No IV.
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Articles
Stanislav Kokoška
German Military Counter-espionage in Prague:
Referat III F Abwehrstelle: Prag and Its Work against Allied Intelligence in the Balkans, 1939–44
Dalibor Státník
The Czechoslovak Intelligence Game in Austria, 1945–55:
Émigré Groups, Western Intelligence Services, and Their Infiltration by Czechoslovak Agents
Prokop Tomek
Operation ‘Kassel’:
The Planned Abduction of Jan Vlček in 1960
Materials
Tomáš Vilímek
Cheka Members in Our Midst:
Collaboration between the Czechoslovak and East German Secret Police, 1970–89
Reviews
Karel Sieber
Securitas Imperii:
The Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism as Criminologist, Documentalist, and Historian
Petruška Šustrová
A Remarkable Study Comparing the Secret Services of Three Post-Communist Countries
Jiří Křesťan
Red Rulers at the Castle
Jaroslav Cuhra
A Summary of Communist Crimes in Slovakia
Petr Blažek
The History of One Man’s ‘Collaboration’ with the Communist Intelligence Services
Jiří Křesťan
Thoughtful Testimonies by the Bernards about Their Native Land and Life as Émigrés
Jan Rataj
Two Views:
The Extreme Right in the Czech Republic as Seen by a Specialist and an Activist
Kateřina Bláhová
In Search of the Key to Alternative Culture
Jaroslav Vaculík
Post-World War II History in Polish History Journals in 2002
Discussion
Karel Hrubý
The Prospective of the Prague Spring
Chronicle
David Kovařík
An International Conference on the Sovietization of the Armed Forces of the East Bloc
Antonín Benčík
‘Alexander Dubček, Italy, and Europe’:
An Exhibition in Bologna
About the Archives
Daniel Štěpánek
The Papers of František Kriegel: A Neglected Source
Referat III F Abwehrstelle Prag and Its Work against Allied Intelligence in the Balkans, 1939–44
Stanislav Kokoška
The article describes how German military counter-espionage (the Abwehr) was established in Prague, its jurisdictional disputes with the Gestapo and its work against the resistance movement in the Protectorate and enemy agents abroad, particularly in the Balkans.
Immediately after the occupation of the rump Czechoslovakia and the setting up of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in mid-March 1939, a separate Abwehr office was set up in Prague (Abwehrstelle Prag), part of which was Referat III F. Its main job was to work actively against enemy intelligence services, both in the Protectorate and in countries not at war with the Third Reich. Referat III F set up its own network of agents, called the ‘Hauskapelle’, which it ran till the arrest of the double-agent Paul Thümmel, a civilian Abwehr employee and also agent of Czechoslovak intelligence abroad, in the spring of 1942. Nevertheless, Referat III F had a number of successes in the Protectorate in exposing resistance groups and their courier links with the enemy abroad. Activity in this area, however, was gradually reduced, because it met with the opposition of the Gestapo, which considered the destruction of the Czech resistance to be exclusively its own task. The prestige of the Prague office of the Abwehr was also badly damaged by the affair with ‘Agent X’ in its ranks, soon identified as Thümmel. In May 1942 Abwehr head Wilhelm Canaris and head of the Sicherheitsdienst (and Reichsprotektor) Reinhard Heydrich signed a new directive for the Hauskapelle, which completely excluded Abwehr activity in this area.
The counter-espionage activities of Referat III F abroad were concentrated particularly on the Balkans. From the beginning the focus was on Czechoslovak émigrés in Belgrade, but other Allied intelligence services in this region gradually also attracted the attention of the Prague office of the Abwehr. One of the most dangerous agents was Antonín Křížek (E 1288, later E 3p, code-named ‘Korf’) and Bedřich Laufer (GV 1283, later GV 1p, code-named ‘Lauterbach’). Both had been assigned to Serbian and Polish courier routes. Referat III F achieved its greatest success, however, against American intelligence in Istanbul, whose spy ring, run by Alfred Schwarz (code-named ‘Dogwood’), was infiltrated not only by Laufer but also by two other agents. The Prague office of the Abwehr wound up its work in spring 1944 in connection with the reorganization of German military intelligence, and Referat III F was incorporated into the Sicherheitsdienst.
