No. III.-IV.
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Articles
Martin C. Putna
Between the Republic, Fascism and the Proletariat:
The Journalism of Jaroslav Durych in the 1920s and Its Relation to His Belles Lettres
Jiří Brabec
The Arts and Culture in the Protectorate under Pressure from Collaborationist Projects, 1941–45
Věra Brožová
From Guardians of Moral Values to Engineers of Human Souls:
Literary Life from May 1945 to February 1948
Jiří Knapík
The Action Committees and the Arts and Culture at the Dawn of a New Period
Elena Londáková
Innocent Culprits – The Defendants and Their Victims:
The Campaign against ‘Bourgeois Nationalists’ as Reflected in Slovak Cultural Life
Kateřina Bláhová
Between Literature and Politics:
Contexts of Czech Literary Life, 1958–69
Jarmila Cysařová
Czechoslovak Television and Political Power, 1953–89
Josef Kotek
Post-August Songs of Anger and Resistance, 1968–69
Horizon
Françoise Noirant
The Beginning of a Misunderstanding:
French Communist Intellectuals and the Silence around the Sovietization of Czechoslovakia, 1949–50
Reviews
Jiří Pešek
„1999“:
Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts
Jaroslav Vaculík
Post-WW II History in Polish History Periodicals, 2001
Karel Hrubý
Arts and Culture in the Service of Politics:
Do the Roots of the Prague Spring Extend to the Early 1950s?
Jiří Vykoukal
Russia in Polish Samizdat:
A Clash of Civilizations Polish Style
Jiří Pešek
The Bavarian Road to Modernization after WW II
Jan Pešek
One Book, Three Views of Slovakia in the 1960s
Václav Průcha
A Contribution to the History of the Collectivization of Czechoslovak Agriculture
Róbert Letz
Stalemate
Discussion
Antonín Benčík
Images of History from the House of Mirrors at Petřín:
Concerning a Review of a Book about Dubček
Chronicle
Vojtech Čelko
‘The Samizdat Archipelago’ in a Supranational Perspective
Vojtech Čelko
The Eustory Competition in the Czech Republic
Annotations
A Bibliography of Contemporary History
Selected monographs, edited volumes and articles from journals and edited volumes published abroad in 1999–2002
The Journalism of Jaroslav Durych in the 1920s and Its Relation to His Belles Lettres
Martin C. Putna
The author of the article contests the traditional view that Jaroslav Durych, a key representative of Czech Roman Catholic literature during the First Republic, was on the margins of the literary life of his day. He argues that, on the contrary, Durych was firmly rooted there and was, from the beginning, respected as an important writer. In the early 1920s Durych welcomed the Czechoslovak Republic and dreamt of linking together Czech nationalism and Roman Catholicism. He believed the national mission lay in the spiritual expansion of the ‘Bohemian Empire’ to the East under the watchword of Roman Catholic ‘Unionism’. From a discussion of these illusions the author moves to an outline of Durych’s sharp criticism of parliamentary democracy, the party system, time-honoured Czech traditions (Hussitism, in particular) and the literature of his contemporaries. The starting point for his articles in the popular press, commentary and essays on these topics was militant Roman Catholicism, which he expressed with irony, sarcasm and provocation. The exaggeration in his work sometimes went undetected, and Durych thus called scandalous attention to himself. He then imprinted this polemical spirit on the journal Rozmach, which he began publishing in 1923. The author seeks to demonstrate how inclinations to the extremes of right and left, to Fascism and Communism, were paradoxically united in Durych’s critical attitudes. Durych’s sympathies for these currents in the 1920s, however, lasted only till the radical ideological movements became organized political parties, which Durych then rejected on principle.
The author notes that although hardly any trace of the extreme rightwing tendency remains in Durych’s literary work, the leftwing tendency left its permanent mark in the form of an original conception of proletarian art and the aesthetics of poverty. In contrast to contemporaneous projects of proletarian art in the circle of the up-and-coming avant-garde, Durych’s plan has conservative features rather than revolutionary. It came into being by joining together the attributes of poverty, piety and a spiritually imbued eroticism; the beauty of the poor pious girl became the centre point of his ‘proletarian’ art. Lastly, the author demonstrates how Durych implemented his model in a series of novels with girl heroines (but sometimes ending up like novels for girls) and how on more than one occasion it degenerated into sentimentality.
