No. I.
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Milan Hauner
Edvard Beneš and the USA, 1939–1942.
An Unpublished Manuscript by Jan Opočenský
Jiří Pernes
The Workers’ Demonstration in Brno, 1951
Jan Pešek
Forced Resettlement Operations in Slovakia, 1948–1953
Matthias Roeser
The Sovietisation and Militarisation of the Czechoslovak Aircraft Industry, 1949–1953
Horizon
Justus D. Doenecke
U.S. Policy and the European War, 1939–1941:
An Historigraphic Survey
Materials
Jan Kuklík
The Beginning of the Presidential Decrees during the London Exile
Documents
Jan Němeček
The Slovak National Council, 1939
On Sources
Jaroslav Soukup
A Comment on Vilém Prečan’s Article about Russian Archives
Reviews
Alžběta Sedliaková
An Up-to-Date Handbook on Slovak Historiography
Chronicle
Zdeněk Sládek
A New Journal:
Rossica
Bibliography
Monographs, collections of essays, articles from journals and collections, in Inglish, French, Italian and German, including non-Czech language books published in the Czech Republic and Slovakia from 1993 to 1995
Summaries
An Unpublished Manuscript by Jan Opočenský
Milan Hauner
Jan Opočenský, previously an historian and Head Archivist in the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry archives, became Beneš’s chief archivist in London during the war. In that capacity he drafted many papers which have so far been attributed exclusively to Beneš himself. Following Beneš’s instructions Opočenský worked between the late summer of 1941 and September 1942 on the manuscript ‘The President’s Sojourn in the United States’. This MS covers the brief but extremely successful period in Beneš’s career, from February to July 1939, when the former Czechoslovak president taught at the University of Chicago and directed the campaign in the USA for the restoration of the Czechoslovak Republic. Relying on another unpublished source, the ‘Opočenský Diaries 1940–1945’, the author of this article has endeavoured to reconstruct the writing of the ‘Sojourn’ in view of the complex political factors Beneš was facing at the time.
Hauner’s thesis is that Beneš’s primary motivation was the desire to obtain from Washington full diplomatic recognition for his exile government and, consequently, also for the restitution of the Czechoslovak Republic, which for reasons he could not grasp was not forthcoming – despite President Roosevelt’s confidential pledge to him during their secret meeting in May 1939. Beneš read the ‘Sojourn’ MS sometime during September 1942, and gave instructions for its publication. Meanwhile, however, Washington had recognized the Czechoslovak exile government and Beneš instructed Opočenský to cancel its publication. Nevertheless, the ‘Sojourn’ has an important appendix containing 35 documents, which has been used for subsequent publications presumably also drafted by Opočenský for Beneš: Tři roky druhé světové války [Three years of WW II] (London 1942), and Šest let exilu a druhé světové války [Six years of exile and WW II] (1946).
The Workers’ Demonstration in Brno, 1951
Jiří Pernes
On 20 November 1951, the government of the Czechoslovak Republic passed a resolution on a change in the payment of Christmas bonuses. Till then they had been paid to all employees, but from that date, the bonus was to go only to employees whose wages were 3,500 Czechoslovak crowns or less. The government resolution provoked significant dissatisfaction, particularly among manual labourers. Unrest came to a head in and around the city of Brno on 21 and 22 November 1951. The Brno armaments factory Zbrojovka became the centre of the turmoil when its employees went on strike, and were soon joined by other factories. Employees took to the streets, organised an anti-government demonstration and even attacked the office of the state police. The Communist authorities used divisions of the People’s Militia to break up the demonstration, actually one of the first manifestations of workers’ dissatisfaction with the social policy of the Czechoslovak Communist regime.
Despite the mass nature of the protests, the government did not rescind or amend the resolution. In early 1952, a trial took place of people who had been arrested during the troubles. Among the demonstrators and strikers were a number of Communist Party members, many of whom faced only Party sanctions. Others, however, were punished by being transferred to worse jobs. The campaign to deter further activity of this sort culminated in the March 1952 trial of a group designated as the demonstration’s organisers.