The Czechoslovak Intelligence Game in Austria, 1945–55:
Émigré Groups, Western Intelligence Services, and Their Infiltration by Czechoslovak Agents
Dalibor Státník
The article is based on documents from Military Defence Intelligence (Obranné zpravodajství – OBZ, later československá vojenská kontrarozvědka) and the State Security Forces (Státní bezpečnost – StB), which are deposited in the Archive of the Interior Ministry, Prague. It is concerned with the rarely researched activity of Czechoslovak intelligence in Austria after World War II and, particularly, after the Communist takeover in late February 1948. Rather than provide a detailed description and discuss the whole network of Czechoslovak agents in Austria at this time or the results of their work for the ‘Third Resistance’ at home, the article aims to outline the Austrian field of operations from the point of view of Czechoslovak services, and mainly to focus on the lives of several persons caught up in the intelligence games.
After a general discussion of the sources, including their information value and verifiability, the author moves on to historical analysis. He demonstrates that Military Defence Intelligence was interested in Austria immediately after World War II mainly owing to its interest in catching war criminals who had escaped the Bohemian Lands and in monitoring the Allied intelligence services attached to the armies of occupation particularly regarding their possible collaboration with former Nazis. After the Communist takeover in Prague, its chief aims and methods changed. A stream of Czechoslovaks headed for Austria, and though secondary to the ones who headed for the American zone in Germany, they were nevertheless important. Their complicated organizational and ideological differences are also outlined by the author. The active ones among them, frequently collaborating with American, British, and French intelligence, became the focus of Czechoslovak Military Defence Intelligence and, increasingly, also of the StB, which had absorbed parts of Military Defence Intelligence. The StB considered its penetration into these structures part of the struggle against the ‘enemy within’, because agents were sent on missions from Austria to Czechoslovakia to gather intelligence or to organize and coordinate the home resistance as couriers (agenti-chodci). The StB was most successful, the article argues, in infiltrating both French civil intelligence (Sureté) and military intelligence (Sécurité Militaire), particularly when its agents got control of Anita Moret, Deputy Director of the latter. The author discusses the life of this woman, whose homesickness for her native Czechoslovakia and whose leftist sympathies were successfully taken advantage of by the StB, which persuaded her in the autumn of 1954 to seek ‘political asylum’ in Czechoslovakia. In addition, the article discusses the careers of František Klimovič, perhaps the most effective Czechoslovak agent in Austria, and Vladimír Smrčina, an adventurer in the service of the StB.
Operation ‘Kassel’:
The Planned Abduction of Jan Vlček in 1960
Prokop Tomek
First, from the historical point of view, the author provides a concise description of the abductions of people abroad, which the Communist régime considered troublesome enough to employ Czechoslovak intelligence and secret police for this unusual, and also illegal, tactic. It was used mainly in the 1950s (the best-known case being the abduction from Vienna of the Czechoslovak Social Democrat politician Bohumil Laušman). The Czechoslovak secret police (Státní bezpečnost – StB), however, planned other abductions as late as the 1980s. To illustrate the mechanism of secret-police repression the author uses the example of the planned abduction of Jan Vlček in the early 1970s. One of the reasons Vlček’s case is interesting is that he had briefly been an StB agent in the 1950s. After his dismissal from the StB, he managed to escape to the West. After six years of searching, the StB discovered him by chance in a psychiatric clinic in Merxhausen, West Germany, and decided to abduct him to Czechoslovakia. Although the operation was ultimately scrapped, it still serves as an example of StB techniques at the time and of the character of the totalitarian régime.
