No. I.
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Articles
Jiří Křesťan
“The Last Hussite” Is Leaving:
Zdeněk Nejedlý in the Snares of CPCz Policy on Culture and the Arts after the Second World War
Jiří Knapík
From Adjustment to Ideological Norm:
Behind the Scenes of Štoll’s “Thirty Years of Struggle”
Petr Šámal
The “Czech Question” in the Context of Stalinism:
Karel Kosík and the Concept of Leftwing Radicalism
Materials
Jiří Beran
The Formation of the Membership Base of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1952
Debates
Jan Rataj
The Final Diagnosis of the Second Republic?
Jindřich Dejmek
Facts versus Suppositions and Half-truths in the Interpretation of Czechoslovak-British Relations:
Smetana’s Review under the Microscope
Vít Smetana
Some Remarks in Response to Jindřich Dejmek
Memoirs
Martin Štoll
Thirty years of Struggle with Ladislav Štoll,
or How Can You Live with That?
Martin Kučera
A Brief Attempt at a Fair Understanding of Ladislav Štoll
Reviews
Petr Čornej
Hus in Marxist Clothing:
The Czech Historical Novel in Its Cultural and Political Context after February 1948
Jana Čechurová
The Muses Were Not Silent during the War
Ondřej Houska
Mussolini’s Italy on the Road to Expansion
Jindřich Schwippel
Oral History from an Archivist’s Point of View
Jan Měchýř
A New Series Devoted to Post-war Social History
Jaroslav Vaculík
The War Years and Post-war Years in Polish Historical Journals in 2004
Concerning the Archives
Prokop Tomek
An StB File as a Primary Source
Annotations
Summaries
Summaries
Articles
“The Last Hussite” Is Leaving:
Zdeněk Nejedlý in the Snares of CPCz Policy on Culture and the Arts after the Second World War
Jiří Křesťan
The article is an outline of a fragment of the political biography of the leading Communist intellectual and politician Zdeněk Nejedlý (1878–1962), in which the author tries to depict Nejedlý’s role in making Czechoslovak policy on the arts and culture after the Liberation in May 1945 and, particularly, after the Communist takeover of February 1948. He then seeks to link this role with the personal side of Nejedlý’s life. He presents Nejedlý as a respected historian and musicologist and as a participant in debates on politics and the arts, who in the interwar period had increasingly inclined towards the radical leftwing and gained considerable authority owing to his participation in the struggle against Nazi Germany, particularly as a member of the Communist leadership-in-exile in Moscow (having joined the Party in 1939). A consequence of this was his position in post-war Czechoslovakia, where he held a number of posts, including Minister of Education, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, and the first Chairman of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
After the Liberation Nejedlý was often a leading maker of Communist policy on the arts and culture in Czechoslovakia and its successful propagandist. Nevertheless, he was not as strong a player as Václav Kopecký, Minister of Information, who stayed in power till 1952, or Gustav Bareš, Head of the Cultural and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPCz, Kopecký’s main competitor in the field, both of whom had the main jurisdiction and controlled the mechanisms for determining cultural policy. Nejedlý’s ideas about culture and the arts were relatively simple – it should be “of the people” (lidová), relevant to the times, realistic, part of a programme, and based on national tradition, which, however, he interpreted selectively (with an emphasis on Hussitism and the National Revival) and with a political purpose (in the spirit of the ideological indoctrination of society). Owing to Nejedlý’s efforts to maintain a clearer continuity between the culture of the “builders of Socialism” (budovatelská kultura) and the past, the source of which was supposed to be “progressive” figures and the works of the composer Bedřich Smetana, the novelist Alois Jirásek, and other Revivalists, the author of the present article shares much with interpretation of scholars like Alexej Kusák, ranking Nejedlý among the moderate politicians of the CPCz, who after the February 1948 takeover represented a certain alternative to those pushing for a radical “purge” of Czech cultural heritage. In view of his weak position in the power hierarchy and, on the other hand, his strong loyalty to the Party line, Nejedlý only rarely clashed with Party radicals publicly (for example, when he opposed the automatic transfer of “Soviet experience” to the Czechoslovak school system). The author, in this connection, touches upon Nejedlý’s relationships with some artists and politicians, particularly Kopecký, and provides evidence of displays of devotion towards Nejedlý, which he seems to have welcomed. The author also discusses Nejedlý’s serious health problems in the 1950s, which limited his influence on making policy in culture and the arts, and his psychological state, which was marked by depressions and anxiety about his possible arrest.
