No. II.-III.
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Contents
Articles
Jiří Křesťan
Václav Talich Has Lost Heart:
On the Purging of the Nation (Part 2)
Political Parties and the (Communist) Past
Jiří Suk
Political Games with the ‘Unfinished Revolution’:
Settling Accounts with Communism during and after the Civic Forum, 1989–92
Adéla Gjuričová
A Rather Traditional Break with the Past:
The Presence of the Past in the Ideology and Political Rhetoric of the Civic Democratic Party
Tomáš Zahradníček
The Pasts That Divide:
The Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, 1989–92
The Letters of Jaroslav Mezník on the Ideas and Policies of Social Democracy
(edited by Tomáš Zahradníček and Milan Drápala)
Michal Kopeček
The Stigma of the Past, Family Ties:
The First Ten Years of Czech Communism after the Changes of 1989
Material
Prokop Tomek
The Tragic Case of Miroslav Dolejší and Eugen Vrba
‘We Shall Permit No One Subvert Our State’ (edited by Jaroslav Cuhra)
Discussion
Jan Křen and Pavel Seifter
‘So, How Should It Have Been Done?’ Pithart’s Questions and the Civic Forum Historical Committee
Vít Smetana
Munich, an ‘Attempt’ at Revision? Of What?
Shadows in Piotr M. Majewski’s Review
Reviews
Alessandro Catalano
Ideological Literature in a Non-ideological Version:
Twenty Years After, the First Modern History of Czech Literature of the Socialist Period
Jan Bureš
Historical Analyses of the Building of Czech Democracy
Vlastimil Hála
European Integration as a Problem
Jan Michl
A Revealing Book about the Post-war Lives of the Czechoslovak Airmen of the RAF
Martin Valenta
From the ‘Springtime of Nations’ to the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Jan Blüml
Sixties Pop Culture in the Recollections of a Slovak Rocker
Of Periodicals and Archives
Jaroslav Vaculík
The War and the Post-war Period in Polish History Periodicals in 2008
Chronicle
The Liblice Conference about the Twenty Years since the End of the Communist Régime
(Katka Volná)
Annotations
Summaries
Articles
Václav Talich Has Lost Heart:
On the Purging of the Nation (Part 2)
Jiří Křesťan
Part 1 of this article, published in Soudobé dějiny, vol. 16 (2009), no. 1, pp. 69–111, analyzed the dilemmas facing Václav Talich (1883–1961), Principal Conductor of the National Theatre Opera and the Czech Philharmonic during the Second World War. Part 1 also considers the consequences he had to face after the Liberation, including the changes in his relations with the historian, musicologist, and post-war Communist politician Zdeněk Nejedlý (1878–1962). Part 2 focuses on the debate that accompanied the ‘Talich Case’. In 1945, after the Liberation, Talich was accused of collaboration with the Nazis. Though the investigation showed that his behaviour had not been impeccable, it did not conclude that Talich should be punished. None the less, his public work as a conductor was restricted after the war. The article discusses the attitudes of leading figures in musical life, journalists, and politicians towards the ‘Talich Affair’, and refutes the view that proponents of a certain political view or artistic trend came out together against Talich. Among those who defended him and demanded that he should be allowed to work in music were a number of Communists (including the playwright and director Emil František Burian, the poet Vítězslav Nezval, the opera singer Přemysl Kočí, and, in his own way, the politician Antonín Zápotocký). Another erroneous view, formulated by the musicologist Mirko Očadlík (1904–1964), was that it all had to do with a dispute between Talich and the ‘Nejedlý School’, which was carrying on the musical legacy of Bedřich Smetana. Talich was given support also by many musicians, particularly from the Czech Chamber Orchestra, which he founded in 1946.
