No. II.-III.
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Jaroslav Krejčí
Three Diagnoses of One Communist Takeover:
Coup d’état, Exported Revolution, Clash of Civilizations
Jerzy Tomaszewski
The Communist Parties’ Road to Power in Central Europe:
A Comparative Study
Ronald W. Pruessen
Symbol to Catalyst to Symbol:
The Evolution of US Perceptions of Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe, 1943–48
Vojtech Mastny
The February 1948 Prague Coup and the Origins of NATO
Zbyněk A. B. Zeman
Czechoslovak Uranium and the February 1948 Communist Takeover
Jan Pešek
The February Takeover of 1948 in Slovakia
Edita Ivaničková
Slovak-Czech Relations in the 1945–48 Power Struggle as Seen by the British Foreign Office
Horizon
Timothy Garton Ash
The Direction of European History
Reviews
Oldřich Tůma
American Policy and the End of Communism in Eastern Europe
Jaroslav Vaculík
Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation
Oldřich Tůma
A Topic That Ought to Be of Increasing Interest to Us
Blanka Císařovská
Meditations on a Century of Czech Politics
Discussion
Zorin’s Mission to Prague, February 1948: In the Light of the New Documents
(V. Prečan, G. P. Muraško, L. Y. Gibiansky and K. Kaplan)
Jan Měchýř
The Spring of the Water of Life, Somewhat Muddied
Jaroslav Valenta
The Oskar Schindler Case:
Two Views
Chronicle
Jiří Kocian
Report on the International Conference of Historians: ‘The Czechoslovak "February", 1948:
The Preconditions and Repercussions at Home and Abroad’
Matthias Roeser
A Report on a Conference of Young German and Czech Historians
Coup d’état, Exported Revolution, Clash of Civilizations
Jaroslav Krejčí
The author considers the nature of events in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 in the broader context. He accepts the claim that it was a coup d’état, but sees its roots in the changes in political thinking in modern European history. From the Enlightenment spirit and the French Revolution (and the local tradition it was grafted on to) there arose two radically opposed views of the world and the social systems based upon them: the Western parliamentary democracies, professing respect for civil liberty, and the revolutionary socialism of the Bolsheviks, which subordinated the individual to the machinery of the state.
The Czechoslovak Republic based itself on the Western model, yet the social shocks of the 1930s, including the Great Depression and, later, the Nazi German occupation, detracted from the attraction of the model, and paved the way for its replacement with the model exported from the Soviet Union. This was clearly manifested in the Communists’ success in the first Czechoslovak general elections after the liberation; this success was also due to the new Communist strategy, which purposefully joined ‘international’ revolutionary ideology with anti-German nationalism. The conditions within post-war Czechoslovakia were a reflection of the increasingly tense relations between the Great Powers. The attempt to merge authoritarian populism with a façade of parliamentary democracy created a hybrid system, whose transformation into a totalitarian régime was only a matter of time. The author, using a sports metaphor, says it was as if two teams were playing against each other using the same ball on the same field, but one playing handball, the other rugby. The February coup ushered in the revolutionary changes in Czechoslovakia, and condemned the country to become the bridgehead of ‘Eurasian civilization’.
The Communist Parties’ Road to Power in Central Europe:
A Comparative Study
Jerzy Tomaszewski
The author defines Central Europe as an area for which relations with Germany and Russia are of key importance in international politics. After World War II the countries here came under Soviet domination, and the coming to power of Communist Parties within them shared similarities but also had their own particular features.
The author begins with an excursus into Central Europe between the first and second world wars. At that time, the region was on the periphery of Great Power interests; Great Power behaviour then prepared the soil for Soviet domination when it undermined confidence in formal obligations, such as treaties and alliances. After 1944 a certain division of influence took place so that the Allies would not be drawn into a war with one another. Favourable conditions for Communist victories were inherent in the internal factors of the Central European states before the war, when economic, social, and national conflicts had led to the radicalization of societies and to the rise of political extremism.
In the analysis that follows, the author examines these states and societies in the years 1945–48, and provides a lucid comparison: in all the countries special legislation was created for the punishment of war criminals, which enabled the Communists to control the justice systems; compromised police forces were replaced by new ones led by Communists; in the armed forces experienced commanding officers who were not Communists were demoted or discharged; the civil service came under Communist control wherever a Communist had become minister or deputy minister of the interior; Communists infiltrated the other coalition parties; and last but not least the presence of the Red Army and knowledge of Communist strategy and tactics enabled the Communist parties at the end of W.W. II to take decisions in accord with Moscow.