In the last part of the article the author reflects on why Nejedlý’s work in the 1960s had not inspired the attempts at the reform of socialism in a specifically Czech form, which resulted in the “Prague Spring” of 1968. Apart from the fact that Nejedlý’s late Revivalist values and aesthetics in this period had become hopelessly outdated, this was so, he argues, probably because Nejedlý had helped to justify the show trials in the early 1950s and was therefore perceived as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Stalinist régime. Nor did he ever come up with an alternative concept that would have essentially diverted from official, Stalinist doctrine on the arts and culture.
From Adjustment to Ideological Norm:
Behind the Scenes of Štoll’s “Thirty Years of Struggle”
Jiří Knapík
The paper given by Ladislav Štoll at the plenary meeting of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers in January 1950, which was immediately published in the press as “Třicet let bojů za českou socialistickou poezii” (Thirty Years of Struggle for Czech Socialist Poetry), is considered one of the clearest expressions of Stalinism in the arts and culture in Czechoslovakia after the Communist takeover of February 1948. Although the consequences of that paper have been considered by historians of literature, the background to it has till now remained almost unexplored. The present article points chiefly to the context of policy on the arts and culture from spring 1949 onwards, after the poet Vítězslav Nezval was criticized in the press and, in particular, after the affair with the “anti-Party pamphlet” against him. In the Culture Council of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CC CPCz) at the time, the idea emerged of holding a plenary session of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers. The session was intended not only to come up with a comprehensive solution to the state of literary criticism, but also to create new models for works of art and to define the attitude of the Communist régime towards the cultural legacy. Štoll’s paper, whose main theses were formulated in autumn 1949, included various opinions of leading policymakers in culture and the arts (his own, Václav Kopecký, and Jiří Taufer’s views, on the one hand, and Jiří Hendrych and František Nečásek’s on the other). At first a critical judgement of poetry after the Second World War was formulated, but with time the more profound idea of an “analysis” of poetry from the interwar period was promoted, in which the chief negative example was the poet František Halas. In addition to this look behind the scenes of the making of policy on arts and culture the article includes notes by the deputy head of the Culture and Propaganda Department of the CC CPCz, Jiří Hendrych, about Štoll’s October 1949 speech in the Culture Council, in which his future paper is sketched out.
The “Czech Question” in the Context of Stalinism:
Karel Kosík and the Concept of Leftwing Radicalism
Petr Šámal
The article is concerned with the interpretation of Czech radical democracy as postulated by the Marxist philosopher Karel Kosík (1926–2003) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It argues that one of the aims of Kosík’s writing about this political movement was to conceptualize leftwing radicalism. It begins with a recapitulation and assessment of historiographical work charting out the relationship between art and politics, particularly policy on culture and the arts in the period of Stalinism (referring to works by Alexej Kusák and Jiří Knapík), and presents the basic feature of leftwing radicalism, which is understood as an attitude characteristic of the relatively short period from the beginning of the totalitarian régime. In the sphere of art this utopian, normatively closed concept was manifested by an extremely utilitarian approach to a work of art, whose primary purpose was meant to be participation in building a “new” world. In this article Kosík is seen as a leading member of the generation of young Communists who had a substantial share in establishing a new philosophical discourse and formulated new criteria for interpreting the history of nineteenth-century Czech political and philosophical thought.