Forced Resettlement Operations in Slovakia, 1948–1953
Jan Pešek
The establishment of the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia in 1948 led to, amongst other things, mobility in the population of Slovakia. This clearly political form of persecution was aimed against opponents to the regime and those whom the regime considered potential adversaries. Resettlement operations affected people who had previously been active in politics and the economy, the urban middle classes, the Church, ‘class enemies’, wealthy village dwellers and other social groups. Forced resettlement was carried out using a number of intertwined campaigns and operations which together formed one stream of the regime’s persecution. Although for many reasons the precise number remains unknown, this form of persecution drastically intruded in the lives of thousands of families; rough estimates set the figure at as many as 100 000 people. The majority of the forced resettlement was during the founding period of the totalitarian regime, roughly 1948–53. In the subsequent period the nature of the regime remained unchanged but this particular form of persecution was only used in exceptional cases.
The Sovietisation and Militarisation of the Czechoslovak Aircraft Industry, 1949–53
Matthias Roeser
The sovietisation of the Czechoslovak aircraft industry (that is to say, the introduction of Soviet aircraft and know-how into production and the introduction of the Soviet economic system) was the result of two factors. Firstly, it was impossible to reach the technological level of the Great Powers without foreign assistance. Second, from 1949 the Soviet Union wanted to transfer part of the arms production of the newly developing Eastern bloc to Czechoslovakia. The USSR, therefore, allowed Czechoslovakia, in 1949, to produce under licence the I1-10 ground-attack plane and Jak-17 jet fighter. In 1951, they even allowed the production of the MiG-15, one of the best jet fighters in the world at the time. The very ambitious production numbers demanded complete reconstruction of the existing system of planning and administration. Under the leadership of numerous Soviet consultants it was reorganised along Soviet lines. Arms production fever resulted in several revisions of the plan, heavy disproportions throughout the economy, and the militarisation of management-employee relations. Further research on this topic awaits the far-reaching declassification of archive documents.
U.S. Policy and the European War, 1939–1941:
An Historiographical Survey
Justus D. Doenecke
This is a Czech translation of an extensive review article first published in Diplomatic History Vol. 19, No. 4 (1995). It thoroughly covers and analyzes the historigraphical streams and schools which have been concerned with F.D. Roosevelt, the isolationists and interventionists and their arguments regarding potential US entry into the Second World War during the critical period leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Beginning of the Presidential Decrees during the London Exile
Jan Kuklík
This article aims to demonstrate that the issuing of the decrees by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile is not merely a matter of the end of World War II and the period immediately afterwards. The author first briefly characterises Czechoslovakia’s legal and political development after the acceptance of the Munich Agreement and the beginning of the Czechoslovak resistance in France and Great Britain. He discusses the problem of recognition of Czechoslovak organs in exile and the process of creating a provisional state administration under Edvard Beneš. The author is the first to publish two documents from the Archive of the Foreign Ministry and the Archive of the T. G. Masaryk Institute, which he uses to explain the creation of the conception for the issuing of constitutional decrees and presidential decrees in the summer and autumn of 1940. In particular, the contemporaneous briefs on the decrees summarise the reasons which led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to its provisional solution to legislative activity. The author emphasizes that all these laws promulgated abroad were to be subject to special post-war ratification (ratihabice), were issued only in exceptional cases, were to observe as much as possible the articles of the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920 and not infringe on basic civil rights. The author links the completion of the first stage of the issuing of the presidential decrees with the amendment of the constitutional decrees and the establishment of the Council of State, in 1940, which accorded that quasi parliament in exile the authority to participate in the process of the drafting decrees in the London government-in-exile.
The Slovak National Council, 1939
Jan Němeček
The Slovak National Council (SNC) was formed in Paris, 22 November 1939, by former Czechoslovak Premier Milan Hodža. Its activity has remained a poorly documented area of the history of the Czechoslovak resistance abroad. Five documents in particular form the basis of research on its history: minutes of the founding meeting of the SNC, its principles on the future devolution of powers in Czechoslovakia, a letter of the SNC sent to the Czechoslovak National Committee (CSNC) in Paris, 5 December 1939, the CSNC’s answer to Hodža, 13 January 1940, and an appeal to Czechoslovak emigrées in France, 24 December 1939. The SNR ended its formally independent work in two months, when it entered the Czecho-Slovak National Council, the opposition to the officially recognized Czechoslovak National Committee.