The Western governments were not determined to check Soviet influence, and limited themselves only to anti-Communist propaganda instead of actual help. They clearly had written the area off as early as 1945, and the Communists controlled it by 1947, except for Czechoslovakia, until provided with a convenient pretext there in February 1948.
Symbol to Catalyst to Symbol:
The Evolution of US Perceptions of Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe, 1943-48
Ronald W. Pruessen
In this period, American policy towards the Soviets and countries under its influence is, the author believes, complicated and ambiguous. It had multifarious results, frequently contradictory impetuses, reactions, and priorities. This conception contrasts with the melodramatic, black-and-white picture drawn by the first commentators and diplomats in their memoirs, as a struggle of Good embodied by the Americans with Evil represented by Stalin and his henchmen. Pruessen distinguishes and characterizes three stages of changes this policy went through. From the beginning of 1943 till April 1945 the idealism of this vision of free self-determination of nations clashed with Roosevelt’s ‘Great-Power’ realism, which sought good relations with the Soviet Union, even at the price of acknowledging its sphere of influence; the hope prevailed, however, that this influence would not be a matter of absolute control and that the country in question would maintain a considerable measure of democracy and open relations with the West. Between April 1945 and March 1947 there was, maintains the author, a relatively loose combination of uneasiness and realism, which alternated with a combination of anger and helpless resignation. With the Truman Doctrine, the USA demonstrated its determination to contain Communism; on the other hand, in relations with Eastern Europe, following dramatic protests, there were acts of appeasement. In Act Three the USA attempted to confront Soviet ambitions with increased political activity, the most marked expression of which was the Marshall Plan. After this offer of foreign aid was refused by Moscow and its soon-to-be vassals, the Americans concentrated on stirring up tension within the expanding totalitarian empire, and joined in preparations for the establishment of NATO. The author emphasizes that in American policy heterogeneous tendencies were at work in all stages. In general one can safely say Eastern Europe ranked rather low on the list of American interests, and that cold-blooded realism in its relations with the region predominated over championing freedom there.
The February 1948 Prague Coup and the Origins of NATO
Vojtech Mastny
The author examines how, if at all, the Communist take-over in Czechoslovakia influenced the formation of NATO. The initiator and driving force of the West’s defensive military alliance against Soviet expansion was Great Britain. Her Foreign Minister, Bevin, in early 1948 consulted with his French counterpart, Bidault, about a plan for a bilateral military treaty. The Belgian Premier, Spaak, on the other hand, was pushing for a multilateral treaty that would not only contain provisions for collective defence but also for other areas of cooperation. The United States of America maintained a reserved attitude, yet tended to support the Belgian proposal without committing itself. After the Prague putsch, Western politicians began increasingly to fear Communist subversion in their own countries, and also a military conflict with the Soviet Union came to be seen as a real threat. Nevertheless, the author claims, the only tangible result of events in Czechoslovakia was the shift in British and French conceptions towards the Belgian ideas, as well as the conclusion of the Treaty of Brussels between Britain, France, and the Netherlands, which became the precursor of NATO. The immediate impulse to preparations for the founding of a new, broadly conceived alliance were the rumours in early March 1948 that the USSR intended to draw Norway into its empire of satellites.
The Prague putsch had the most importance for the stabilization of domestic politics in Italy, where the spectre of a Communist victory had been cast over the April elections. The Communists’ opponents had been able skilfully to employ propaganda to exploit the danger to Italy of the ‘Czechoslovak contagion’, and thereby dissuaded most of the Italian electorate from supporting the Communists. In other Western European states, too, sympathy for the revolutionary solution was fading, which was demonstrated also in furious strike action in France – nor was the recollection of the perfidy of the Communists in February 1948 forgotten later. Stalin thus paid a rather high price for his easy Czechoslovak booty. The psychological significance of the Prague putsch for public opinion in the West was in essence, therefore, more important that its impact on the formation of military-political structures that would, the author concludes, have undoubtedly emerged even without the impulse provided by the Czechoslovak Communists.
Czechoslovak Uranium and the February 1948 Communist Takeover
Zbyněk A. B. Zeman
A world-wide uranium-rush took place between 1944 and 1948. Uranium ore was the essential raw material for the construction of the atomic weapon. The only known source of uranium at the time, which was in Stalin’s reach, was at Jáchymov/Joachimstahl, Czechoslovakia. It became the subject of a secret treaty of 23 November 1945, which provided the Russians with direct access soon after the war to the only working uranium mine in Europe and to the fastest growing sector of local industry. It also gave them a unique and close-up view of Czechoslovak home and foreign policies. Soviet policies for Jáchymov contradicted the local political programme on critical points such as the nationalization of industry (the Soviets proposed a joint-stock company) and the expulsion of the Germans (POWs began arriving at Jáchymov in 1946). In addition the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPCz) found it difficult to extend its organization and control to the Jáchymov state-owned company. For London and Washington the secret treaty and its immediate aftermath became an important indicator of the direction of Czechoslovak foreign policy, and confirmed the view that Stalin aimed to include Czechoslovakia in a zone of influence that would be inimical to the West.