The second part of the article summarizes the reasons Kosík’s writings about radical democracy should be given a special status in today’s discourse. The main argument is the fact that, apart from the opinions of Zdeněk Nejedlý, Kosík’s writings (marked in some cases by a strikingly ideological character and the mixing of academic style with elements of political journalism) presented the most sharply defined discussion of the “Czech Question” at the time. Kosík’s interpretation of radical democracy is presented in comparison with earlier Marxist interpretations of the history of the nineteenth century (by Jan Šverma, Záviš Kalandra, and Václav Čejchan). In the conclusion of the article Kosík’s construct is called the “progressive” line of Czech history, which was based on the idea of “revolutionary spirit” (revolučnost) and his understanding of the “Czech Question.”
The Formation of the Membership Base of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1952
Jiří Beran
The selection of members for the new institution was one of the tasks the Government Commission for Development of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Ladislav Štoll was entrusted with by a government decision of 15 January 1952. The article examines the work of the Commission in this area, focusing in particular on the political criteria of selection. It also considers how the relationship was defined between the Academy and its assumed sub-academies, of which ultimately only the Czechoslovak Academy of Agricultural Sciences came into being and survived for one decade. It also examines the extent to which Slovak scholars were represented in the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and then looks at the establishment of the separate Slovak Academy of Sciences in 1953. The article mainly considers the extent to which the new institution was based on earlier academic societies of the kind in Czechoslovakia in terms of staff and organization. The article includes lists of ordinary members and corresponding members from 1952, as well as a list of 29 scholars excluded in the last minute from elections of corresponding members, after intervention by dogmatic members of the apparat Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
Although the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences developed under the wing of the Communist Party, in the work of the Government Commission certain elements of democratic thinking nevertheless made themselves felt. The selection of ordinary members in some of the natural sciences was made with an eye to academic qualifications. By contrast, branches of the social sciences were hard hit, particularly philosophy, sociology, and political economy, where, with the forced promotion of Stalinist Marxism, their connection with previous developments was completely severed. With the application of doctrines applied in Soviet science and scholarship, biology and its related disciplines suffered as well, however. In connection with the selection of members, the author pays particular attention to historians and discusses the struggle over ideology in Czech historiography. It came as a great surprise, he notes, when the political secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPCz refused to make Ladislav Štoll an ordinary member and important functionary of the Academy, justifying its decision by saying that it expected Štoll to take over from Zdeněk Nejedlý as Minister of Education. The author does not rule out the possibility that in the social context of the times Klement Gottwald, who, according to not entirely reliable sources, was pushed into expanding the show trials into the cultural sphere, did not want to strengthen the position of a man whose judgements on literature had opened the way to persecution of this kind.
Debates
The Final Diagnosis of the Second Republic?
Jan Rataj
This is both a review of Jan Gebhart and Jan Kuklík’s Druhá republika 1938–1939: Svár demokracie a totality v politickém, společenském a kulturním životě (The Second Republic, 1938–39: A Conflict between Democracy and Totalitarianism in Political, Social, and Cultural Life), published by Paseka, Prague, in 2004, and an essay about the character of the political régime of the Second Republic. In the first part of the review-essay, the author introduces the main theses and contents of the individual chapters of Gebhart and Kuklík’s book, criticizing some specific shortcomings, though on the whole he considers it a factually rich, well-informed synthesis of the history of the Second Republic, based on precisely marshalled sources. He disagrees, however, with the authors’ interpretation of the Second Republic. In particular, he takes issue with their interpretation that the Second Republic represented primarily a struggle between democratic forces on the one hand, which were trying to preserve as much as possible of the First Republic, and extremist forces on the other, which were heading towards totalitarianism, a struggle played out under the moderately restrictive control of the Beran government, which had to react to the crude pressure applied by Nazi Germany. In contrast he presents the thesis that after the Munich Agreement of 1938 an authoritarian régime was established which, by the logic of developments moved to the totalitarian model and drew on the intellectual sources of the authoritarian conservative rightwing during the First Republic and Czech Fascism.