Cheka Members in Our Midst:
Collaboration between the Czechoslovak and East German Secret Police, 1970–89
Tomáš Vilímek
Based on records in German archives, the article discusses the form and content of collaboration between the Czechoslovak State Security Forces (StB) and East German Ministry of State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit – MfS) in the 1970s and ’80s. After a summary of the changing priorities and methods of the political police in the two countries at this time, the article describes the departments of the MfS which collaborated most intensively with the StB. The most important in this respect was Department 20 (Hauptabteilung XX), which was concerned with the ‘struggle against the enemy within’. It took part in planning collaboration with the StB, focusing on three main areas: the struggle against foreign ‘centres of ideological subversion’, such as Radio Free Europe and groups of émigrés associated with the Czech periodical Listy; stopping of independent religious activity; and maintaining State control of the arts and sciences. The article therefore mentions some of the more than twenty ‘files’, which were ’started up’ together with the StB in this period. They include the exposing of the ‘Berlin route’ used to smuggle unsanctioned literature from the West into Czechoslovakia and East Germany and keeping an eye on Professor Bedřich Loewenstein’s contacts in Czechoslovakia (Operation ‘Lýkovec’). The translation of reports and the passing on of information from the StB to the relevant parts of the MfS were the responsibility of Department 10 (Abteilung X). An MfS operative group comprising several agents was active in Prague, and the article discusses its reports on the events of ‘Palach Week’ in January 1989. It concludes with an analysis of the monthly reports on current affairs in the East-bloc countries from 1984 to 1989, which were prepared by the Central Assessment and Information Group of the MfS (Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe – ZAIG), and, lastly, the article considers the importance of the central system of secret-police files in the East-bloc countries.
Securitas Imperii:
The Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism as Criminologist, Documentalist, and Historian
Karel Sieber
The review discusses the methods used by the authors of articles in the last four volumes of Securitas Imperii, which is published by the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (Úřad pro dokumentaci a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu – ÚDV), Prague. He points out shortcomings that arise when researchers believe the documents in the Archive of the Czech Ministry of the Interior to be the omniscient, and he criticizes the inconsistency in their historical interpretation as well as their adoption of Communist secret-police terminology (and, sometimes, conclusions). The reviewer argues that research on the history of the Communist secret police is impossible without turning to additional sources – namely, documents in other archives and the testimony of eyewitnesses, as well as secondary literature
A Remarkable Study Comparing the Secret Services of Three Post-Communist Countries
Petruška Šustrová
Kieran Williams and Dennis Deletant, Security Intelligence Services in New Democracies: The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, 291 + ix pp.
This book is mainly about the transformation of the former Communist secret services in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania in the 1990s. The reviewer praises the authors’ competent analysis, which is used to outline three models of this transformation: the Czech, based on a thorough change of personnel and the principle of the apolitical character of secret services; the Slovak, illustrating the fragility of the changes that were made and the danger of the political misuse of these services; and the Romanian, representing changes of a more or less formal nature.
Jiří Křesťan
Jiří Pernes, Takoví nám vládli: Komunističtí prezidenti Československa a doba, v níž žili, Prague, Brána, 2003, 328 pp. + 32 pp. of illustrations.
The work under review, Takoví nám vládli: Komunističtí prezidenti Československa a doba, v níž žili [Those Who Governed Us: The Communist Presidents and Their Times], provides vivid, biographical sketches of Klement Gottwald, Antonín Zápotocký, Antonín Novotný, Ludvík Svoboda, and Gustáv Husák. Despite some of the author’s precipitous judgements, the reviewer praises his mastery of the facts, lively presentation, attempt to understand the psychological motives for his subjects’ behaviour, and nuanced assessment of them. The value of the book, particularly for researchers is, he argues, unfortunately diminished by the absence of scholarly references.
A Summary of Communist Crimes in Slovakia
Jaroslav Cuhra
František Mikloško, Gabriela Smolíková, and Peter Smolík (eds), Zločiny komunizmu na Slovensku 1948–1989, vol. 1; Ladislav Takáč, (ed.), Zločiny komunizmu na Slovensku 1948–1989, vol. 2, Prešov: Michal Vašek, 2001, 743 and 575 pp., CD ROM.
This large, two-volume work, Zločiny komunizmu na Slovensku 1948–1989 [The Crimes of Communism in Slovakia, 1948–89] by Slovak historians is, according to the reviewer, the first thorough, reliable, and systematic mapping-out of Communist crimes in Slovakia. Of the twenty articles in the first volume, which consider various aspects of persecution, three stand out owing to their size and comprehensiveness: Jan Pešek’s on the show trials, Róbert Letz’s on the persecution of Christians, and an article by a group of authors on escapes from Czechoslovakia. The second volume comprises 127 testimonies by victims of persecution. The work is appended with carefully assembled statistics and a list of the names of more than a hundred thousand persecuted persons, according to separate categories, most of which are included on the CD-ROM that accompanies the volume.