Arts and Culture in the Protectorate under Pressure from Collaborationist Projects, 1941-45
Jiří Brabec
The author discusses the ‘activist’ (that is, collaborationist) conceptions of Czech national identity in the Protectorate of Bohemian and Moravia, 1939-45, as part of the Nazis’ ‘New Order’. First, he devotes himself to the ‘scientifically’ rationalized concepts of Josef Kliment and Jan Mertl. Kliment, an historian of law, had, since the end of the 1920s, been drawn to the topic of universalistic political groupings in history, which, in connection with a criticism of the errors of parliamentary democracy, created fertile ground for considerations of the incorporation of the Czech State into the Greater German area after the Munich agreement and, ultimately, for a defence of the ‘New Order’. Following the principles of allegedly scientific objectivity, Mertl, a sociologist, first undertook productive criticism of the internal contradictions of democracy and then propagated autocratic State systems from Hobbes’s Leviathan to the Nazi régime.
The author then turns his attention to two of probably the most important activist journalists: Emanuel Vajtauer and Karel Lažnovský. Vajtauer, a literarily gifted author of books of reportage, was originally an activist of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, till he was thrown out when the Czechoslovak Communist Party adopted the Stalinist line. After the Munich agreement, he used his anti-liberalist credo to justify his collaboration with the Germans, and during the Occupation he fully supported the apologetic ‘New Order’ and Czech participation in it. Lažnovský, by contrast, is presented as a thoroughly mediocre parvenu, whose inordinate ambitions led him to feverish journalistic activity in support of the Occupation and to the post of Editor-in-Chief of the daily České slovo in the Protectorate.
Towards the end of the article, the author turns to Emanuel Moravec, who in his country became a symbol of pro-German ‘activism’ and outright collaboration. A former Czechoslovak Legionnaire and officer in the Czechoslovak army he achieved renown before the Munich agreement as an adroit journalist and specialist on military affairs. In the democratic press he came out resolutely in defence of the Republic against the German threat and was emotionally devastated by the capitulation. Disillusion and pragmatism then led him to thoughts about how to achieve Czech-German co-existence, which resulted in the most dangerous and also most successful conception of Protectorate activism. As Minister of Information and Propaganda he put ruthless pressure on both the Czech Government and many intellectuals in the Protectorate to make them collaborate openly, and in hundreds of speeches and articles he rationalized collaboration as the natural consequence of the treachery of the Western great powers and as a necessity if the Czech nation was to avoid being condemned to extinction. Moravec was also present at the establishment of the best known collaborationist organizations in the areas of propaganda and culture, such as the Board of Trustees for the Education of Youth (Kuratorium pro výchovu mládeže) and the Public Education Services (Veřejná osvětová služba).
From Guardians of Moral Values to Engineers of Human Souls:
Literary Life from May 1945 to February 1948
Věra Brožová
The author presents a complex view of Czech literary activity in its political context during the three years from the end of German occupation to the Communist takeover. Literary life in this period was marked by scant creative activity and, on the other hand, scores of discussions, proclamations and debates, in which Czech writers – a number of whom held important positions in cultural, administrative and political institutions – made their voices heard in the search for a new cultural-political orientation for the country. The new geopolitical arrangement of Europe had placed post-war Czechoslovakia in the Soviet sphere of influence, and the limits of debate were set by the Košice Government Programme, which had for the most part been formulated in the wartime headquarters of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in Moscow. Nevertheless, these years also witnessed the last chance for expression, in a relatively pluralistic atmosphere, on basic matters in the Czech arts and culture, such as their relation to the arts and culture of ‘East’ and ‘West’, the relationship between the individual artist and the collective, the question of the ordinary, popular nature of the arts and their relationship to tradition, the compatibility of the concepts of socialism, democracy and humanity, and questions of artistic freedom. The author traces the basic positions and contours of these discussions, which began to crystallize at the First Congress of Czech Writers in June 1946, shortly after the general elections, which the Communists won with a majority, supported by many non-Communist intellectuals who believed in a specifically Czech road to humanist socialism. Apart from this, she examines the changes in the writers’ organizations and clubs, the most important of which was the Syndicate of Czech Writers.
The author also discusses the response to persecution in the arts in the Soviet Union, which, apart from a series of debates on the threat to the artistic freedom of the writer, included the Communists’ attempt to centralize the arts under their leadership by establishing the Arts and Culture Community (Kulturní obec) and the spontaneous reaction of democratic intellectuals, who established a counter organization, the Arts and Culture Association (Kulturní svaz), and the utterly inert umbrella organization, when both came together briefly, in 1947, in the Arts and Cultural Union (Kulturní jednota). She then focuses on the planned cultural and propaganda offensive of the Communist Party for the decisive power struggle in 1948, which included a campaign against the independent newspaper Svobodné noviny, whose Editor-in-Chief was Ferdinand Peroutka, discussed at the end of the article.
