. By the next Presidium session Husák changed his position and accepted his defeat (though not without reservations). Husák remained President of the Republic, but Jakeš had now become the most powerful man of the régime.
The introductory commentary by František Koudelka characterizes the role, agenda, and composition of the upper levels of the Party Presidium, the Central Committee, and the Central Secretariat of the CPCz. He also provides the historical context and atmosphere behind the talks documented here.
The published documents are of particular interest to scholars and other readers because they enable an authentic behind-the-scenes look at the workings of the top level of the Communist power structure. They thus allow historians to correct some imprecise points in memoirs by top-rank Czechoslovak and Soviet Communists.
Marie Černá (1972) read sociology at Prague. She now specializes in biographical sociology.
Vlastimil Hála (1951) is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences, Prague. He is primarily concerned with the history of philosophy, and has published Impulsy Kantovy etiky [The impulses behind Kant's ethics] and a number of articles on contemporary history and the history of philosophy, including Bolzano, Brentano, Hösle, and Habermas.
Jiří Hoppe (1968) read History and Czech Studies at Prague. Since 1992 he has been a Researcher in the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences, Prague. His main research interest is the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968.
Stanislav Kokoška (1959) is a Researcher in the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Science, Prague, in the Department of the History of World War II. He is primarily concerned with the anti-German resistance at home, the liberation of the Bohemian Lands in the spring of 1945 and the history of intelligence.
František Koudelka (1929) was till recently a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague. He headed an Institute project on the activity and role of the State Security Forces in the years 1954–68, and has also researched political history in Czechoslovakia, 1968–89. His publications include Státní bezpečnost 1954–1968 [The State Security Forces, 1954–68] (1993).
Igor Lukes (1951) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Boston. He holds degrees from Charles University and Tufts University (Medford, Massachussets) and his current area of specialization is twentieth-century Central European history. Among his many publications are Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler: The Diplomacy of Edvard Beneš in the 1930s (1996).
Petr Luňák (1966) is Docent of Modern History in the Faculty of Social Studies, Charles University, Prague. He read History at Prague and International Relations at Johns Hopkins University, Washington D.C. His area of specialization is the history of international relations and problems of European security. At present he is employed in the NATO Office of Information and Press, Brussels.
Milan Otáhal (1928) was a Researcher in the History Institute at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences till the Soviet military intervention of 1968. In 1989 he resumed work as an historian and since 1990 has been a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences, Prague. His main research interest is the phenomenon known as ‘Normalization’. His most recent publication is Podíl tvůrčí inteligence na pádu komunismu [The role of the intelligentsia in the fall of Communism] (1999).
Jiří Pešek (1954) graduated from Charles University, Prague, and was then employed in the Prague Municipal Archive. He is now a Research at the Institute of German and Austrian Studies, Charles University, and has written a number of articles on cultural history.
Oldřich Tůma (1950) is Director of the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences, Prague. Since the early 1990s he has been researching and writing on modern Czech history, especially the period 1969–89.
Zdeněk Vašíček (1933) has lectured at universities in Brno, Prague, Bochum, Paris, and Rome. He is concerned mainly with the theory and methods of archaeology and historiography. His publications include Archaeology Yesterday and Today: The Development of Archaeology in the Sciences and Humanities (1990), Archeologia: Storia, problemi, metodi (1997), L’archéologie, l’histoire, le passé: Chapitres sur la présentation, l’épistemologie et l’ontologie du temps perdu (1994); Obrazy (minulosti) [Pictures (of the past)] (Prague, 1996).
Pavel Žáček (1969) was employed in the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the StB and the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of Crimes of Communism. He is now a Senior Researcher in the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences, Prague. His chief professional interest is the security-police system of Communist Czechoslovakia and he recently published Boje o minulost [Struggle for the past] (2000).