The History of One Man’s ‘Collaboration’ with the Communist Intelligence Services
Petr Blažek
Bořivoj Čelovský, Moje střetnutí s rozvědkou StB, Šenov u Ostravy: Tilia, 2003, 196 pp.
During the forty years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, the author of this volume, Moje střetnutí s rozvědkou StB [My Encounter with Spies of the Czechoslovak Security Forces], historian Bořivoj Čelovský, was an émigré. While a civil servant in Canada in the second half of the 1950s, he set out to expose the ring of Czechoslovak spies in Canada. In the book reviewed here, Čelovský relates the story of his contacts with officers of Czechoslovak intelligence at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Ottawa, which he developed with the knowledge of members of the Canadian intelligence services. Seen in the context of Čelovský’s life, this, the reviewer believes, is a reliable and remarkable report, which clears up any question of his ‘collaboration’ with the Czechoslovak Security Forces, the StB.
Thoughtful Testimonies by the Bernards about Their Native Land and Life as Émigrés
Jiří Křesťan
Růžena Volínová-Bernardová, Pohled zpět: Život ve vírech 20. století; Vilém Bernard, Kde básníkům se poroučí: O české literatuře za komunistické nadvlády, Prague: Akropolis, 2003, 224 pp.
The publication reviewed here comprises four, originally separate, texts by the Bernards. Růžena Volínová-Bernardová, the author of the colourful, yet modest memoirs, Pohled zpět: Život ve vírech 20. století [Looking Back: Life in the Whirlpools of the Twentieth Century], was a leftwing intellectual in Czechoslovakia before World War II. After the war she headed the economics committee of the Central Council of Trades Unions and then, after the Communist takeover in late February 1948, she and her husband escaped the country. Vilém Bernard was a leading Social Democrat after World War II, especially in the émigré Social Democratic party. For forty years he led the association of émigré Social Democratic parties from the countries of central and eastern Europe. The first of the three pieces in his part of the volume, Kde básníkům se poroučí: O české literatuře za komunistické nadvlády [Where Poets Are Ordered What to Do: Czech Literature under Communist Rule], is autobiographical; the second is an essay on the position of émigré parties in the Socialist International; the last is about literature under state supervision in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s.
Two Views:
The Extreme Right in the Czech Republic as Seen by a Specialist and an Activist
Jan Rataj
Miroslav Mareš, Pravicový extremismus a radikalismus v České republice, Brno: Barrister & Principal and the Centre for Strategic Studies, 2003, 655 pp. + photographs.
Pavel Sedláček, Nic než národ: Integrace české ultrapravice před parlamentními volbami 2002, Prague: Národní strana, 2003, 93 pp.
The reviewer notes that the first book reviewed here, Pravicový extremismus a radikalismus v České republice [Right-wing Extremism in the Czech Republic], is a high-quality, scholarly monograph, the first to treat systematically the phenomenon of the radical right-wing in Czech politics from the early 1990s. He questions, however, the suitability of the concept ‘political extremism’ to describe this phenomenon, analyzes several questionable historical connections made in the book, and provides a fairly detailed summary of its contents. The second publication under review, Nic než národ: Integrace české ultrapravice před parlamentními volbami 2002 [Nothing But the Nation: The Integration of the Czech Far Right before the 2002 General Elections] is by an activist in a far-right political group, and is therefore, the reviewer states, an interesting example of this kind of thinking and a useful source for historians and political scientists.
In Search of the Key to Alternative Culture
Kateřina Bláhová
Josef Alan (ed.), Alternativní kultura: Příběh české společnosti 1945–1989, Prague: Lidové noviny, 2001, 610 pp., photographs and CD-ROM.
The reviewer notes that despite its title, Alternativní kultura: Příběh české společnosti 1945–1989 [Alternative Culture: The Story of Czech Society, 1945–89], the volume is not the full story of alternative culture in Czech society under the Communist regime, but, instead, a collection of thirteen episodes about various areas in the arts, which are linked together by the term ‘alternative culture’. She considers problems connected with defining the term and using it analytically in academic work, and then provides a concise description of each of the generally high-quality, factual contributions in the volume.
