No. IV.
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Contents
Articles
Tomáš Pavlíček
Writers’ Institutions and the Crisis of Democracy, 1934–39
Martin Franc and Jiří Knapík
‘We’ll Get Around to the People in the Coming Quarters’:
Leisure in the Bohemian Lands, 1948–56
Pavel Skopal
Ideology or Financial Profit or Both?
Film Distribution in the Bohemian Lands and the Conflict between Ideological and Economic Aims, 1945–68
Luboš Veselý
Against the ‘Fascist Gangs of the UPA’:
Ukrainians in the Propaganda of the People’s Republic of Poland
Reviews
Martin Franc
A Surprisingly Colourful Picture of Life under the Régime of ‘Normalization’:
‘Ordinary People’ in Oral History Research
Petr Sedlák
The Short Twentieth Century That Changed Ouběnice and Traditional Rural Life
Jan Bečka
Czechoslovaks on the Battle Fields of Indochina
Miroslav Kryl
The Power of Hope
Vojtech Čelko
‘Lesser History’ through the Eyes of a Great Historian
Chronicle
A Berlin Exhibition about Hitler and His Germans (Petr Sedlák)
The Summer School of Contemporary History, Prague, Now in Its Third Year (Jan Randák)
Annotations
Summaries
Articles
Writers’ Institutions and the Crisis of Democracy, 1934–39
Tomáš Pavlíček
In this article the author discusses certain activist groups in the arts, which were established in Czechoslovakia in an effort to influence current affairs in the 1930s. Their shared feature was the recognition that democracy was in crisis. Unlike other politically oriented arts institutions, for example, the Levá fronta (Left Front), these institutions endeavoured to speak out as representatives of all writers and other artists, and also dynamically to shape literary life. The author describes the genesis of writers’ public engagement beginning in the late 1920s and the context. He discusses the key people and their ideologies, analyzes their public statements, outlines the responses to them and debates they raised in the press, and seeks to identify their relationship to each other.
The first and best known of the groups, the Community of Czechoslovak Writers (Obec československých spisovatelů), was established, in late November 1934, in immediate reaction to the events known as the ‘insignia affair’ (insigniáda). The resistance of students at the German University of Prague to the forced transfer of the ancient insignia of Charles University to the Czech University soon led to large nationalist demonstrations and unrest amongst the Czech right wing. Left-wing arts institutions also became their target. The authors from the liberal democratic centre, around Karel Čapek (1890–1938), together with moderate left-wingers, including writers expelled from the Czechoslovak Communist Party and eminent figures such as the literary critic F. X. Šalda (1867–1937), as well as Communist intellectuals, agreed on a common anti-Fascist manifesto. Roman Catholic writers refused to participate. A total of 261 individuals and 58 different groups or institutions signed the manifesto, but animosity amongst certain groups prevented unity in the Community of Writers, and the manifesto tended to lead to further internal polarization. The next reports that the author has of the Community of Czechoslovak Writers come from 1937 and 1938, when it established international contacts at anti-Fascist congresses of people in the arts. But the Community did not come out with a public statement till the Munich crisis in autumn 1938. The Community at this point managed to unite members of all groups within it, in order, alone or together with other organizations, to address people outside the country, with rousing appeals for international solidarity with the threatened Republic of Czechoslovakia. After the signing of the Munich Agreement, in the atmosphere of the growing campaigns against First Republic politicians and the Left, the community of writers again began to atomize and this was reflected in the membership and activities of the Community. For various reasons the Roman Catholic, conservative, and ruralist writers quit the Community. On the other hand, some writers of the older generation became members. The planned merging with the Syndicate of Czech Writers (Syndikát českých spisovatelů) was called off and, with the German occupation that began on 15 March 1939, the Community became defunct.
In the substantially changed circumstances of the Second Republic (1 October 1938 to 14 March 1939), however, alternative institutions were established, enabling writers to speak out on political affairs. The ephemeral existence of these institutions is also discussed by the author. The most important was the National Arts Council (Národní kulturní rada). It was linked to the ideology of the governing National Unity Party (Strana národní jednoty), whose programme called for restrictions on the arts and their subordination to government bodies in a traditionalist, nationalist spirit. The National Arts Council soon vanished from the scene, however, only to be replaced, in the last week of the Second Republic, by the Arts Council (Kulturní rada) of the National Unity Party, a predominantly political body intended to control the arts.
