No. I.
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Articles
Jan Kuklík and Jana Čechurová
The Czech Refugee Trust Fund and Czechoslovak Émigrés:
Part One, Its Genesis and Funding
Michal Jareš
Poetry in Volumes Published by Czech Wartime Émigrés in Great Britain
Daniela Kolenovská
Belarusian Émigrés in Czechoslovakia, 1918–38
Horizon
Detlev Mares
Too Many Nazis?
Contemporary History in Great Britain
Reviews
Karel Hrubý
A Struggle of Two Cultures in a Totalitarian System:
Some Thoughts on Jiří’s Knapík’s Most Recent Book
Jiří Kosta
Diary Entries of a Czechoslovak Diplomat from the Capital of the Third Reich
Květa Jechová
Stories about the Identity of Jews of the Bohemia Lands, 1918–38
Pavel Mücke
“They Became his Victims”:
Hitler and His Army
Jiří Pešek
An Inspiring Search for Alternatives
Peter Heumos
The Worker in State Socialism
Vladimír Březina
New Information about the Show Trials of the Fifties
Matěj Hušek
A Comparison of Propaganda and Censorship in the Bohemian Lands and Germany
Periodicals and Archives
Jaroslav Vaculík
The Wartime and Post-war Years Considered in Polish History Periodicals, 2005–06
Historical Curiosities
Jaroslav Bouček (ed.)
Slavík on the End of the Český časopis historický and on Nejedlý’s History of the Czech Nation (Warjah Nebudimírovič: Song of the Fall of Čečehoň;
Jan Slavík: Zdeněk Nejedlý has Departed for History’s Judgement Day)
Chronicle
Vladimír Březina
Budapest 1956, Brügel, Baťa:
Three Conferences in Moravia
Annotations
Articles
The Czech Refugee Trust Fund and Czechoslovak Émigrés: Part One, Its Genesis and Funding
Jan Kuklík and Jana Čechurová
This is the first part of a two-part article on the creation and financing of the Czech Refugee Trust Fund. The article considers the state of affairs that emerged after the Munich Agreement of September 1938: the break-up of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, the accession of parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler’s Germany, the creation of the short lived Czecho-Slovakia (or Second Republic), and the great number of refugees fleeing the country.
The most important prerequisite for the creation of the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, which was active in Great Britain throughout the Second World War and, in fact, all the way into the 1970s, was the provision of Anglo-French loans for the reconstruction of post-Munich-Agreement Czecho-Slovakia in January 1939, and, in particular, the £4 million British grant in support of refugees. The primary recipients of British support were, as intended, ethnic Germans (particularly Social Democrats and other opponents of Nazism) and Jews, who sought to escape the Second Republic and whose emigration to British dominions and Palestine was supported by Great Britain. By the time the rump Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany (15 March 1939), however, only part of the loan had been used. Moreover, a problem arose with the support of Czech (and also Slovak) émigrés on British territory. These difficulties were surmounted by the creation of the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, to which the remaining funds from the British grant were finally transferred in January 1940, and then used to support refugees.
The means of support and the actual work of the Fund are analyzed in greater detail by the authors in Part Two of their article, which will be published in a future issue of Soudobé dějiny.