The author puts the Talich case into the broader context of the post-war settling of scores with real or imagined henchmen and sympathizers of the German forces of occupation. He considers the character of the people forming the moral judgements, by examining their attitudes towards Communism and its desired dictatorship of the proletariat and class struggle. Particularly Nejedlý, who repeatedly criticized Talich publicly after the war, and did not try to understand the motives behind his behaviour in the Protectorate, showed very little courage when standing face to face with Stalinist repression. On the whole, however, it is fair to say that the politicians involved (including President Edvard Beneš) showed considerable restraint in the Talich case, and made it possible to investigate his war-time behaviour thoroughly according to the law. The author rejects as simplistic the conclusions that clearly place the blame on Talich or other artists working in the Protectorate or, on the contrary, present these people as blameless victims of attacks by their enemies. Every life story is individual, the author argues, each episode must be judged in its historical context. Respect for Talich’s art and talent will not diminish, if we concede that during the Second World War he had to make compromises resulting from Nazi pressure, his own doubts, or simply fatigue and having grown accustomed to the reality of Protectorate life.
Political Games with the ‘Unfinished Revolution’:
Settling Accounts with Communism during and after the Civic Forum, 1989–92
Jiří Suk
This article discusses the birth and early dynamics of Czech post-Communist anti-Communism. It is based on the recognition that during the political takeover in November and December 1989 the policy of radical discontinuity remained a marginal, practically invisible and inaudible phenomenon in the mostly restful period of civil unrest. In the generally shared atmosphere of ‘national understanding’, which led to the historic compromise between the old, Socialist régime and the new, democratic régime, there was no room for a policy of radically settling scores with the Communist Party and the past. It was all the more surprising, therefore, when demands along these lines (the relinquishing of Party property, the outlawing of the Party, the punishment of criminal and treasonous politicians) appeared as if out of nowhere as early as the beginning of 1990, and then intensified. Memory was awakened and its numerous previously buried levels now emerged in public life. The incursion of the dark, unrecognized, and unprocessed past into the artificial reality of historic compromise caused frustration with ethics in the ranks of the nascent political élite. It was but a small step from the political prisoners’ awakened memories of crimes committed by the recently defeated régime to the now current problems with the ‘nomenclature brotherhoods’ and ‘Communist mafias’ in the provinces and in businesses throughout the country. Calls for a thorough settling of scores were heard with increasing frequency from Civic Forum (Občanské fórum), the victorious political movement, and they eventually became the catalyst of the pronounced division within the Civic Forum. But these calls never turned into a decisive political strategy and they managed to hold a dominant place only in the programmes of the less important parties and organizations like the Club of Engage Non-Party Members (Klub angažovaných nestraníků – KAN) and the Confederation of Political Prisoners (Konfederace politických vězňů). After the break-up of Civic Forum in late 1990 and early 1991, radical anti-Communism ran out steam, and the right-of-centre political parties that emerged from the erstwhile Civic Forum – primarily the Civic Democratic Party, the Civic Democratic Alliance, and the Christian Democratic Party – adapted the originally radical demands to a realistic policy of compromise based on the fact that the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, with the support of more than ten per cent of the electorate, remained a part of the democratic political system. The largely ignored sense of frustration with morals, stemming from the fundamental contradiction between the ideal (that is, comprehensive) possibilities of a policy of settling scores and the real (that is, limited) possibilities, was put off for later years, and remains a public problem to this day.
A Rather Traditional Break with the Past:
The Presence of the Past in the Ideology and Political Rhetoric of the Civic Democratic Party
Adéla Gjuričová
The Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana) was founded in early 1991 with no historical predecessor. According to its founders it was founded ‘in spite of’ the tradition of Czech political thought, with reference only to Anglo-American political models. This article investigates whether these historical factors were truly absent, and, among other things, points to the veiled use of widely shared historical stereotypes in the popularization of the chosen variant of economic transformation. From the political crises of 1997 and 1998, when the right-of-centre governing coalition fell apart and the Social Democrats took power, Civic Democratic Party rhetoric linked up far more explicitly with Czech tradition and history. This trend came to a peak between 2000 and 2002, when the party no longer saw Czech national traditions and interests as being in conflict with the allegedly provincial thinking of the Czechs’ post-Communist neighbours, but rather in conflict with the structure and orientation of the European Union and the interests of Germany.