The Action Committees and the Arts and Culture at the Dawn of a New Period
Jiří Knapík
The article is the first comprehensive overview of the operation of the Action Committees of the ‘reborn’ National Front and of the purges in the Czechoslovak arts after the Communist takeover in February 1948. During the first period of their existence the Action Committees concentrated on excluding artists and administrative and technical employees from future work in the arts, while carrying out a series of organizational changes with the aim of systematically making this sphere conform to the basic ideas of Communist policy on the arts. The creation of Action Committees in the arts was instigated in part by the appeal ‘Kupředu, zpátky ni krok!’ [Forwards, and not one step back!], published in the popular press on 25 February 1948, and eventually signed by hundreds of persons in the arts. The coordinating function was performed at the central level by the Party apparat together with the Arts and Cultural Commission of the Central Action Committee of the National Front, led by the writer Jan Drda. In theory, persons who had been adversely affected could appeal to it against the verdicts of the individual Action Committees. The author traces the formation of the Action Committees and the first steps they took in the organizations of writers, composers, fine artists, persons involved in theatre, the Czechoslovak Film company, Czechoslovak Radio and the Union of Czech Journalists. He also points to some particular features in various areas of the arts. On the basis of his research so far, he concludes that purges in the arts and culture in Czechoslovakia, in the spring of 1948, affected at least seven hundred persons at the central level alone, though this number is conservative and continued to grow afterwards.
Innocent Culprits – The Defendants and Their Victims:
The Campaign against ‘Bourgeois Nationalists’ as Reflected in Slovak Cultural Life
Elena Londáková
The persecution of ‘Slovak bourgeois nationalists’ – a campaign that considerably affected the arts and culture community in the early 1950s – has long been an area of interest for historians. This is so not only because it took place in one of the most dramatic periods of Communist rule, and one that had for years been considered taboo, but also because it was an unprecedented act of violence and ruthless State despotism exercised through the courts against a carefully selected group within the Slovak intelligentsia. As part of an international campaign by Communist parties against the ‘enemy in their own ranks’, the persecution was intended to help centralist circles in the Czechoslovak Communist Party to suppress any attempts to achieve equality for Slovakia in a single State with the Czechs and also to help a younger generation of Slovak Communists to get rid of their rivals among the First-Republic intellectuals and the ‘generation of the Slovak National Uprising’. In Czechoslovakia at the time, however, it affected not only the Communist representatives of the Slovak intelligentsia, but had other negative aspects as well.
The author analyzes both the external and internal circumstances surrounding the making of the campaign and in particular its consequences for Slovak cultural life, of which many of the victims had been a part. Describing the fate of the persons sentenced to many years in prison, for example Laco Novomeský, Vlado Clementis (who was executed), Gustáv Husák, Daniel Okáli and Ladislav Holdoš, and the reaction of the public, the mass media and the memoirs of fellow-travellers, who became a more or less active part of the machinery of the courts, the author paints a vivid picture of the times and its involuntary actors, who were affected by the repression regardless of whether or not they had become its direct victims. The campaign had a strongly nationalist aspect, which also affected contemporaneous Czech-Slovak relations and revealed the inability of the State to handle them in a civilized way without prejudice or emotion.
The long process of the rectification of these wrongs was just as important for Slovak society as the repression and injustice had been. The author charts the victims’ thorny road to judicial and civil exoneration (‘rehabilitation’) and their gradual release from prison in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s. The year 1963, with the first conference of Slovak writers in the spring followed soon afterwards by the congress of Slovak journalists, was, in that sense, a watershed. At these meetings, which were given a great deal of publicity, open criticism was heard (as well as self-criticism) not only of the actual campaign against ‘bourgeois nationalists’, but also of the positions of the Slovak cultural community and particular actors in the campaign, including top-level Party functionaries. The painful process of coming to terms with this tragic chapter of post-WW II Slovak history thus contributed to the formation of the more liberal intellectual climate out of which the Prague Spring movement grew in 1968.