Facts versus Suppositions and Half-truths in the Interpretation of Czechoslovak-British Relations:
Smetana’s Review under the Microscope
Jindřich Dejmek
The author takes issue with Vít Smetana’s review of his Nenaplněné naděje: Politické a diplomatické vztahy Československa a Velké Británie (1918–1938) (Unfulfilled Hopes: Czechoslovak-British Political and Diplomatic Relations) published by Karolinum, Prague, in 2003. The review, “Dejmkovo velké dílo pod drobnohledem” (Dejmek’s Magnum Opus under the Microscope), was published in Soudobé dějiny 11 (2004), no. 4, pp. 97–116. The author rejects Smetana’s argument, calling it academically unfounded, unoriginal, and driven more or less with an aim to discredit him. He defends himself particularly against the criticism that his book is written in a gloomy anti-British tone and that it tendentiously defends interwar Czechoslovak policy as personified by Edvard Beneš.
He argues that his book is the first treatment of the topic by a Czech author, and objects that in an attempt to proceed without bias he could not judge the positions of the vast majority of British politicians towards Czechoslovakia other than with marked criticism, although he appreciates their positive aspects. Second, he highlights the question of criteria of judgement, such as the security interests of the Czechoslovak Republic, whose responsible politicians could not have acted other than by trying to create an international security system guaranteed by the Great Powers. Alternatives to the policy of those days can, in his opinion, be speculated about only at the theoretical level. Third, he rejects the reviewer’s criticisms of his method, which concern primarily his work with sources and the overall traditional conception of interpretation in the style of purely descriptive diplomatic history.
Some Remarks in Response to Jindřich Dejmek
Vít Smetana
The author replies concisely to the individual points of Dejmek’s defence. Dejmek’s unpersuasive article, the author argues, in part distorts and in part ignores his arguments. He therefore stands by the judgements expressed in the review.
Memoirs
Thirty Years of Struggle with Ladislav Štoll,
or How Can You Live With That?
Martin Štoll
In an essay written with both a personal touch and an attempt at objective distance, the author reflects on his grandfather Ladislav Štoll, a leading ideologue of Czechoslovak arts and culture from the middle of the 1940s to the end of the 1970s. From memoirs and later essays he briefly describes his own relationship to his grandfather. He inquires into the reasons that led Ladislav Štoll to dogmatic devotion to Communist orthodoxy and the Party and into how one might understand Štoll’s life and works without bias. He sees his attempt as a contribution to the genre of social anamnesis, which is still almost nonexistent amongst Czechs as they try to come to terms with their Communist forebears.
A Brief Attempt at a Fair Understanding of Ladislav Štoll
Martin Kučera
This article is an attempt to comprehend Štoll in outline as a person embodying a certain kind of mentality and style as an author. On the one hand his describes Štoll’s personality based chiefly on the subjective testimonies of Jiří Taufer, whom he befriended in the late 1980s, and on the other hand critically characterizes some of Štoll’s publications. He underscores the differences in the mentality of Štoll and Taufer, who are otherwise usually perceived as an inseparable pair, and on the whole judges Štoll as a literary critic operating in the fixed framework of Marxist-Leninist theory, who never really understood the aesthetic component of a work of art and displayed only the minimum of original opinion.
Reviews
Hus in Marxist Clothing:
The Czech Historical Novel in Its Cultural and Political Context after February 1948
Petr Čornej
Królak, Joanna. Hus na trybunie: Tradycje narodowe w czeskiej powieści historycznej okesu realizmu socjalistycznego. Warsaw: Instytut Sławistyki Zachodniej i Południowej Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2004, 159 pp.