Post-World War II History in Polish History Journals in 2002
Jaroslav Vaculík
The author provides a summary commentary on the most interesting articles published about contemporary history, particularly after World War II, in Polish history journals. He first discusses the ‘flagship’ journal in the field, Dzieje Najnowsze, before considering eleven other periodicals, including those of a regional nature.
The Prospective of the Prague Spring
Karel Hrubý
The article is the latest contribution to the current debate in Soudobé dějiny concerning the Czechoslovak reform movement in 1968 and Alexander Dubček’s role in it. Analyzing several basic documents of the Czechoslovak Communist Party programme from those days, the article outlines the ideological starting-points and prospective of the process of ‘rebirth’ (obroda). It argues that the leadership of the Communist Party at the time, despite changes and proposals for the better, was unable, even if it had intended (which it did not), to go beyond the key Marxist-Leninist tenets and the closed political system run by a single party. Another variant of reform, an alternative to the ‘Prague Spring’, the article argues, was provided by the critically-thinking part of the intelligentsia, which was on the margins of the Party or outside it, and expressed the opinion of a considerable part of the public or influenced it. The article concludes that only these positions constitute the current legacy of the ‘Prague Spring’ from the point of view of the liberal-democratic system being established in Czechoslovakia and, later, the Czech Republic, in the 1990s.
An International Conference on the Sovietization of the Armed Forces of the East Bloc
David Kovařík
An international historical conference was held in Brno, on 12 and 13 November 2003. Entitled ‘The Sovietization of the Armed Forces of Central and South-eastern Europe after World War II’, it was organized by the Brno Military Academy and the Warsaw Academy of National Defence together with the Military History Institute in Prague. Although the papers were of a high quality and interesting, the author of this report found that discussion weak and the atmosphere of the conference for the most part cold.
‘Alexander Dubček, Italy, and Europe’:
An Exhibition in Bologna
Antonín Benčík
This report first provides a summary of how the University of Bologna awarded Alexander Dubček an honorary doctorate, and then describes Dubček’s trip to receive it in 1988. Fifteen years later, in November 2003, the University of Bologna mounted an exhibition about Dubček’s life and political career, his role in the Prague Spring, 1968, and his Europeanness. The exhibition was put together by Dubček’s friend, the journalist Luciano Antonetti, and included contributions by researchers in the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague.
The Papers of František Kriegel:
A Neglected Source
Daniel Štěpánek
This is a report on the Papers of František Kriegel, which are deposited in the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, an inventory of which was made by the author. A physician, member of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and a Communist politician (Chairman of the Central Committee of the National Front during the Prague Spring, 1968), Kriegel was the only member of the Czechoslovak delegation who, after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, refused to sign the ‘Moscow Protocol’, a document that legalized the basing of Warsaw Pact forces in Czechoslovakia. After his expulsion from the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Kriegel became involved in opposition activity and signed the human rights document ‘Charter 77’. The inventory of the Kriegel Papers can be accessed at http://www.usd.cas.cz/UserFiles/File/kriegel.pdf.
Antonín Benčík (1926) is a retired historian, but collaborates frequently with the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague. He is concerned with the Czechoslovak resistance during World War II and Reform Communism during the Prague Spring, 1968. Among publications of which he is author or co-author are Rekviem za pražské jaro [Requiem for the Prague Spring] (Třebíč, 1998) and Utajovaná pravda o Alexandru Dubčekovi: Drama muže, který předběhl svou dobu [The Concealed Truth about Alexander Dubček: Drama of a Man Ahead of His Time] (Prague, 2001).
Kateřina Bláhová (1976) is a researcher in the Institute of Czech Literature, Prague, where she is collaborating on the project ‘A History of Czech Literature, 1945–1990’. Her main areas of academic interest are Czech historiography and literature in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the European context, as well as Czech cultural history after 1945.
Petr Blažek (1973) is a graduate student in the Institute of Czech History, Charles University, Prague. His research is on Czech history in the second half of the twentieth century. He is co-author of Ostrůvky svobody: Kulturní a občanské aktivity mladé generace v 80. letech v Československu [Islets of Freedom: Cultural and Civil Activity of the Young Generation in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s] (Prague, 2002).