A Comment on Vilém Prečan’s Article about Russian Archives
Jaroslav Soukup
The author raises some points about Prečan’s discussion on Russian archives and provides more precise Czech translations of Russian archival terms.
An Up-to-Date Handbook on Slovak Historiography
Alžběta Sedliaková
The Guide to Historiography in Slovakia, Studia historica Slovaca 20 (Bratislava 1995), compiled by Elena Mannová and David Paul Daniel, maps out a great many of the topic areas of Slovak history. In its introduction, Slovakia is described as a state with an extensive infrastructure for historical research. This is followed by a survey of literature on Slovak history and a list of current historical journals published in Slovakia. In their historical analysis of the individual chronological periods, the handbook’s authors focus on historiography. The conclusion contains information on historical institutions, archives, libraries and museums.
Zdeněk Sládek
Rossica is a new bi-annual for Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussia studies, first published this year by Euroslavica, Prague. Articles will be published in English and Russian.
Contributors
Justus D. Doenecke is Professor of History at New College of the University of South Florida. He took a doctorate at Princeton in 1966. He is the author of many books and articles on US isolationism during the Cold War and US opinion makers during the Manchurian crisis.
Milan Hauner (1940) took degrees in Prague and Cambridge. He lives in the United States and teaches there and in Europe. He is the author of India in Axis Strategy (Stuttgart 1981), Hitler: A Chronology of his Life and Time (London 1983), What Is Asia to Us? Russia’s Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today (1992) and editor of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union (Boulder 1988).
Jan Kuklík (1967) is a Reader in Legal History at the Law School of Charles University. His main area of concern is the legal history of the first Czechoslovak Republic and World War II. He is author of Vznik Československého národního výboru a Prozatímního státního zřízení ČSR v emigraci v letech 1939–1940 [The creation of the Czechoslovak National Council and the Provisional State Administration of Czechoslovakia in exile, 1939–40].
Jan Němeček (1963) is a researcher in the Historical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He is concerned with the history of the Czechoslovak resistance at home and abroad during World War II. He is collaborating on a project with the Institute of International Relations on the editing and publication of Czechoslovak diplomatic documents.
Jiří Pernes (1948) is a research worker in the Insitute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. His main area is the Communist system in crisis, 1953–57. He is the author of works on late 19th and early 20th century Czech history, including Spiknutí proti Jeho Veličenstvu [Plot against His Majesty] (1988), Svět Lidových novin [The world of the newspaper L.n.] (1993), Habsburkové bez trůnu [Habsburgs without a throne] (1995).
Jan Pešek (1949) is a researcher in the Historical Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. He is concerned primarily with questions of national histories after 1945. He is the author of Štátna bezpečnosť na Slovensku 1948–1953 [The state security forces in Slovakia, 1948–53] (1996) and co-author of 150 rokov družstevníctva na Slovensku: Víťazstvo a prehry [150 years of agricultural collectivisation in Slovakia: Victory and defeats] (1995).
Matthias Roeser (1968) took a degree in East European, medieval and modern history and economics, in Cologne in 1995. Whilst on a scholarship from the Czech Ministry of Education, 1992–93, he conducted research at Prague University for his dissertation on the sovietisation and militarisation of the Czechoslovak aircraft industry, 1948–53. He worked briefly at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, and is now at the Hannah Arendt Institute, Dresden.
Alžbeta Sedliaková (1952) is at the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She collaborated with the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences on the Bibliografie dějin Československa and compiled the selected bibliography Historiografia na Slovensku 1990–1994 (1995).
Zdeněk Sládek (1926) was a researcher in the Institute of East European History, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, until 1968. After being prevented from working as an historian, he returned to the field only after 1989. He is mainly concerned with Czechoslovakia’s economic relations with neighbouring countries and with the history of Russia in the inter-war period. He is the author of Hospodářské vztahy ČSR a SSSR 1918–1938 [Czechoslovak-Soviet economic relations, 1918–38] (1971) and co-author of Dějin Ruska [A history of Russia] (1995).
Jaroslav Soukup (1931) is an historian and archivist in the Archive of the T. G. Masaryk Institute, where he is in charge of the Edvard Beneš Papers.