In the second part of the article the author discusses how in the Civic Democratic Party the interpretation of ‘coming to terms with the Communist past’ was changed. She supports the view that this was not merely a matter of a short-term political instrumentalization of changes in mood in society or reactions to pressures from regional organizations and political opponents. Rather, she argues, it was a matter of a relatively consistent conception of the Communist past as an alien element in Czech history, which needed, as part of the idea of ‘breaking with the past’, to be driven out of its own tradition. This sort of conception leaves no room, however, for the weighing of guilt, the problematization of the categories of culprit and victim, or reflections on one’s own responsibility.
The Pasts That Divide:
The Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, 1989–92
Tomáš Zahradníček
In the mid-1990s the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party (Československá strana sociálnědemokratická), next to the Civic Democratic Party, became the strongest political force in the country. This article is concerned with the question of why it was unable after the Changes of November and December 1989 to influence the Czech public and become involved in the political debates about the Communist past. The author considers who actually were the first actors in Social Democratic politics, and stresses the role played by the most important initial differences between them in their attitudes towards tradition and certain personal lives before November 1989. According to these differences, the author divides the Social Democrats into three main groups: the ‘restitution group’, the ‘continuity group’, and the ‘new group’.
The numerically largest group, the ‘restitution group’ (led by Slavomír Klaban, born in 1922), attempted to restore the Social Democratic Party after the forty-year break in its activity. In doing so, this group based itself on the bitter memory of the pro-Communist faction’s having taken control of the party in 1948, and on the repressive measures that followed. The ‘continuity group’, comprising exile Social Democrats (led by Karel Hrubý, born 1923, and Jiří Loewy, 1930–2004) and ‘independent Socialists’ who had signed Charter 77 (led by Rudolf Battěk, born 1924, and Jaroslav Mezník, 1928–2008) had the experience of many years of active resistance to the Communist régime. Apart from them, new activists, who previously had practically nothing in common with the party, joined the Social Democrats after the fall of the ‘ancien régime’. Amongst them were former Communists, some of whom were active in the Obroda reform club. These fundamental starting points ran up against the actual position of the Social Democrats after the Changes of late 1989. This position was determined by several external factors: the Civic Forum did not wish to see political parties develop, the public quickly and for the long-term abandoned the slogans of Socialism (even if reformed), and the Communist Party was able to survive in the new circumstances and sought to represent not just its traditional members, but all left-wing voters. This situation required political action from the Social Democrats in the space between the Civic Forum and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, for which the nascent party was ill prepared. The first elected leadership under the former exile Social Democrat functionary Jiří Horák (1924–2003) had a weak position and many other figures of authority, from diverse political milieux, struggled for preeminence, seeking to use the Social Democratic name to assert their own views. But in fact any topic that was related to the past divided them. That changed after the election of Miloš Zeman (born 1944) as head of the party in February 1993. The new party chairman did not meet the expectations of any of the existing groups amongst the Social Democrats, which hoped that Zeman would authoritatively join in debates about the past and take sides. On the contrary, he made it part of his programme to include adherents of diverse political traditions and views in the Social Democratic Party; they balanced each other out and Zeman let a plurality of voices be heard.
The article is followed by a selection of ‘The Letters of Jaroslav Mezník on the Ideas and Policies of Social Democracy’ from 1978 to 1993. (The originals are amongst the papers of the journalist Jiří Loewy, deposited in the Archive of the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague.) In these letters, addressed mostly to Loewy, the Brno historian Mezník, a key figure of the group of ‘independent Socialists’ after he signed Charter 77, ponders the possibilities of non-Communist Socialist thinking and policy in Czechoslovakia, the local traditions of the Social Democrats, and their current orientation. An important role was played here by Mezník’s efforts to achieve understanding between exiles and dissidents at home and to mediate between them, which he later did once both groups were back on the Czechoslovak political scene.