Jaroslav Cuhra (1971) is a senior researcher in the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, specialized in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in central and eastern Europe after World War II. He is author of Československo-vatikánská jednání 1968–1989 [Talks between Czechoslovakia and the Vatican, 1968–89] (Prague, 2001).
Karel Hrubý (1923) is a Czech sociologist, who has been living in Basle, Switzerland, since 1968. In 1983–91, he was Editor-in-Chief of Proměny, the quarterly of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts Sciences (New York). His main academic interest is the sociology of change in political systems, both medieval (Hussitism) and in modern. With Milíč Čapek, he is co-author of T. G. Masaryk in Perspective: Comments and Criticism (Ann Arbor, 1981).
Stanislav Kokoška (1959) heads the Department for the History of World War II, the Occupation, and Resistance, at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague. His chief scholarly interest is the Czech resistance in the Protectorate, the liberation of the Bohemian Lands in spring 1945, and intelligence. Together with Jaroslav Kokoška he published Spor o agenta A-54: Kapitoly z dějin československé zpravodajské služby [The Controversy over Agent A-54: Chapters from the History of the Czechoslovak Secret Service] (Prague, 1994).
David Kovařík (1972) is a researcher in the Brno branch of the Institute of Contemporary History and a graduate student in the Institute of History, Masaryk University, Brno. He is researching regional history after 1945 with a focus on life in the Czechoslovak borderlands.
Jiří Křesťan (1957), archivist and historian, is a department head in the Central State Archives, Prague. His research is mainly on the history of Communism and socialism in the Bohemian Lands, with a special interest in the Communist academic and post-war minister of culture Zdeněk Nejedlý, who is the subject of his Pojetí české otázky v díle Zdeňka Nejedlého [The Conception of the ‘Czech Question’ in the Work of Z.N.] (Prague, 1996).
Jan Rataj (1951) is Docent of Political Science at the Prague School of Economics. His chief scholarly interest is nineteenth and twentieth-century Czech history, particularly the extreme right, Communism, and Czech-German relations. He is author of O autoritativní národní stát: Ideologické proměny české politiky v druhé republice 1938–1939 [An Authoritarian Nation-State: Ideological Change in Czech Politics in the Second Republic, 1938–39] (Prague, 1997).
Karel Sieber (1978) is a student of history and political science at Charles University, Prague, and is employed in the news archive of Czech Television. His chief academic interest is Czechoslovak foreign policy during the Cold War, particularly with regard to the countries of Africa.
Dalibor Státník (1962) is employed in the Archive of the Czech Ministry of the Interior. His chief area of research is the history of trades unions and the cultural-historical contexts of the twentieth century, with a special interest in the life and times of the writer Jaroslav Maria (1870–1942). He is author of Sankční pracovní právo v padesátých letech [Sanctions in Czechoslovak Labour Law in the 1950s] (Prague, 1994).
Daniel Štěpánek (1976) is a graduate student of political science at Charles University, Prague. His main research interests are the Reform Communist František Kriegel and central-European integration into the European Union.
Petruška Šustrová (1947), journalist and translator, was an active signatory of Charter 77, a member of VONS (Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted), and, in the early 1990s, a deputy minister in the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior, where she was involved in reorganizing the Czechoslovak secret service.
Prokop Tomek (1965) is in charge of the documentation section at the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism, Prague. His chief professional interest is in the mechanism of repression in Communist Czechoslovakia. His publications include Československý uran 1945–1989 [Czechoslovak Uranium, 1945–89] (Prague, 1999) and Dvě studie o československém vězeňství 1948–1989 [Two Essays on the Czechoslovak Prison System, 1948–89] (Prague, 2000).
Jaroslav Vaculík (1947) is Docent of History at the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University, Brno, where he lectures on world history from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. His chief professional interest is Czech minorities abroad. His many publications on the subject include the three-volume Dějiny volyňských Čechů [A History of the Volhynian Czechs] (Prague, 1997, 1998, and 2001).
Tomáš Vilímek (1976) is a graduate student of political science at Charles University, Prague. He is conducting research on the environmental, social, and economic causes of the collapse of the Czechoslovak and German Communist régimes, and a comparison of the history of opposition in the two countries.