Between Literature and Politics:
Contexts of Czech Literary Life, 1958–69
Kateřina Bláhová
The essay is concerned with the historical and political contexts of literary life in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. The author traces the efflorescence in the arts in Czechoslovakia in this period, which took place in parallel with gradual democratization in all spheres of society, culminating in the Prague Spring of 1968. In consequence of the historical position of the writers in Czech society, literary life not only reflected this process but also helped considerably to shape it. The slow but sporadic expansion of the space for literature, its enrichment with non-Marxist currents (such as abstract, experimental, Action art, spiritually oriented trends) and the internal differentiation remained under the control of Party and State organs. Attempts to regulate this process in the late 1950s and early 1960s led to its attenuation, which was accompanied by, among other things, administrative and personnel changes, a change in the structure of the literary journals and the editors of publishers of belles lettres, and the political screening of persons employed in the arts. In the middle of this period, however, the writers began to challenge the Party diktat (for example, in talks on the existence of the journal Tvář). The writers thus became a moral counterweight to the authorities. The tension between Party ideology, which demanded that the arts should be politically engagé, and, on the other hand, the writers, who were pushing for creative freedom and freedom of expression, came to a head at the Fourth Congress of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, in June 1967. The restriction applied by the upper-level organs on the ‘rebel’ writers were then lifted in consequence of political changes in early 1968. The writers became the inspiration and coordinators of the social-reform movement of the ‘Prague Spring’, and after that movement was put down by armed military force they attempted to defend their newly won freedom against the growing political pressure exerted by the re-consolidating totalitarian régime.
Czechoslovak Television and Political Power, 1953–89
Jarmila Cysařová
In this article, conceived as an overview, the author traces the technical, institutional and, in particular, political-administrative developments (methods of political control) at Czechoslovak Television under the Communist régime. She divides the history of Czechoslovak Television in its relations with the political authorities into several stages. In the 1950s, with limited technology, television writers and producers sought their own distinctive voice and, in compromises with official demands and the censor, they shaped television into a cultivated medium. After various ups and downs the institutional status of Czechoslovak Television culminated – with a 1960 decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCz) and a 1964 statute and law on Czechoslovak Television – essentially in its direct subordination to the CPCz leadership without an intermediary body. Nevertheless, as an equal partner of senior media in conflicts with the conservative wing of the CPCz, Czechoslovak Television did contribute to the liberalization of society. In the period of the ‘Prague Spring’, under the leadership of its reformist director Jiří Pelikán, together with the press and radio, Czechoslovak Television managed to pry itself loose from the control of the CPCz apparat, and, for the first time in its existence, experienced several months of freedom of speech. It became an extraordinarily influential medium, thanks to which, for example, film footage of the Soviet-led military intervention of August 1968 travelled round the world. Beginning in September 1968 forward-looking commentary, independent reporting and TV drama productions were gradually jettisoned, while engagé journalists and other employees were sacked. Under the new director, Jan Zelenka, the CPCz buttressed its mechanisms of control over television including a strict nomenclature order. The propaganda role of television was markedly increased to ensure its use as an instrument of power. From that point till November 1989, Czechoslovak Television remained a reliable pillar of a regressive political régime, and more or less disregarded the timid attempts by other media to be more critical in the spirit of Soviet perestroika and glasnost.
Post-August Songs of Anger and Resistance, 1968–69
Josef Kotek
In this article the author comments on critical and protest songs of 1968 and 1969. These songs, a wave of which were set in motion by the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia beginning in August 1968, achieved extraordinary popularity and became a unique phenomenon of the period. They combined mostly expressive, inventive melody with politically engagé, sometimes nearly poetic lyrics, as is evident from the select songs published in this article. The most important persons involved with the post-August 1968 songs of ‘anger and resistance’ were the singer/song-writer Karel Kryl, the singers Marta Kubišová, Karel Černoch, Waldemar Matuška and Karel Hála, and their main composers (apart from Kryl) Jindřich Brabec and Zdeněk Marat with the lyricist Zdeněk Borovec.
The Beginning of a Misunderstanding:
French Communist Intellectuals and the Silence around the Sovietization of Czechoslovakia, 1949–50
Françoise Noirant
The article, first published in Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps no. 59 (July–September 2000), is based on research in Czechoslovak and French archives. In it the author seeks to describe the fundamental turnaround in the relations between the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCz) and the Czechoslovak Communist régime and, on the other side, French Communist intellectuals, which, in her view, took place at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the ’50s. The turnaround – from mutual sympathy and relatively intensive collaboration to profound mutual alienation and a far-reaching limitation of contacts – was particularly clear in the area of arts and culture, though its causes were political.