Zeman argues that the mere fact of ownership of the uranium mines, as well as the way in which this ownership was handled by the Government, became fateful for post-war Czechoslovakia. This, he points out, has been a neglected subject of Czechoslovak history.
The February Takeover of 1948 in Slovakia
Jan Pešek
The February 1948 crisis was initiated in Prague, where a decisive struggle was under way. The situation developed in Slovakia according to this, and constituted part of the solution throughout the country. The resignation of several ministers in Prague, on 20 February 1948, had no equivalent in Slovakia because the members of the Board of Commissioners (Zbor povereníkov, the Slovak government), who were in the Democratic Party, did not tender their resignations. On the order of Klement Gottwald, however, Gustáv Husák, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners, stripped them of office. Unlike the government crisis in Prague, formally solved in a more or less parliamentary way, the Slovak approach was clearly unconstitutional and illegal.
The Communists in Slovakia approached taking power just as energetically as their counterparts Bohemia and Moravia. The shaken Democratic Party as actually the sole rival quickly fell apart. A unique phenomenon in Slovakia was the disarming of the partisans under the influence of the Slovak Communist Party. The Commission of the Interior (that is to say, the ministry) was led by a man without party affiliation, General M. Fejenčík, but the security organs were for all intents and purposes under Communist control. Most of the national committees, in which the Democratic Party was predominant, were replaced by management boards. Within days, the leadership of the Slovak Communist Party had all the reins of power firmly in its hands.
Slovak-Czech Relations in the 1945-48 Power Struggle as Seen by the British Foreign Office
Edita Ivaničková
This contribution, prepared on the basis of research in the Public Records Office, London, represents the first probe into this topic. It starts from the fact that beginning in the spring of 1945 Slovak-Czech relations, from the point of view of the British Foreign Office, had run into difficulties, and London’s interest was concentrated on the struggle for power between the Communists and a broad spectrum of democratic forces in the restored Czechoslovakia. Only after the general elections of May 1946, however, did the British become truly aware that the Slovak question was in fact an integral part of this struggle, particularly after the crisis in the autumn of 1947 in Slovakia. They did not especially intervene in Slovak-Czech relations, with the exception of the case of Jozef Tiso, who had been President of the Slovak State during the war. The situation began to change towards the end of 1947 when Britain began to reconsider her foreign policy towards Czechoslovakia. One aspect of this policy was meant to be support for non-Communist political parties in Czechoslovakia. Its principles, however, were not formulated till just before the February 1948 Communist takeover, and their postulates, including the impact on British foreign policy, became irrelevant to Slovak-Czech relations.
The Direction of European History
Timothy Garton Ash
Originally delivered as a paper at Charles University, this article was conceived as a historical and political essay. In it the author considers the prospects of an integrated Europe. The history of Europe, he believes, is unique in that it is shot through with the teleological conception of the Continent as a vision that is in the process of being realized. After 1945 unification became the clear content of this vision. The author tends to doubt the optimistic assumption that the historical abnormality of this effort as a peace process was the result of the lessons of two world wars. The unification of Europe was considerably helped by three external factors: negatively, the Soviet Union; positively, the United States; and also the violent excommunication of the East European states with their chaotic relations behind the Iron Curtain. In the motivation of the participants in integration sheer idealism was mixed with pragmatic national interests; with time positive common goals came to the fore.
After the collapse of Communism, moreover, there are reasons for a certain scepticism about the early realization of hopes invested in an integrated Europe. The new dynamic of unification, marked by the realization of monetary union and the preparations for expansion of the Union, has clashed with striking factors of deceleration in the form of the return of wartime atrocities in the Balkans, the continuation of the crumbling and disintegration of national units, and the lukewarm support for integration among the inhabitants of Western Europe. The expansion of the Union is, moveover, not entirely compatible with its intensification, which had hitherto been preferred, because the project of monetary union does not include reforms of the institutions necessary for the acceptance of new members. Prospects of the success of monetary union, claims Garton Ash, are made uncertain by two factors: there are economic and political risks in the fact that the redistribution of funds might run up against intensified national interests, owing to the absence of a European demos and a European polis, that is to say, there is no nation Europe. In addition, examples from history demonstrate that successful monetary unions always preceded, never followed, political union. The consequence of the rationalist and perfectionist attempt to ‘create’ Europe might ultimately mean its undoing, and putting its achievements at risk.