Poetry in Volumes Published by Czech Wartime Émigrés in Great Britain
Michal Jareš
This article is considers four volumes of Czech verse, which were published by Czech émigrés in Great Britain in the early years of the Second World War. They are Hlasy domova/Křik koruny české (Voices from Home/The Cry of the Bohemian Crown, 1939), Domů… (Homewards, 1939), Ústy domova (The Voice of Home, 1941), and Z lyriky války (Lyric Verse in Wartime, 1941). The author first seeks to provide an overview of the literary culture of the Czech wartime émigrés in context. Apart from quotations from hard-to-access source material he also provides a summary of verse of this origin. He chose the topic owing to both the involvement in it of writers who later became important figures in Czech literature and the arts, including the theatre director Ota Ornest (1913–2002), the writer Jiří Mucha (1915–1991), and the poet Josef Lederer (1917–1985), and a certain neglect of émigré literature from the Second World War and afterwards. In this respect the author takes issue with the some rather hard criticism, such as that expressed by the literary historian Václav Černý (1905–1987) – namely, that this work was marginal, mere versifying without much aesthetic value, obsessed with the idea of returning home. The writing, argues the author of this article, maintained faith in the Czech language, gave moral strength to writers and readers and also integrated them, and in some cases (for instance, the work of Lederer, writing under the pseudonym Jiří Klan), the writing even constitutes a timeless achievement. The article also seeks to raise questions about the general reception of émigrés in Czech society, a topic that to this day remains controversial. Nor did other waves of émigrés, upon returning home, receive the recognition they merited, instead encountering the simplification and even trivialization of the overall problem of a leading a life in the arts outside one’s own country. Samples of verse from these volumes are appended to the article.
Belarusian Émigrés in Czechoslovakia, 1918–38
Daniela Kolenovská
Using records from Czech archives this article outlines the situation of the Belarusian émigrés in Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1938. It first presents a brief overview of the development of the Belarusian national movement and the reactions of this movement to the changes brought about largely by the First World War. In this context it traces the efforts of Belarusian émigrés who formed a government-in-exile and, after the stabilization of the Soviet Union, continued to push for an independent Belarusian state, despite the absence of truly international support, a lack of funds, and in-fighting. The archive records reveal that Belarusian émigrés began to settle in Czechoslovakia after the announcement of the Russian emergency aid operation. Students were clearly predominant amongst them. Most of the Belarusians in Czechoslovakia (about a hundred people) were involved in the national movement. Since, however, the émigrés probably did not manage to achieve de facto recognition, Belarusian national life could develop in Czechoslovakia only by means of clubs. In terms of politics, their situation was similar to that of the Russians’ and Ukrainians’ situation in Czechoslovakia: a heterogeneous group, which included Christian Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and Socialists. Soviet diplomats and secret agents were agitating amongst them with growing success. Only a minimum of Belarusians were oriented to working with Russian émigrés. Apart from having a political side, the club life of Belarusian students in Czechoslovakia also involved the arts. It failed, however, to create an independent Belarusian scholarly institution. Ultimately, the departure of students to find work in Belarusian parts of Poland, together with the consequences of the Great Depression, led to the failure of the Belarusian movement in Czechoslovakia. The Belarusian Self-help Committee’s loyalty to the German authorities after the Occupation of Bohemia and Moravia cast the Belarusian national movement here into doubt amongst people opposed to the German Reich. This chapter of Czech-Belarusian relations closes with the handing-over of Belarusian émigrés to the Soviet authorities after the Second World War. As a supplement to the article the author provides biographical sketches of a hundred important Belarusian émigrés in Czechoslovakia.
Horizon
Too Many Nazis?
Contemporary History in Great Britain
Detlev Mares
This is a translation of the article “Too Many Nazis? Zeitgeschichte in Großbritannien” originally published in Alexander Nützenadel and Wolfgang Schieder (eds) Zeitgeschichte als Problem: Nationale Traditionen und Perspektiven der Forschung in Europa (Göttingen, 2004). According to the author contemporary history in Great Britain begins in the period just after the Second World War, when the public in general and historians began to ask questions about the causes of the war and sought critically to come to terms with the pre-war policy of appeasement. (Nazism itself has continued to be a frequent topic of research in Great Britain.) In terms of institutions, however, the field did not begin to develop till the mid-1960s, when the Institute of Contemporary History and, with it, the Journal of Contemporary History were founded. Historians of contemporary history initially had problems, of course, getting the new field accepted amongst their “traditionally” oriented colleagues; apart from the usual objection concerning the allegedly insufficient amount of time having passed since the event being researched took place, they have struggled with the somewhat paradoxical problem that, unlike countries on the Continent, twentieth-century Great Britain did not experience any radical historical break in continuity. Today the field of contemporary history is well established in Great Britain. Apart from a number of other research institutions, the important Institute of Contemporary British History (now the Centre for Contemporary British History) and its journal Contemporary British History have been on the scene since the mid-1980s.