The author outlines the expansion of Franco-Czechoslovak collaboration in arts and culture after World War II. On the one hand, France tried to renew its influence on the arts and culture in Czechoslovakia, which is evident from a definite intensification of mutual agreements and the revival of French cultural institutions (the Institut Ernest Denis, Prague, the Lycée français, Prague, the Maisons de France, in Bratislava and Brno, and the Czechoslovak Federation of Alliances françaises, which comprised thirty local branches). On the other hand, apart from the renewal of traditional contacts with France among democratic actors and institutions, a special initiative was developed by the CPCz; after agreement with Moscow, through the Ministry of Information headed by the Communist Václav Kopecký, it set up an information office in Paris, in 1946, connected with the work of the cultural attaché and the publishing of the journal Paris–Prague (later called Parallčle 50). This step aimed to create in France a network of friendly contacts with ‘progressive’ French intellectuals and, with their help, foster amongst the public a suitably idealized image of Czechoslovakia as a shop window of the ‘people’s democracies’. After the political takeover in February 1948, the Czechoslovak Embassy in Paris also joined in the cultural-ideological propaganda. Three distinctive figures divided the tasks here amongst themselves: the versatile artist, journalist and playboy Adolf Hoffmeister as the ambassador (and also the Czechoslovak delegate to UNESCO), the young Francophile poet Ivo Fleischmann as cultural attaché, and the long-serving activist of the international Communist movement Artur London (who later described his experience of the 1950s persecution in Doznání [My Mind on Trial]) as editor-in-chief of Parallčle 50.
The February 1948 takeover, according to the author, did not immediately mean a serious blow to Franco-Czechoslovak cultural relations; that came only after the intensification of the Sovietization of Czechoslovakia in the winter of 1949–50, manifested mainly in the clandestine arrival of Soviet ‘advisers’, the militarization of the economy, and general ideological homogenization. After the split with Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union buttressed its rule over the East bloc satellites and ceased to tolerate deviations from its own model in any sphere including the arts and culture, where it pushed for Socialist Realism as a serious artistic method. The author traces admiring and also critical reactions of the French intellectuals who travelled to Prague and also the commentary of CPCz functionaries, as this process led to the emergence of mutual distrust, misunderstanding and a freezing of relations. Sympathizing Frenchmen and Frenchwomen were unable to comprehend the true nature of this change in the régime, which meant the end of freedom of expression (in the arts, too, of course) and a paranoid suspicion of all Westerners. The Czechoslovak Communists, by contrast, looked at their French comrades with a feeling of superiority, considering them ideologically confused and undisciplined; they perceived French ‘backwardness’ as a not yet surmounted consequence of the objective conditions of chaos in ‘bourgeois democracy’ in comparison with the ‘new order’ in a ‘Soviet democracy’. (Francophile emissaries of Czechoslovak arts and culture in France were forced to shift position while displaying their loyalty). The upshot of this rift was the closing down of French cultural institutions in Czechoslovakia and the ending of the Czechoslovak cultural propaganda mission in France in the spring and summer of 1951, both at the initiative of Czechoslovakia. The author’s analysis does not, however, seek merely to record the facts of specific relations, but to capture the meaning of the ideological and mental transformation accompanying this turnaround as reflected in the language of official records, in a comparison of its various semantic levels beneath the surface of the official ‘newspeak’.
„1999“:
Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts
Jiří Pešek
In the form of a report with commentary, this article is an introduction to a remarkable quarterly concerned with contemporary history, which has been published in Bremen since 1986. Its historical focus, mainly on Nazism and its consequences in Germany (and, to a far lesser extent, the history of Communism), is combined with contemporary socio-critical political involvement of a moderately left-wing variety. The result is a polemical, yet cultivated journal, with a distinctive profile.
Post-WW II History in Polish History Periodicals, 2001
Jaroslav Vaculík
The article presents an overview of the interesting articles on contemporary history published in five Polish history periodicals: Dzieje Najnowsze, Zeszyty Historyczne, Przegląd Historyczny, Studia Historyczne and Zapiski Historyczne.
Arts and Culture in the Service of Politics:
Do the Roots of the Prague Spring Extend to the Early 1950s?
Karel Hrubý
Alexej Kusák, Kultura a politika v Československu 1945–1956, Prague: Torst, 1998, 663 pp.