The publication under review, by a Polish scholar of Czech literature at Warsaw University, comprises an analysis of seventeen historical novels by Czech writers published in the 1950s. Królak carries out this analysis with a qualified outline of modern conceptions of Czech history, national traditions, the development of the Czech historical novel from the end of the eighteenth century, and the ideological activity of Zdeněk Nejedlý. But for a few minor reservations the reviewer points to the author’s superb knowledge of this aspect of Czech literature and to her semiotic approach, and claims that her argument about the related conceptions of the Czech authors of historical novels and Czech Marxist historiographers in the 1950s is truly original.
The Muses Were Not Silent during the War
Srba, Bořivoj. Múzy v exilu: Kulturní a umělecké aktivity čs. exulantů v Londýně v předvečer a v průběhu světové války 1939–1945. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2003, 888 pp + appendices.
This monumental publication, although groundbreaking in its orientation and the amount of information it conveys, is, according to the reviewer, problematic in its conception and form. Srba wrote much of it in the late 1960s as a manual for theatre studies, but has revised and expanded that work here. It is organized by topic into hundreds of chapters, which unfortunately spoils the flow and leads to much repetition. Another minus is that the author has not used new Czech publications or records from archives of various institutions. Nevertheless, he has written an extraordinary work, which examines culture and the arts not only of Czechoslovak émigrés in Great Britain (and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere) but also German and Austrian émigrés who were associated with them there.
Mussolini’s Italy on the Road to Expansion
Ondřej Houska
Mallett, Robert. Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933–1940. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 266 pp.
In this important book based on detailed research in Italian archives the British historian Robert Mallett concludes that the chief strategic aim of the Mussolini régime was long-term control of the Mediterranean, necessary prerequisites of which were conflict with France and Great Britain and closer relations with Germany. His book, according to the reviewer, therefore ranks among the interpretations that take a highly critical view of Italian foreign policy following the Fascist takeover.
Oral History from an Archivist’s Point of View
Jindřich Schwippel
Vaněk, Miroslav. Orální historie ve výzkumu soudobých dějin. (Hlasy minulosti, vol. 1). Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2004, 175 pp.
The reviewer welcomes Vaněk’s publication as the first systematic Czech manual of its kind and discusses a few other insufficiently reviewed publications in which oral history was previously employed as a method in Czech historiography.
A New Series Devoted to Post-war Social History
Jan Měchýř
Kalinová, Lenka. Východiska, očekávání a realita poválečné doby: K dějinám české společnosti v letech 1945–1948 (Česká společnost 1945–1992, vol. 1). Prague: Úsatv pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2004, 117 pp.
The reviewer welcomes this book, the first in a new series, published by the Institute of Contemporary History and concerned with the social history of the Bohemian Lands in the post-war period. Kalinová’s book is an outline of the ideological prerequisites of the political-economic move of Czech society in particular and European society in general to the left after the Second World War, and naturally returns to the days of the Great Depression and the war. The reviewer finds it a useful outline of the topic, but feels it pays too little attention to certain aspects.
The War Years and Post-war Years in Polish History Journals in 2004
Jaroslav Vaculík
In his regular, this time detailed, survey of essays on contemporary history published in Polish history journals in the previous year, the author discusses the quarterly Dzieje Najnowsze as the central Polish periodical in the field, then provides less detailed information about articles in the journals Zeszyty Historyczne, Kwartalnik Historyczny, Przegląd Historyczny, Sobótka, Przegląd Zachodni, Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, and Wiadomości Historyczne. He also provides detailed information about the article by Jerzy Eisner, published in the last named periodical, which concerns myths and stereotypes in Communist Poland.
About the Archives
An StB File as an Historical Source
Prokop Tomek
The article judges the importance and possibilities of using records from the secret services of the former Communist régime in Czechoslovakia in historical research. He pays particular attention to the files of the former State Security Forces (Státní bezpečnost or StB). On the basis of his own experience and the internal regulations of the StB, he points to the possible pitfalls of using StB files as historical sources. He provides several specific examples of working with the files, references to the possibilities of declassification, information about particular features of the archiving of the files, and the problem of their being shredded.