The central theme of British contemporary history is, according to the author, the recurring search for the causes of the decline in the international standing of Great Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, which is symbolized by the end of the Empire and underscored by the long recession in the 1970s. Answers were sought in international relations (the post-war international constellation and decolonization), politics at home (the post-war political consensus, the building of the welfare state, the growing strength of the labour unions), economics (a disproportionately costly civil service and failure to modernize), culture and mores (the suppression of the entrepreneurial spirit, the dwindling away of Victorian virtues). A new impulse, one that was also mutually bound with politics, was given to this historiography in the years that Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. She had made it her aim to restore British prestige and productivity by mobilizing traditional virtues. The wide range of discussions about the decline included some downright revisionist approaches (for example, John Charmley’s), but also led to a shift in the field of contemporary history towards an interdisciplinary, international approach.
In the last part of the article, the author considers the periodization of contemporary history in Great Britain. Some historians consider the field to include even the Reform Acts of 1832, which expanded male suffrage. More often, however, historians point to the First World War as marking the beginning of contemporary history, but mostly say that it is the Second World War or its end. Some historians, however, argue that contemporary history for Great Britain does not begin till the Suez Crisis (late 1956). In any case, the predominant view today is that contemporary history includes the twentieth century while its centre of gravity is shifting to the period after the Second World War. This sort of periodization now corresponds also to the pragmatic conception of contemporary history as periods limited by the memories of living contemporaries of the events and people under discussion.
Reviews
A Struggle of Two Cultures in a Totalitarian System:
Some Thoughts on Jiří’s Knapík’s Most Recent Book
Karel Hrubý
Knapík, Jiří. V zajetí moci: Kulturní politika, její systém a aktéři 1948–1956. Prague: Libri, 2006, 398 pp.
In the first part of this review the reviewer praises Knapík for providing a systematic, comprehensive, and vivid picture of the institutional framework of culture in the years when the Communist system of controlling the arts in Czechoslovakia was established. Knapík provides a suitable periodization of this period, contributing a considerable amount of new or more precise information and also some remarkable interpretations of specific events. He describes without bias the conflicts among the centres competing to make policy on the arts for some party or other, and attributes more weight to motives of power rather than ideology. His interpretation of policy on the arts is balanced, credible, and draws on a thorough knowledge of the sources.
In the second part of the article, the reviewer discusses the relationship between society and culture (in the broad sense of the word) in the 1950s. In his view “socialist” culture as a system of values professed by the regime that was established in Czechoslovakia after the takeover of February 1948 did not at the time have an integrative character, but, while being taken over, collided with suppressed but relatively deeply rooted elements of “First Republic” (democratic) culture still existing in society. The reviewer argues that it is the task of historians, sociologists, philosophers, and other social scientists to continue the discussion of this reception and resistance.
Diary Entries of a Czechoslovak Diplomat from the Capital of the Third Reich
Jiří Kosta
Hoffmann, Camill. Politický deník 1932–1939. Preface by Dieter Sudhoff. Trans. from the German by Alena Bláhová and David Kraft. Prague: Pražská edice, 2006, 239 pp.
Poet, editor, and diplomat, Camill (Kamil) Hoffmann (1878–1944) is an example of Czech-German-Jewish symbiosis. After the First World War he founded the Prager Presse, a pro-government German language newspaper, and later, from 1920 to 1939, was press attaché of the Czechoslovak embassy in Berlin, till he was recalled to Prague. The diary, first published as Politisches Tagebuch, 1932–1939 (Klagenfurt, 1995), describes the rise and growing power of the Nazi régime, and constitutes a remarkable primary source for historians.