The reviewer of this work, which was written in exile in West Germany in the early 1970s, values the fact that it represents a broadly conceived, first attempt to map out the complex fabric of relations between the arts and politics in the period from the liberation of Czechoslovakia, when the country set out on a socialist road, to the beginning of the political thaw after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He takes issue, however, with the author Alexej Kusák’s central thesis that the road from the defeat of dogmatic proponents of a vulgarly ideological conception of policy on arts and culture, in 1951–52, led directly to the political reforms that culminated in the Prague Spring of 1968. He points out that Kusák, a relatively engagé actor in events at the time, has projected his own personal experience into the historical analysis and is unable to give up his conviction about the historical union of the movement of avant-garde art and the Communist movement, whose genuine common aim was the emancipation of the individual in a free and humane society. Apart from that, the reviewer argues, he exaggerates the more or less tactical difference between the individual makers of Communist policy on the arts in the 1950s, and unsuitably calls some of them ‘liberal’, while ignoring the whole area of culture that was brutally persecuted or driven underground and where genuine values were generated. The result is a considerably deformed picture of events in the arts and culture.
The reviewer also expresses doubts about Kusák’s second main thesis, namely that Czech arts and culture in the National Revival of the nineteenth century were ‘hereditarily burdened’ with their subservience to politics. He reproaches the author for having indiscriminately used the term ‘subservience’ (služebnost) and not differentiating between the artists’ free inclination towards national and democratic values, on the one hand, and the compulsory extolling of the totalitarian régime, on the other. The whole development of the arts and sciences in the Bohemian Lands from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth to the end of the First Republic (1938), according to the reviewer, demonstrates that their development was for the most autonomous, hardly subservient. According to the reviewer, Kusák’s book – despite containing much inspirational analysis and interesting information – raises questions more than it offers satisfactory answers.
Russia in Polish Samizdat:
A Clash of Civilizations Polish Style
Jiří Vykoukal
Kazimierz Janusz, Konfrontacje Rosja–Zachód: Zderzenie dwóch cywilizacji, Komorów: Wydawnictwo Antyk, 1997, 251 pp.
This work on the insurmountable clash of the Russian and Western (that is, Polish) civilizations is, according to the reviewer, one of the Polish classics in ‘alternative circulation’ (samizdat) of the 1970s, and was at that time one of the characteristic expressions of the historicization of debates on the future of Poland within the Soviet bloc. The reviewer uses this work to outline the typical features of these debates, and looks at the broader complex of problems mainly in the sphere of the history of ideas or ideologies and also the history of the anti-Communist opposition in modern Poland.
The Bavarian Road to Modernization after WW II
Jiří Pešek
Thomas Schlemmer and Hans Woller (eds), Bayern im Bund, vol. 1, Die Erschließung des Landes 1949 bis 1973, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001, 458 pp.
The reviewer presents the first volume of a seven-volume project, ‘Society and Politics in Bavaria, 1949–73’, organized by the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History, which seeks to map out the profound structural changes in one Land in the quarter century since the founding of the Federated Republic of Germany. He also reports briefly on subsequent volumes of the series. The volume under review comprises five comprehensive articles on the development of energy policy, transportation, health care, education and the influence of the Bundeswehr on life in garrison towns. In conclusion, the reviewer expresses doubts, however, about the extent to which the information from this research may be generalized to include all of West Germany.
One Book, Three Views of Slovakia in the 1960s
Jan Pešek
Miroslav Londák, Stanislav Sikora and Elena Londáková, Predjarie: Politický, ekonomický a kultúrny vývoj na Slovensku v rokoch 1960–1967, Bratislava: Veda 2002, 392 pp.
The reviewer welcomes this work as the first broadly conceived, well-documented interpretation of Slovak political, economic, and cultural developments in the period ‘before the Spring’, 1960–67. He is surprised, however, that it was conceived as three separate discussions rather than as a synthesis of individual thematic areas.
A Contribution to the History of the Collectivization of Czechoslovak Agriculture
Václav Průcha
Karel Jech, Soumrak selského stavu 1945–1960, Prague: Sešity Ústavu pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, vol. 35.) Prague: ÚSD AV ČR, 2001, 252 pp. + 63 pp. of documents.
The reviewer appreciates the fact that Jech, using surprisingly plentiful and hitherto unknown archival records, has comprehensively examined the fate of Czechoslovak farmers in the first fifteen years after World War II, with an emphasis on the worst persecution during the first wave of collectivization in the early 1950s.
Róbert Letz
Jaroslav Cuhra, Československo-vatikánská jednání 1968–1989, Prague: Sešity Ústavu pro soudobé dějiny, AV ČR, vol. 34, 2001, 270 pp.