The author does not share the vision of Europe as a single actor on the world stage, and concludes by stating that the paradigm of ‘unification at any price’ is basically a mistake for current European policy, and ought to be replaced with the paradigm of a ‘liberal order’. This order rejects the violent solution of disputes, is non-hegemonic, and undogmatic, ensuring the rights and freedoms of its citizens. Whereas, he points out, unity is not a primary value in and of itself but only a means to a higher end, the liberal order contains not one, but two primary values, namely peace and freedom.
Reviews American Policy and the End of Communism in Eastern Europe
Oldřich Tůma
James A. Baker III and Thomas M. Defrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace 1989–1992, New York: Putnam, 1995, 687 pp., is the work discussed here. The reviewer says that Baker, US Secretary of State from 1989 to 1992, has written memoirs of extraordinary interest, including on matters related to central Europe and the collapse of Communism. At least the first half of these extensive memoirs are on precisely those topics.
The reviewer sketches out Baker’s references to discussions with Hungarian Foreign Minister Várkonyi and his Polish counterpart Tadeusz Oleszkowski in Vienna in February 1989, and in Moscow in May with Shevardnadze, in Paris in July, and in Jackson Hole, in September. Baker pays the most concentrated attention to East Germany, the reviewer writes, while Czechoslovakia appears only a few times and occasionally with slight factual errors. The reviewer cites a curious example of a meeting between Dubček and Baker in Prague in February 1990. Dubček was to meet with the last Communist Premier of the GDR, Hans Modrow, and asked Baker’s opinion about what to say. Baker concisely said, ‘Free elections and a free market’, to which Dubček replied, ‘That is exactly what I have always supported’. While one may venture to express doubts about Dubček’s support of free markets in February 1990, one can confidently say he certainly did not always support them. Baker’s reply, ‘I know, and that’s why I’ve always admired you’, is evidence of a certain lack of depth in the Secretary of State’s knowledge of contemporary Czechoslovak history.
The reviewer concludes that US foreign policy, which was for years formed above all by the Soviet threat and the danger of Communism, was at a key moment of the Cold War, namely dealing with the Soviets under Gorbachev’s rule, clearly not based merely on a wait-and-see attitude.
Jaroslav Vaculík
Grzegorz Motyka and Rafał Wnuk, Pany i rezuny: Współpraca AK-WiN i UPA 1945–1947, Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen, 1997, 212 pp. is the work reviewed here. The two young Polish historians from the Institute of Political Studies, at the Polish Academy of Science, are not burdened with the old stereotypes. They have taken on a sensitive and controversial topic, namely the collaboration after W.W. II between two erstwhile adversaries, namely members of the former Polish Army (Armija Krajowa, the AK) and the Ukrainian Insurgents Army (UPA). In the period following W.W. II, when Polish- Ukrainian hatred was reaching its zenith, lower-ranking commanding officers, sometimes without the consent of their superiors, or even clearly breaking orders, concluded locally-based agreements that in many places put a halt to the mutual slaughter.
A Topic That Ought to Be of Increasing Interest to Us
Oldřich Tůma
The reviewer calls Petr Luňák’s Západ: Spojené státy a Západní Evropa ve studené válce [The West: The USA and Western Europe in the Cold War], Prague: Libri, 1997, 460 pp., the first thorough work on the history of West European integration to have appeared in Czech. It is based on a sound knowledge of a vast number of secondary sources, taking the reader back almost to the beginning of the modern era. Though the emphasis is on the process of integration, the cold war is discussed, and Luňák sees it as a geopolitical conflict, rather than as a clash of civilizations.