The Stigma of the Past, Family Ties:
The First Ten Years of Czech Communism after the Changes of 1989
Michal Kopeček
This article is concerned with the attitude that the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy – KSČM) has had towards its own past. It examines the subject from the perspective of the internal development of the Party and its search for a political and cultural identity in the Czech political system. The interpretation of the past and the role of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (Komunistická strana Československa – KSČ) in Czech and Czechoslovak history were key elements in the ideological development of the Party in the first ten years of Czech democracy after the Changes beginning in mid-November 1989. And they played a central role in the Communists’ efforts to respond to the new democracy’s systemic and rhetorical anti-Communism. In this article the author seeks to demonstrate what effect debates about the past had in causing divisions in the Party in the first years after the Changes. On the one hand they contributed to cleavages within the Party, but on the other they also created conditions for its later consolidation and new self-confidence. The initial reformist strategy inclined roughly to the ideas of the Social Democratic Party and sought to win the maximum number of votes and ultimately a share in government. It was supported by the film-maker and chairman of the Party, Jiří Svoboda (born 1945) from 1990 to 1993, but was gradually superseded by the strategy of what one Czech expert on international relations, Vladimír Handl, has called the ‘left-wing retreat’, and what one British political scientist, Seán Hanley, calls ‘voter representation’, based on the strengthening of political-cultural identity and the emphasizing of communication between the rank-and-file and the leadership of the Party.
As the author demonstrates, the idea of ‘coming to terms with the past’ gradually acquired a meaning amongst the Communists that was markedly different from the meaning it had for most Czechs. The pragmatism of the subsequent leader, Miroslav Grebeníček (born 1947), to a certain attenuated, but did not solve, the fundamental dilemma faced by the Party, which consisted in the conflict between the ‘logic of the electoral struggle’ and the ‘logic of voter representation’. The first trend after the downfall of the reformists in 1993 included, in particular, neo-Communist theorists (like the political thinker Miloslav Ransdorf, b. 1953), who sought to formulate Socialist alternatives acceptable to most left-leaning Czechs. That also led them to attempt a more critical analysis of their own past than the majority of their rank-and-file members would have done. The second trend, the logic of voter representation, oriented to preserving and strengthening the strong identity of Party members and supporters, was linked with the continuing conservative majority of the rank-and-file represented by local activists, the Party press, and some members of the Party leadership. All of them preferred the programme of political and social populism. They tended to understand history as the ‘politics of history’ – in other words, as a means to support their own identity and to resist the hostile environment outside the Party. For both trends in the Party, however, the challenge presented by anti-Communism – whether systemic or spontaneous – remained, to the end of the 1990s, an important, if not the most important, unifying motive. But it considerably limited their possibilities to raise sensitive questions about their own past and to hold a potentially critical debate.
Material
The Tragic Case of Miroslav Dolejší and Eugen Vrba
Prokop Tomek
This article presents Miroslav Dolejší (1931–2001), the author of Analýza událostí 17. listopadu (Analysis of the Events of 17 November), the best-known conspiratorial interpretation of the democratic Czechoslovak revolution of November 1989. It does so, however, from a little known side of Dolejší, that is, as a talented man and political prisoner of the Communist régime, who spent a total of eighteen and half years behind bars. Dolejší was first arrested in 1951, and accused of working with an American agent to found an underground youth organization that would carry out a coup d’état. According to the author of the article this was probably an operation provoked by the Czechoslovak secret police. Dolejší was sentenced to twenty-three years in prison, of which he served nine before being released in the presidential amnesty of 1960. Afterwards he showed his exceptional abilities: though he had not finished secondary school, he became an expert in the field of systems engineering and automated systems of control and a member of several academic societies. During the ‘Prague Spring’ he was active in K 231 (or Klub 231, Klub bývalých politických vězňů, the Association of Former Political Prisoners). In the mid-1970s, with the help of the former journalist Eugen Vrba (1918–2004), who was under secret-police surveillance, Dolejší attempted to send academic articles about Czechoslovakia to the West, for which he would receive payment. In 1976 both men were arrested. Although the official dossiers did not state clearly whether Dolejší’s and Vrba’s reports contained sensitive intelligence, the two men were accused of spying and Vrba was sentenced to ten years in prison, Dolejší to eleven. Dolejší was released in 1985, twenty months before his sentence would have ended.