The reviewer emphasizes that in his book on Czechoslovak-Vatican negotiations from 1968 to 1989, the author, Jaroslav Cuhra, has based himself on broadly conceived archival research, the secondary literature, the popular press and interviews with participants in the talks. This monograph not only charts out the talks in detail and judges them, says the reviewer, but it is also an important contribution to our knowledge of Vatican policy towards the East bloc in this period.
Images of History from the House of Mirrors at Petřín:
Concerning a Review of a Book about Dubček
Antonín Benčík
The impetus to the debate was a review of Benčík’s Utajovaná pravda o Alexandru Dubčekovi: Drama muže, který předběhl svou dobu [The hidden truth about Alexander Dubček: Drama of man who was ahead of his time] (Prague and Ostrov 2001). The review, written by Jiří Suk, and titled ‘Alexander Dubček – velký státník, nebo politický symbol?’ [A.D. – Great statesman or mere political symbol] was published in Soudobé dějiny no. 1 (2002). Benčík takes issue with the review that calls his book a tendentious apology for Dubček and Dubček’s role, which neither respects the criteria of scholarly work nor considers other scholars’ work if it does not support his arguments. In reply Benčík accuses the reviewer and the authors cited by the reviewer (Petr Pithart, Alena Vondrová and Jaromír Navrátil) of bias as well as ignorance of the sources and historical background. He sees their criticism of Dubček and the political course of the Prague Spring (as well as Dubček’s role in the 1960s and 1980s) as unsupported by fact and as ideologically driven by the current right-wing campaign against the 1968 reform Communists led by Dubček. These sorts of critical interpretations of the Prague Spring and Dubček’s policies, Benčík believes, are the distorted view.
‘The Samizdat Archipelago’ in a Supranational Perspective
Vojtech Čelko
The article is a review of the largest exhibition of its kinds and of its catalogue, which was organized by the Research Institute for Eastern Europe at Bremen University, under the title Samizdat – Alternative Culture in Central and Eastern Europe, from the 1960s to the 1980s. It was held first in Berlin and then, in a somewhat reduced form, at the National Museum, Prague, in the summer 2002.
The Eustory Competition in the Czech Republic
Vojtech Čelko
The author reports on the first year of the Eustory history contest in the Czech Republic. The competition, organized by the Körber Foundation, Hamburg, has been held in other Europe countries for more than thirty years. It is intended for secondary-school students, who are entitled to enter written work on history, which is based on their own research. The Czech version of the competition, on the topic ‘Alone against the Powers That Be’ is run by the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague (in cooperation with the Association of Czech History Teachers), which has also published a selection of the best student work.
Antonín Benčík (1926) is an external researcher of the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, concerned with the topic of the Czechoslovak resistance during WW II and the Prague Spring reform movement of 1968. He has author or co-authored a number of works including Rekviem za pražské jaro [Requiem for the Prague Spring] (Třebíč, 1998) and Utajovaná pravda o Alexandru Dubčekovi: Drama muže, který předběhl svou dobu [The Concealed Truth about Alexander Dubček] (Prague, 2001).
Kateřina Bláhová (1976) is a researcher in the Institute of Czech Literature, Prague. Her area of interest is the history of Czech historiography and literary studies from the mid-19th to the early twentieth century in the European context and Czech cultural history after 1945. She is part of a project at her institute called ‘A History of Czech Literature, 1945–90’.
Jiří Brabec (1929) is a literary historian, specializing in the history of 20th-century Czech literature. In 2000 he began work in the Masaryk Institute, Prague, as Editor-in-Chief of the collected works of Thomas G. Masaryk. He is the main contributor to the Slovník zakázaných autorů [Dictionary of banned authors] (samizdat 1978, Toronto, 1982, and Prague, 1991), and co-author of the fourth volume of the Dějiny české literatury [History of Czech literature], which covers the period from the late 19th century to 1945 (Prague, 1995).
Věra Brožová (1957) is a literary historian. Since 2001 she has been a lecturer at the School of Education, Charles University, Prague, in Czech literature since the second half of the 19th century, which is her main area of academic interest. She was involved in the Institute of Czech Literature project called ‘A History of Czech Literature, 1945–90’.
Jarmila Cysařová (1929) was a journalist and television reviewer in the 1960s. In the 1970s and ’80s she was a blue-collar worker. In recent years she has devoted herself to research into the history of Czechoslovak Television and FITES (Film and Television Union).