Stories about the Identity of Jews of the Bohemia Lands, 1918–38
Květa Jechová
Soukupová, Blanka. Velké a malé českožidovské příběhy z doby intenzivní naděje. Bratislava: Zing Print, 2005, 284 pp. (Etnické studie, vol. 2.)
The book under review is not the usual treatment of the history of one minority. Rather, it is an integrated collection of historical-ethnological essays about the searching, forms, and changes of the identity of Czech Jews during the First Republic. In the collective stories of Jews the author discusses phenomena such as antisemitism, assimilation, Zionism, national consciousness, Czech patriotism, and Czech Jews’ attitudes towards Tomáš Masaryk. According to the reviewer Soukupová has fully demonstrated the usefulness of the method she has chosen, and has contributed to our understanding of the topic.
“They Became his Victims”:
Hitler and His Army
Pavel Mücke
Bartov, Omer. Hitlerova armáda: Vojáci, nacisté a válka ve Třetí říši. Trans. from the English by Jiří Voňka. Prague: Naše vojsko, 2005, 217 pp.
This is a review of the Czech translation of Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York, 1992). The work, by the respected American historian Omer Bartov, is a classic among books on the Wehrmacht. In it, Bartov is concerned primarily with the ideological indoctrination of Hitler’s army, the social links within it, war crimes, and the punishment of Wehrmacht soldiers, and, ultimately, the mechanisms of self-justification and the post-war memories of German soldiers. The reviewer praises it highly.
An Inspiring Search for Alternatives
Jiří Pešek
Alte, Rüdiger. Die Außenpolitik der Tschechoslowakei und die Entwicklung der internationalen Beziehungen 1946–1947. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003, 571 pp. (Veröffentlichungen des Collegium Carolinum, vol. 96)
In this published version of his dissertation the author asks the following fundamental questions: What reasons, motives, and foreign-policy conceptions were decisive for Czechoslovak policy, parties, and the government when deciding to integrate Czechoslovakia into the East bloc? What internal conflicts consequently emerged in the Czechoslovak leadership? And what were the external factors that positively or negatively influenced these developments? With a thorough knowledge of the sources and after having carried out research in Czech and French archives, the author analyzes the Paris Peace Conference, the drafting of the Czechoslovak-French Agreement, and the negotiations about the Marshall Plan and “the German Question.” Ultimately, he sees no alternative to the “post-1945 Czechoslovak road,” since there was little or no political will, public agreement, or Western support.
Peter Heumos
Hübner, Peter, Kleßmann, Christoph, and Tenefelde, Klaus (eds). Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit. Cologne, Vienna and Weimar: Böhlau, 2005, 515 pp. (Zeithistorische Studien, vol. 31)
The volume under review comprises papers given at a conference in the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam, September 2003. It has three sections: the worker’s state as a political construct and the attempt to make it a reality; labour relations, working conditions, and the status of the worker; and, last, the working class in social and political conflict. The reviewer considers both the conference and volume a ground-breaking comparative analysis of Communist societies, but recommending that next time such a project should include the Soviet Union.
New Information about the Show Trials of the Fifties
Vladimír Březina
Pernes, Jiří and Foitzik, Jan (eds). Politické procesy v Československu po roce 1945 a “Případ Slánský”: Sborník příspěvků ze stejnojmenné konference, pořádané ve dnech 14.–16. dubna 2003 v Praze. Brno and Prague: Kateřina Mikšová, Nakladatelství Prius and Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2005, 391 pp.
This is a review of an edited volume of papers from an international conference on the political trials in Czechoslovakia after the Second World War, particularly the show trials of the early 1950s. The conference was held in Pankrác Prison, Prague, 14–16 April, 2003. The volume comprises almost thirty articles, which are grouped into three sections and cover a wide range of topics, from the international context of the trials, a comparison of trials in various countries, and detailed descriptions of some of the large show trials. The focus, however, is on the show trial of Rudolf Slánský, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and his co-defendants. According to the reviewer, the volume provides a great deal of new information and raises new questions.