‘We’ll Get Around to the People in the Coming Quarters’:
Leisure in the Bohemian Lands, 1948–56
Martin Franc and Jiří Knapík
The authors consider the changes in the conception, organization, ways of spending, and forms of leisure in the Bohemian Lands from the establishment of the Communist monopoly on power in early 1948 to the second half of the 1950s. (After this point leisure began here began strikingly to change under the influence of consumerist trends.) They consider the topic in the context of the dominant ideology and changes in economic, social, and arts policies. The authors take into account gender differences, contrasts between town and country, and special features of social groups. They pay particular attention to leisure amongst young people and children. The authors do not, however, see the Communist takeover of February 1948 as a watershed in the sphere of leisure. Instead, they demonstrate both the continuity and differences between the period of limited democracy, from May 1945 to February 1948, and the years that followed. In some cases, they highlight features that were identical in Nazi German and Communist approaches to leisure activities (the rejection of jazz, ‘trash’ (brak) in the arts, and Western influences in general).
The authors discuss how the Communist régime intervened intensively in the way people chose to spend their free time, in its endeavour to shape a new type of man and woman in the new social conditions. At the same time, particularly in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the State so emphasized the importance of the work of building socialism, that leisure was seen as a ‘necessary evil’, since it used up valuable physical and mental energy that would have been better spent on increasing productivity. For the same aims, but also with regard to the idea of somewhat democratizing the arts, the regime gave preference to activities such as political and vocational self-education as well as the study of selected arts and cultural values. In keeping with the subordination of the individual to the interests of society, collective forms of recreation and the leisure (holidays spent with groups of co-workers, mass group visits to plays, films, concerts, museums, galleries, and, later, Pioneer camps) were given priority. Traditional club activity and individual leisure were seen as ‘bourgeois survivals’. Some young people’s non-conformist leisure activities met with suspicion from the authorities or with outright repression. Amongst the models of leisure that the régime held worthy of emulation were the Socialist youth building enterprises (stavby mládeže), ‘volunteer’ work, and additional instruction or training. The new organizations, such as the Revolutionary Trade-union Movement (Revoluční odborové hnutí – ROH), the Czechoslovak Youth Organization (Československý svaz mládeže – ČSM), and the Association for Work with the Army (Svaz pro spolupráci s armádou – Svazarm), which took the place of the earlier clubs and associations, comported with the new ideology and provided the required forms of leisure. The authorities endeavoured also to support considerably developed and differentiated hobbies, such as making art, playing board games, and collecting. Special facilities were established to run these activities, including the enterprise-based clubs of the ROH, arts centres (kulturní domy), and popular-education organizations (osvětové besedy). Forms of universally accessible activity, like chess and phillumeny (collecting matchbox labels), were supported, whereas as financially more demanding hobbies or those linked to private gain, such as philately or numismatics, were marginalized. A slight retreat from the ideologized conception of leisure came with the so-called ‘new course’ of 1953. But more striking changes were made in the second half of the 1950s. These years, which saw shorter working weeks, a higher standard of living than before, and the emergence of consumerist trends, are described by the authors as a period of the planned expansion of leisure and its gradual individualization.
Ideology or Financial Profit or Both?
Film Distribution in the Bohemian Lands and the Conflict between Ideological and Economic Aims, 1945–68
Pavel Skopal
Film distribution in Czechoslovakia under the Communist régime was meant to serve political ends as an instrument in developing a new kind of film culture. The initial failure of this model underscored the tension between the ideological requirements on arts policy and economic demands made on the film industry. Distribution in 1948–68 can therefore usefully be seen not only as an instrument for carrying out the official ideology of the Communist Party, but also as a place where different interests clashed as they were carried out in distribution practices. From this perspective the author considers the changes that took place in the distribution and presentation of films in these years. Even before the February 1948 takeover, an orientation to the USSR within the film industry and pressure from the apparat of the Czechoslovak Communist Party were clearly manifested in film distribution. The years from 1948 to 1950 saw the most striking attempt to create a new type of film culture and radically to force the supply of films to conform to this aim. The failure of these efforts, accompanied by financial demands on the Czechoslovak State Film company (Československý státní film), led to a certain differentiation in what was put on offer and also led to the first conflicts between the company and the apparats of the State and the Party. According to the author, there was a marked decentralization of distribution in 1957, but shortly afterwards the régime became more rigid and the number and kinds of films that were distributed became more limited. In the 1960s economic criteria of distribution were increasingly taken into account. After the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the process came to a peak. At the same time, the number of Western-made films shown in Czechoslovakia and the number of people going to seem them briefly increased, whereas the number of screenings of Soviet and East bloc films and the size of their audiences declined. The turning-point was caused by restrictions on the arts as part of ‘normalization’ policy (the overall return to hard-line Communism) beginning in 1969. Although fundamental changes in film distribution after 1948 were mostly dictated by the centre of power, its ideological demands in this area ran up against economic demands and the reality of productivity requirements. This created a palpable tension between aspects of arts policy and aspects related to economics, and made the film-distribution sector a sphere of hidden and sometimes even open conflict.