Vojtech Čelko (1946) is a Senior Researcher in the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague. His chief area of academic interest is Czech and Slovak history from 1945 to the present in the central European context.
Karel Hrubý (1923), a sociologist, has been living in Basle since 1968. In 1983–91 he was Editor-in-Chief of Proměny, the politics and arts quarterly of the Czechoslovak Society for Arts and Science. He is concerned with the sociology of change in political systems in earlier Czech history (particularly Hussitism) and the present. Together with Milíč Čapek he has published the study T. G. Masaryk in Perspective: Comments and Criticism (Ann Arbor, 1981).
Jiří Knapík (1975), an historian, has worked in the Institute of History and Museum Studies, Silesian University, Opava, since 2000. His chief area of academic interest is policy on the arts in Czechoslovakia, 1948–53. He is the author of Kdo spoutal českou kulturu: Portrét stalinisty Gustava Bareše [The man who clapped Czech arts and culture in irons: A portrait of the Stalinist Gustav Bareš] (Přerov, 2000) and the dictionary Kdo byl kdo v naší kulturní politice 1948–1953 [Who was who in arts and culture policy in Czechoslovakia, 1948–53] (Prague, 2002).
Josef Kotek (1928) is a musicologist and music journalist. After many years in the Institute for Musicology, Prague, he is now retired. His specialization is the history of Czech pop music, and his publications include the two-volume Dějiny české populární hudby a zpěvu [A history of Czech pop music and song] (Prague, 1994 and 1998).
Róbert Letz (1967) is employed in the Department of Slovak and General History, the School of Education, Comenius University, Bratislava. His chief area of research is the history of politics and the Church in Czechoslovakia after 1945. He is the author of Slovensko v rokoch 1945–1948: Na ceste ku komunistickej totalite [Slovakia, 1945–48: On the road to Communist totalitarianism] (Bratislava, 1994).
Elena Londáková (1956) is a Senior Researcher in the History Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. She is concerned with post-1945 Slovak arts and culture, particularly the education system in the late 1950s and early ’60s and the developments in the arts and culture in the 1960s and ’70s. With Miroslav Londák and Stanislav Sikora, she is co-author of Predjarie: Politický, ekonomický a kultúrny vývoj na Slovensku v rokoch 1960–1967 [Before the Spring: Political, economic and cultural developments in Slovakia, 1960–67]
Françoise Noirant (1945) is a postgraduate student at INACLO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales), Paris, supervised by Antoine Marčs and Catherine Durandin. Her research is on cultural and propaganda and Franco-Czechoslovak relations, 1944–56.
Jan Pešek (1949) is a Senior Researcher in the History Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. He is the author of books and articles on topics related to Slovakia after WW II, with a focus on Communist repression after 1948, Church-State relations and the Czechoslovak secret police (StB).
Jiří Pešek (1954) is Professor and Head of the Department of German Studies in the Institute of International Studies, Charles University, Prague. He is co-author of a number of books and articles, mainly on cultural history from the Middle Ages to the present.
Václav Průcha (1931), Professor of Economic History at the Prague School of Economics, is concerned with contemporary economic history. He has published widely in a number of countries, most recently, with Josef Faltus, the textbook Všeobecné hospodářské dějiny 19. a 20. století [A general history of 19th and 20th-century economics] (Prague, 1996); the first volume of his economic and social history of Czechoslovakia is forthcoming.
Martin C. Putna (1968) is Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature, Charles University, Prague. He is a literary historian and essayist. Apart from literature, he is concerned with the history of Christian thought. He has published widely, including a two-part history of modern Russian literature in exile, Rusko mimo Rusko [Russia outside Russia] (Brno, 1993 and 1994), and Katolická literatura v českých zemích 1848–1918 [Roman Catholic literature in the Bohemian Lands, 1848–1918] (Prague, 2000).
Jaroslav Vaculík (1947) is Docent in the School of Education, Masaryk University, Brno. He lectures in world history from the 17th century to 20th. His research is on the history of Czech minorities abroad.
Jiří Vykoukal (1961) is Head of the Department of Russian and East European Studies in the Institute of International Studies, Charles University, Prague. His main academic interest is the history of central Europe, particularly Poland, and the development of political thought and ideology. He is, together with Bohuslav Litera and Miroslav Tejchman, author of Východ: Vznik, vývoj a rozpad sovětského bloku 1944–1989 [East bloc: Emergence, evolution, end] (Prague, 2000).