A Comparison of Propaganda and Censorship in the Bohemian Lands and Germany
Matěj Hušek
Anděl, Michal, Brandes, Detlef, Labisch, Alfons, Pešek, Jiří, and Ruzicka, Thomas (eds). Propaganda, (Selbst-)Zensur, Sensation: Grenzen der Presse- und Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Deutschland und Tschechien seit 1871. Essen: Klartext, 2005, 309 pp. (Veröffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte im östlichen Europa, vol. 27)
This is a review of an edited volume of papers from a German-Czech conference held in Düsseldorf, May 2003. According to the reviewer it usefully explores various aspects of the limits of press and academic freedom in Germany and the Bohemian Lands from 1871 onwards. The first two sections of the volume contain articles concerned with various forms of censorship, propaganda, and their effects, whereas the last section has articles about sensationalism and the construction of reality, for example, the presentation of medicine in the mass media.
Periodicals and Archives
The Wartime and Post-war Years Considered in Polish History Periodicals, 2005–06
Jaroslav Vaculík
This contribution to a regular section of Soudobé dějiny reports on interesting articles on contemporary history published in Polish history journals over the last two years. It pays most attention to Dzieje Najnowsze, a key quarterly published jointly by the History Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Pułtusk Academy of the Humanities. It also discusses articles in Przegląd Historyczny, a quarterly from Poznań, Sobótka, a quarterly from Silesia, Wiadomości Historyczne, a bimonthly about teaching methods, and Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, a monthly.
Historical Curiosities
Slavík on the End of the Český časopis historický and on Nejedlý’s History of the Czech Nation
Jaroslav Bouček
As editor, Bouček presents two manuscripts by the historian Jan Slavík (1885–1978) from the period after the Communist takeover of February 1948, when Slavík was not permitted to publish. Among other things, Slavík was a leading expert on Russian history. In the first Czechoslovak Republic he was involved in debates about the meaning of Czech history and the methodological starting points of historiography. After the Communist takeover, however, he was practically silenced for ever. The first text published here is a parody in verse, “Zpěv o pádu Čečehoně” (Song of the Fall of Čečehoň, 1950), stylized in the genre of a chivalric epic. In it, the author (under the pseudonym Warjah Nebudimírovič) satirically comments on the circumstances in which the Český časopis historický (The Czech Journal of History) was closed down in 1949 and on the contemporaneous publication of the first volume of Dějiny národa českého (A History of the Czech Nation) by Zdeněk Nejedlý, the foremost Communist historian and, at the time, Minister of Education, Science, and the Arts. The second MS published here is an obituary from 1962: “Zdeněk Nejedlý odchází na konečný historie soud” (Z.N. has Departed for History’s Judgement Day), which elucidates Slavík’s highly critical attitude towards Nejedlý as an historian. In the introductory commentary Bouček places the “epic” into the context of Slavík’s satirical, epigrammatic work in verse, which was written from the sidelines of current events in the community of Czechoslovak historians. He also explains a number of historical facts about the publication of the last volume of the Český časopis historický in 1949, and appends a biographical description, “Vezír a jeho čety” (The Vezier and His Men), about Nejedlý and a group of Marxist historians who appear in Slavík’s parody under pseudonyms.
Chronicle
Budapest 1956, Brügel, Baťa: Three Conferences in Moravia
Vladimír Březina
A report on three history conferences held in three Moravian towns in autumn 2006. The first was an international conference on the Bohemian-German historian Johann Wolfgang Brügel (1905–1986), which was held in the town of his birth, Hustopeč, in September. The second conference was about the anti-Communist uprising in Hungary in 1956, and was held in Brno in November. The last was the international conference about the internationally renowned businessman Tomáš Baťa and the society and times he lived in, which was held in Zlín in late November and early December.