Despite it being an exceptional work of scholarship on account of its logical and comprehensive approach, the work, the reviewer is compelled to add, suffers from several oversights (the change in direction of Soviet policy after Stalin’s death, crisis in the bloc in 1956, and events in Poland in 1980–1; and on the whole it pays little attention to the link between developments in the West and events in the East). The author’s discussion of the 1960s and 1970s, moreover, seems somewhat chaotic to the reviewer. And while admitting it is impossible not to have errors in a work of this scope, the reviewer corrects a half dozen, which though they are of a nature that does not affect the overall interpretation, still need pointing out. Lastly, Luňák has also ignored certain important sources, which is particularly apparent in the case of Czech literature on the subject
Meditations on a Century of Czech Politics
Blanka Císařovská
The reviewer discusses Zdeněk Šolle’s Století české politiky: Počátky moderní české politiky od Palackého a Havlíčka až po realisty Kaizla, Kramáře a Masaryka [A Century of Czech politics: The beginnings of modern Czech politics from Palacký and Havlíček to the realists Kaizl, Kramář and Masaryk] (Prague 1998). The author, Zdeněk Šolle, has spent his whole professional life studying this period of Czech history. His book discusses the emergence and development of the modern Czech programme in the years 1848–1914, and the deeds of its most important actors, namely the historian and politician František Palacký, the political poet and journalist Karel Havlíček Borovský, the lawyers and politicians J. Kaizl and Karel Kramář, and the philosopher and politician Tomáš Masaryk. In the spirit of the West, particularly France after the Revolution, their politics were linked primarily with ideas such as democracy, constitutionalism, and humanism, ideas which became all the more compelling the more the Czech nation became convinced of its right to a national existence of its own.
The modern national idea, as Masaryk put it, had been developed into a programme by Palacký in the form of an Austro-Hungarian federation on the basis of the rights of man and of its constituent nations being on an equal footing with one another. Within this federation, the Czech political programme was to be based on administrative independence and on its own government of the Bohemian Crown, and on linguistic equality. Havlíček Borovský applied Palacký’s programme.
The reviewer takes issue with Šolle’s use of the term ‘modern’, which may be appropriate for the arts, but not necessarily for politics of this period, unless one understands Šolle to mean that which has survived from the past to help to create the present. Šolle does in fact want to say that the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is the point from which modern politics develop; the key problem was to reform the Austro-Hungarian monarchy into a state in which each constituent nation was equal and practised social justice.
The reviewer describes Šolle’s discussion of the emergence of Palacký’s modern Czech politics in the Czech National Revival, and his desire for equality of all nations (and not, as he was sometimes accused of, of Slavs over Germans). Unfortunately, notes the reviewer, Šolle somewhat neglects the philosophical prerequisites of Palacký’s programme. But Šolle does dedicate space to the evolution of Czech and Slovak political relations in the period.
In his discussion of the actors who appear later in the period, Šolle points out that whereas Palacký and Rieger had endeavoured to bring about a fundamental revolution in the Austrian Constitution, with Kaizl, Kramář and Masaryk, a period of pragmatic politics begins.
Šolle, the reviewer writes, is one of the few living Czech historians who reflects on Czech history in a broader time frame, who searches for the identity and roots of Czech society in a deep probe into the ‘soul’ of the nation. Šolle enlivens his portrait of the past by using numerous quotations from the work of those men – which, the reviewer warns, might be risky, when one recalls that today few of Šolle’s readers will have read Palacký, Havlíček, Masaryk, let alone Kramář. The reviewer, furthermore, doubts whether the last named, a conservative, rightly belongs among the ranks of the other three. The work also suffers from a more detailed discussion of the relationship between the state-rights and natural-rights theories, as various Czech politicians conceived and developed them, and what actually was modern. The reviewer concludes that Šolle’s work is an especially important piece of history writing and, though it discusses the nineteenth century, is inspirational for the present.
Discussion Zorin’s Mission to Prague, February 1948: In the Light of the New Documents
(V. Prečan, G. P. Muraško, L. Y. Gibiansky and K. Kaplan)
The complex interplay of external and internal factors of Sovietization and the incorporation of the countries of central and Eastern Europe into the Soviet bloc constitute a frequently discussed topic of early Cold-War history. Recently the document-based picture of how Czechoslovakia was perceived at various levels of Soviet diplomatic, Party, and military institutions has been broadened; few documents, however, are available to provide evidence on direct intervention by the Soviet leaders, such as Stalin’s veto against Czechoslovak participation in Marshall Plan negotiations.
At the international conference in Prague the Russian historian Galina Muraško at least partially began to unlock the mystery of the mission to Prague by Valerian Zorin, one of Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov’s deputys. Zorin was in Prague from 19 to 25 February 1948, that is, at the height of the government crisis that resulted in the Communist coup d’état and the exclusion of non-Communist coalition partners. Muraško did not have at hand the entire set of documents necessary to come to a definite conclusion about the options open to Zorin and the work he carried out. From the several telegrams between Zorin and Moscow which are now available, it is clear, however, that Moscow wanted the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPCz) to proceed more resolutely, and the Kremlin was not afraid to use unconstitutional methods.