Against the ‘Fascist Gangs of the UPA’:
Ukrainians in the Propaganda of the People’s Republic of Poland
Luboš Veselý
The author discusses Ukrainian topics in Polish Communist propaganda, which have till now been largely ignored in both Poland and the Ukraine, even though the post-war struggle against ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ constituted a lasting element of the propaganda repertoire of the Polish People’s Republic. He also discusses how these topics were developed and passed on in Polish periodicals, belles-lettres, film, and historiography and he seeks to explain the impact this has had on Polish public discourse since the collapse of Communism.
This propaganda drew its basic material from the struggle of the Polish armed forces against the partisans divisions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiya – UPA), which operated in southeast Poland beginning in 1945. Before the establishment of the Communist régime, it was mainly the non-Communist political parties and the armed anti-Communist underground who identified with it. After the second half of the 1940s, this propaganda grew quiet, and was not revived until 1956, in connection with endeavours to increase the prestige of the army; in the second half of the 1960s, it was supported by chauvinist and antisemitic members of the Polish Communist leadership. It last intensified when martial law was imposed in Poland in 1981. According to the author, the content, arguments, and gist of the anti-Ukrainian propaganda did not essentially change from the end of the Second World War in mid-1945 to the collapse of Communism in late 1989. The soldiers of the UPA and the proponents of an independent Ukraine were identified with Fascists and enemies of Poland and this picture became fixed in the minds of a large part of Polish society, which more or less identified this image with Ukrainians as a whole. These national stereotypes did not begin to be surmounted till the appearance of the democratic opposition in the 1980s. A special place in these historical images is held by the legend of General Karol Świerczewski, codenamed Walter, who was assassinated, apparently, by Ukrainian nationalists while on a tour of inspection in March 1947. A month later, Operation ‘Vistula’ (Akcja Wisła) was launched. The operation, whose aim was the forced resettlement of Ukrainians out of southeast Poland, was then publicly presented as revenge for Świerczewski’s murder. He was turned into a hero, and his legend was cultivated by naming streets, squares, schools and other institutions after him, publishing biographies singing his praises, and erecting monuments to him. A fundamental role in the depiction of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict was, according to the author, played by the novel Łuny w Bieszczadach (A Blaze in the Beskids, 1959) by Jan Gerhard (born Wiktor Lew Bardach, 1921–1971) which was hugely popular, went into several editions, and triggered a boom of publications on the topic. Whereas fiction went hand in hand with the nationalist distortion of the truth, works of historiography on the topic could, according to the author, allow themselves the luxury of sticking closer to the facts, providing they did not run counter to official propaganda.
In the last part of this article, the author offers his own typology of contemporary interpretations of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, assessing each of them by genre, content, and approach, rather than by the nationality of the author. His first category includes ‚‘nationalist-Communist’ works, which are essentially a continuation of Communist propaganda. He calls an interpretation ‘national’ if its basic matrix is the nation of the interpreter, without intentionally constructing a negative picture of the other nation. The smallest group, he claims, are the representatives of the ‘revisionist’ interpretation that consciously seeks to reassess the existing views of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict which have become established as a result of Communist propaganda. At the end of the article, the author lists the main questions that in this context are a subject of contemporary dispute and debate in Poland and the Ukraine. They relate to the necessity, rightness, or uselessness of Operation ‘Vistula’, the responsibility for carrying it out, its professed and true aims, the methods used in fighting for Ukrainian independence, and the character of Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists.
Reviews
A Surprisingly Colourful Picture of Life under the Régime of ‘Normalization’:
‘Ordinary People’ in Oral History Research
Martin Franc
Vaněk, Miroslav (ed.), Obyčejní lidé…?! Pohled do života tzv. mlčící většiny: Životopisná vyprávění příslušníků dělnických profesí a inteligence, vols 1–3. Prague: Academia 2009, 531 + 1,304 pp.
The title of the publication under review translates as ‘Ordinary People …?! A Look at the Life of the “Silent Majority”: Biographical Narratives by Workers and Intellectuals’. The book is the fruit of a large project by the Oral History Centre of the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague. The reviewer compares this publication with an earlier, similarly conceived volume from the Centre, which looks at political élites and dissidents in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. He considers it an improvement that the interviews of volumes 2 and 3 of the work under review are linked closely to the articles of volume 1, and that the interpretation is now more professional in terms of method. He notes, however, that on the whole the publication is unimpressive mainly because of the varying approaches that the individual authors have taken towards the information gleaned from the interviews. Moreover, he notes, they lack a critical approach (except when comparing other sources) and fail to recognize the limits of generalization. Their most interesting finding, he concludes, is that the diversity of the presented life stories and strategies considerably altar our generally received notion of ‘normalization’ society being ‘grey’.