The newly released documents argue against the currently widespread version, which claims that the Kremlin considered it appropriate for the Soviet Army in Hungary to move towards the frontier with Czechoslovakia or even to enter Czechoslovak territory. It is clear from the telegrams, that the Soviet leadership considered the Soviet demonstration of military might at the frontier with Czechoslovakia, which according to Zorin Premier Gottwald and General Secretary Slánský were demanding, to be inappropriate. Molotov also thought it inappropriate for Moscow to give Gottwald any orders ‘along Party lines’ and warned against Zorin visiting Beneš without direct orders from Moscow. The Soviet Communist Party publicly expressed its position on the events in Czechoslovakia with only a commentary in Pravda, remarking on the international ‘reactionnaries’ and emphasis on the inadmissibility of any compromise.
The Editors of Soudobé dějiny have included with Muraško’s article the comments of Russian historian Leonid Gibiansky and Czech historian Karel Kaplan. Both scholars point out that even after the publication of part of the documents connected with the Zorin mission a number of open questions remain concerning the evaluation of the Soviet role in the February takeover. The Communists’ opponents, including President Beneš, had no idea of what decisions had been taken in the Kremlin, and so the CPCz leadership could use the Soviet threat as an instrument of political and psychological pressure. And, Kaplan argues, Moscow had no need to give Gottwald instructions emphasizing a tough, uncompromising approach, as Zorin had originally said about him, when in the meantime it became apparent that the CPCz had become master of the situation.
The Spring of the Water of Life, Somewhat Muddied
Jan Měchýř
The reviewer takes a look at Petr Husák (ed.), Budování kapitalismu v Čechách: Rozhovory s Tomášem Ježkem, Prague: Volvox Globator, 1997, 293 pp. He discusses and sometimes polemicizes with the views of the post-1989 Czech politician Tomáš Ježek (b. 1940). Ježek was trained as an economist, and after the changes beginning 17 November 1989 was active in Civic Forum, later joining the faction that formed the Civic Democratic Alliance (Občanská demokratická aliance, ODA), and then defecting to Václav Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS). In June 1990 he became the Czech Government’s Minister of State Property and Its Privatization, was later entrusted with running the National Property Fund, and thus established a reputation as one of the so-called ‘fathers of privatization’.
The reviewer reproaches Ježek for having made three basic mistakes. First, for him privatization was not a means to an end, as can be seen from his statement ‘The profitability of our privatization projects was not the primary concern of the Government’. Second, Ježek, to the detriment of things, ‘was building capitalism in the Czech Republic’ on the basis of antiquated ideas and drawing only from textbooks, which he himself admits. In 1992 he believed ‘within five years, if not earlier, one will begin to talk about the Czech economic miracle’. Third, Ježek is perhaps the last economist to say ‘the reform was a success’. He has either not understood or does not fully appreciate that the voucher-based privatization did not create an institution of genuine owners who could claim their rights as owners, let alone execute them, and that the privatization scheme in fact left the management of the former state-owned enterprises in the hands of managers from the Communist régime. Ježek, says the reviewer, has entirely ignored the fact that privatization has not created a genuine market economy, has not undermined the power of the monopolies, and has not, with few exceptions, created an environment for genuine and fair competition.
The Oskar Schindler Case:
Two Views
Jaroslav Valenta
With Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (based on Thomas Keneally’s book Schindler’s Ark, Oskar Schindler became an international name. While both the film and the book have a right to a certain poetic licence when dealing with the historical facts, the reader and member of the film audience all too frequently believes such work to be recorded or filmed history. In the course of a few months in 1996 and 1997, two biographies of Schindler appeared, written by Czech historians (one by Jitka Gruntová, the other by Rudolf Fikejz), with a focus on his activity during the war years, his role, and his motives in saving Jewish prisoners who were deployed in his business as cheap labour. Both biographies have a regional interest in the topic and a link to the town of Svitavy/Zwittau and its environs, from which Schindler came and to where he evacuated his Cracow factory. The subject matter is of course of greater interest than merely regional, being almost international. The known primary sources on the topic are scanty, and to a certain extent also controversial and contradictory; only the post-war claims of Schindler, or in some cases his wife, must be approached with extreme caution and with a competent historical approach. It is from this angle that the reviewer examines the two monographs on Schindler.
Schindler has not been sufficiently researched, and the known data must be carefully and critically certified. Of the two works Gruntová’s book provides the better starting point; despite its somewhat moot interpretation of the details, its author’s approach is clearly that of the historian. Fikejz, on the other hand, had a wider spectrum of sources at his disposal, but his work unfortunately suffers from an uncritical, indeed at times almost hagiographical acceptance of the later claims of its hero. Another reviewer, writing in the Sudetendeutsche Zeitung (No. 10, 1998), said that Gruntová’s book (whose superb documentation cannot be denied) meant the ‘conservation of the Soviet general view of the world’, but this opinion is easily refuted by a reading of Gruntová’s work; the clichés expressed in the German review were clearly intended to insult the author.