The Short Twentieth Century That Changed Ouběnice and Traditional Rural Life
Petr Sedlák
Petráň, Josef. Dvacáté století v Ouběnicích: Soumrak tradičního venkova. Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2009, 576 pp.
In this work, Josef Petráň (b. 1930) follows on from his earlier publication about the history of the village where he was born, Ouběnice, in the Benešov area, from its earliest recorded history to 1918 (Příběh Ouběnic: Mikrohistorie české vesnice. Prague, 2001). In this new volume, he considers the history of Ouběnice from the declaration of Czechoslovak independence in 1918 to the end of the twentieth century. The reviewer discusses Petráň’s theoretical starting points and their roots in cultural and anthropological historiography and the extent to which he succeeds in applying microhistorical approaches. In its conception, the publication represents, according to the reviewer, a distinct innovation (at least in the Czech milieu) but its core does not consist only in direct theoretical application; it also includes an exhaustive and fruitful interpretation of statistical sources. The drama of Ouběnice, which is presented as a series of detailed descriptions and pictures, consists in the radical transformation of the countryside and the resultant breakdown of traditional rural life.
Czechoslovaks on the Battle Fields of Indochina
Jan Bečka
Kudrna, Ladislav. Bojovali a umírali v Indočíně: První vietnamská válka a Čechoslováci v cizinecké legii. Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů and Naše vojsko, 2010, 400 pp.
The book under review is about Czechoslovaks in the French Foreign Legion fighting in Indochina against the movement for national independence in the first half of the 1950s. The book presents this historic episode by discussing the fates of twenty-one Czechoslovaks in the Foreign Legion, which the author discusses in the context of the war in Indochina and relations between the Czechoslovak Communist régime and the movement led by Ho Chi Minh and the government he established in North Vietnam. The author also discusses the Czechoslovak Legionnaires’ return to their native land and their lives afterwards. The reviewer considers the work a useful contribution to the history of a previously ignored topic.
Miroslav Kryl
Pick, Miloš. Naděje se vzdát neumím. Brno: Doplněk 2010, 123 pp. + supplementary text and photos.
The book under review, whose title translates as ‘I Don’t Know How to Give Up Hope’‚ is a memoir-like work by the economist Miloš Pick (b. 1926). The core of the book is a depiction of the dreadful experiences of people interned in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald, where Pick, a Jew, had been deported by the Nazi régime. He also describes his experience of a death march at the end of the war. Of particular value, apart from the moving power of his testimony, is the depiction of the ‘ordinary life’ of a middle-class Jewish family in a small east Bohemian town before the war, the information about the leftwing resistance movement in Theresienstadt, and the help provided by Prague members of the resistance to Theresienstadt inmates. Equally interesting are Pick’s reflections on his own post-war illusions about democratic socialism and his involvement in the reform movement of the Prague Spring of 1968, after which he was thrown out of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and was prevented from working in his field.
‘Lesser History’ through the Eyes of a Great Historian
Vojtech Čelko
Lipták, Ľubomír. Nepre(tr)žité dejiny. Bratislava: Q111, 2008, 157 pp.
The reviewer sketches the life and work of the Slovak historian Ľubomír Lipták (1930–2003), which spanned the Thaw of the 1960s and, later, the restoration of democracy in the 1990s. Lipták’s last published book, whose title translates as ‘Uninterrupted/Unlived History’, comprises eleven essays or articles on various topics in twentieth-century Slovak history, particularly everyday life. According to the reviewer these articles demonstrate Lipták’s ability to consider Slovak topics from a supra-regional perspective and they will succeed in addressing an audience by writing about history in a literary style.
Chronicle
A Berlin Exhibition about Hitler and His Germans
Petr Sedlák reviews the exhibition ‘Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime’, which was held at the German Historical Museum from October 2010 to February 2011. The exhibition, which aimed to illustrate the relationship between German society and Adolf Hitler on his way to power, at war, and ultimately in defeat, managed, according to the reviewer, to demonstrate the ubiquity and effects of Nazi ideology and propaganda in the public sphere, but failed to offer a truly systematic view of their reception by the German population. Nonetheless, the exhibition generally made a good impression.
The Summer School of Contemporary History, Prague, Now in Its Third Year
Jan Randák reports on the Summer School of Contemporary History, which was held in Prague, for the third time. It was organized in collaboration with the Centre for the Administration and Operations of the Czech Academy of Science and the Institute of Czech History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. Intended for teachers at primary and secondary schools, and comprising film screenings, museum visits, and papers delivered by experts on contemporary history, the programme met with great interest.