Chronicle Report on the International Conference of Historians ‘The Czechoslovak "February", 1948: The Preconditions and Repercussions at Home and Abroad’
Jiří Kocian
From 19 to 21 February 1998 an international history conference was held in Prague ‘The Czechoslovak "February", 1948: The Preconditions and Repercussions at Home and Abroad’. It was organized by the Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague) in collaboration with the National Security Archive (Washington D.C.), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington D.C.), the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Prague), Centre français de recherche en sciences sociales (CEFRES, Prague), the Open Society Fund (Prague), and the Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences (Bratislava). The conference was held under the aegis of Leader of the Czech Senate, Petr Pithart, and was opened by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jaroslav Šedivý, which gave the conference a broader social and political scope than were it merely academic. Almost one hundred historians participated – apart from Czechs, there were nearly fifty experts present from over a dozen countries.
The conference programme comprised eight panels: ‘The International Context’, ‘Czechoslovakia and the Great Powers’, ‘The Road to the Soviet Bloc: Communist Takeovers in the Neighbouring Countries’; ‘The Repercussions Abroad’; ‘The Old and New Evidence on "Czechoslovakia’s Peaceful Road to Socialism"’, ‘Internal Dimensions I: The Social and Political Preconditions’ and Internal Dimensions II: The Slovak Factor’, ‘Beneš’s Last Struggle’, and ‘The Aftermath at Home and Abroad’. The conference concluded with a panel discussion open to the public held at the Radio Free Europe building. The discussion was opened by Vilém Prečan, Director of the Institute of Contemporary History, who pointed out the conference’s place in the series of international conferences held in the 1990s, which have been charting the milestones of the Cold War. He characterized it as another attempt by historians, political scientists, and other scholars to re-consider and understand international history of the last sixty years. February 1948 is not only a reminder of the errors and failures of Czech policy, he said, but also of all the lost opportunities of the twentieth century throughout the world, and remains in many senses a warning. In evaluating it, one is reminded of other fateful watersheds and milestones in Czech modern history – Munich 1938 and the long shadow it cast upon developments following W. W. II; 1968 as the search for a way out of the deep crisis Czechoslovak society had been led in twenty years of monopoly rule by the Communist Party, and also the revolution of November 1989, which began the democratic transformation of society and can be called the positive undoing of February 1948.
The conference outlined the main trends in research on the historical development that had accompanied February 1948 in Czechoslovakia and round the world. Many of the papers pointed out that February 1948 may not have changed the course of international relations, but it did mean a definitive delimitation of great-power spheres of interest, which were mutually respected for years. Though the subordination of local Communist leaderships to the Kremlin was discussed rather thoroughly, documents are still needed that would allow one to describe and analyze all the mechanisms of Soviet interference in Czechoslovak affairs. The papers on the Czechoslovak social preconditions for the February takeover were particularly inspirational, and the papers by the Slovak scholars also helped in this area. Many papers confirmed the indispensability and urgent need for more intensive basic archive research at home and abroad. The conference demonstrated that February 1948 occupies an important place as a topic in historiography, and also in the public consciousness, and Czech historians are increasingly aware of the need to incorporate the important topics of Czech and Czechoslovak history into world history as its integral part.
A Report on a Conference of Young German and Czech Historians
Matthias Roeser
‘The German-Czech historians workshop. New Prospects for Czech and German historiography: Shared Questions, Differences, and Blank Spots’ was the compact title of a conference of the equally compactly named Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas and the German-Czech Committee of Historians, which was held in Leipzig, 15–18 October 1998. It was the first joint conference of Bohemists from Germany and the Czech Republic. Twenty-five papers were delivered, mostly by young scholars who were either in their final year of studies or had just graduated. From the names of the various conference sections the direction this generation is taking in this field is clear: problems after 1945; the nation and politics in the media and the arts; apart from the great struggles; the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age: the Church, the Nobility, the Serfs, the State; Annexation and occupation.
Contributors
Blanka Císařovská (1927) has been a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History since its founding in 1990. She is primarily concerned with Czech civil initiatives in the 1970s and 1980s. Her most recent publication is Charta 77 očima současníků: Po dvaceti letech [Charter 77 as seen by contemporaries: Twenty Years On] (1997).
Timothy Garton Ash (1955) is a Research Fellow in contemporary European history, StAntony’s College, Oxford. He has published in many journals. His most recent monograph is In Europe’s Name, Germany and the Divided Continent (1993). Some of his work, including The Magic Lantern (1990) and The File (1997), has been translated into Czech.
Leonid Y. Gibiansky (1936) is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. He is chiefly interested in contemporary history and central and south-east European international relations.
Edita Ivaničková (1948) is a Senior Researcher of the History Institute, the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. She is concerned with the history of international relations in the 1940s and, most recently, with British foreign policy towards central Europe.
Karel Kaplan (1928) has been a Senior Researcher in the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, since its founding. Among his many books are Největší politický proces. M. Horáková a spol. [The biggest show trial. The state vs Horáková et al] (1995), and Pět kapitol o únoru [Five chapters about February 1948] (1997).
Jiří Kocian (1956) took a degree in history at Charles University, Prague. He is a Senior researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague. History after 1945, with a focus on politics and society, is his chief academic concern.
Jaroslav Krejčí (1916) is Professor Emeritus, Lancaster University, member of the Czech Learned Society, trained in law and economics, but predominantly an historian and sociologist. Among his numerous publications are Great Revolution Compared: The Search for a Theory (1983) and, as co-author, Czechoslovakia, 1918–92: A Laboratory for Social Change (1996).
Vojtech Mastny (1936), formerly Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center of International Relations, the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins University, is now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars, Washington. His best-known monographs are Russia’s Road to the Cold War (1979) and its sequel, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity (1996).
Jan Měchýř (1930) is Docent at the Institute of Economic and Social History, Charles University. His principal field is Czechoslovak history from 1945 on.
Galina P. Muraško (1932) is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. She is concerned particularly with Czechoslovakia and other countries of the former East bloc.
Jan Pešek (1949) is Senior Researcher at the History Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She is author of Štátna bezpečnosť na Slovensku 1948–1953 [The secret police in Slovakia, 1948–53] (1996), Štátna moc a cirkvi na Slovensku 1948–53 [Church and State in Slovakia, 1948–53] (1997), and Odvrátená tvár totality: Politické perzekúcie na Slovensku v rokoch 1948–1953 [Political persecution in Slovakia, 1948–53] (1998).
Vilém Prečan (1933) is Docent of History, Charles University, Prague. He is a founder of the Institute of Contemporary History and its first Director. He is concerned primarily with Czechoslovakia in the European context following the Munich Agreement. A volume of his essays, V kradeném čase, was published in 1994.
Ronald W. Pruessen (1944) is Professor of History at the University of Toronto and a Director of the Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project. His publications include John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power (1982), and ‘Cold War Threats and America’s Commitment to the European Defense Community’ Journal of European Integration History (Spring 1996).
Matthias Roeser (1968) took a degree in medieval and modern history as well as economics in Cologne. In 1992–93 he was on a scholarship at Charles University, Prague, and after a shorter period at the Institute of Contemporary History was a researcher at the Hannah Arendt Institute, Dresden. He has published on the sovietization and militarization of the Czechoslovak aircraft industry (Soudobé dějiny 1/96).
Jerzy Tomaszewski (1930) is a Professor at Warsaw University, and Director of the Centre for Jewish History. His chief areas of interest are 20th-century economic history and international relations, minorities in Poland, and particularly the Jews in Poland before the Shoah. His Preludium zagłady: Wygnanie Żydów polskich z Niemiec w 1938 r. [Prelude to tragedy: Expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany, 1938] was published in 1998.
Oldřich Tůma (1950) was recently elected Director of the Institute of Contemporary History. He began as a specialist on Byzantium, and since the early 1990s has been concerned with contemporary history, particularly the period 1969–89. He has published many articles related to this period.
Jaroslav Vaculík (1947) is Docent at the School of Education, Masaryk University, Brno. He lectures in world history from the 17th centuryon. His main area of interest is the Czech minority abroad.
Jaroslav Valenta (1930) is a Professor and Senior Researcher in the Historical Institute, Prague. He is concerned with central-European history, particularly Czechoslovak and Polish, from the 19th century on. His recent publications include a work on the expulsion of the Germans from Poland (Sborník ÚMV, 1998) and, as co-author, an English-language edition of documents on wartime plans for a Czech-Polish confederation.
Zbyněk A. B. Zeman (1928) is Professor Emeritus of European History, Oxford. Central and Eastern European and the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are his main areas of interest. He has published widely in English; his Pursued by a Bear: The Making and Breaking of Communist Europe, has appeared in Czech, and his biography of Edvard Beneš is about to be published here.