The author claims that Dolejší’s analysis, which seeks to explain the events of November 1989 as a conspiracy of dissidents, Communists, and foreign secret services, was psychologically determined by the tragic fate of its author and that it is fair to see it as a particular way of seeking satisfaction for wrongs done. For men imprisoned in the 1950s, and who had thus been robbed of their futures, it was painful to see former Communists, albeit signatories of Charter 77, who had in several cases been involved in their persecution, taking up senior posts in public life. For Dolejší one such person was Vladimír Kolmistr (born 1930), a member of Obroda (Rebirth), the club of dissident reform-Communists, and then a member of the Czech Parliament (Czech National Council) in the 1990s. In 1950, as Chairman of the Kladno District Committee of the Czech Youth Association (Český svaz mládeže), Kolmistr had instigated Dolejší’s expulsion from secondary school. Evidence of this is provided by the minutes of the meeting about the expulsion, which are also published here with an introduction by the historian Jaroslav Cuhra, putting them in the broader context.
Discussion
‘So, How Should It Have Been Done?’ Pithart’s Questions and the Civic Forum Historical Committee
Jan Křen and Pavel Seifter
In this contribution, the authors, both historians, but this time as eye-witnesses, ask the question that Petr Pithart touched upon in his memoirs, Devětaosmdesátý (Eighty-nine; 2009): What could have been done to prevent the widespread destruction and theft of secret-police files and other archive records in Czechoslovakia in late 1989? The authors cast doubt on Pithart’s claim that this state of affairs was a result of the situation in society and that it was impossible to influence it in any fundamental way. The solution, the authors believe, was offered by the Historical Commission of the Civic Forum, of which they were members, whose draft proposals for the security and preservation of archive records, as well as other work from December 1989 and January 1990, they discuss here. They also discuss why these proposals were not given a fair hearing in the Coordinating Centre of the Civic Forum.
Munich, an ‘Attempt’ at Revision? Of What?
Shadows in Piotr M. Majewski’s Review
Vít Smetana
In this article the author takes issue with Piotr M. Majewski’s review of his book, In the Shadow of Munich: British Policy towards Czechoslovakia from the Endorsement to the Renunciation of the Munich Agreement, 1938–1942 (Prague, Karolinum Press, 2008), which appeared in the last issue of our journal (‘Mnichov, Británie a pokus o revizi českého pohledu’ [The Munich Agreement, Great Britain, and an Attempt to Revise the Czech View], Soudobé dějiny, vol. 16 [2009] no. 1, pp. 174–76). The author attributes the reviewer’s reproaches solely to lax reading or ignorance or both. He rejects the reviewer’s claim that the subject discussed in his book had already been sufficiently researched by others, and believes that the subject cannot be considered exhausted, even after the publication of his own monograph. He argues that his book is hardly at all concerned with the events around the Munich Conference of autumn 1938, which the reviewer, by contrast, has fixed his attention on. He rejects the reviewer’s opinion that what was of utmost importance in forming the attitudes of the British Foreign Office towards the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile was the anti-Czech bias of the civil servants employed there. And he particularly defends himself against the reviewer’s ‘labelling’ and ‘pigeonholing’, which he perceives in the assessment of his work as ‘revisionist’ and as an attempt to overcome the ‘Czech view’. There is, the author argues, no such thing as ‘revisionism’ or ‘the Czech view’ in contemporary Czech historiography.
Reviews
Ideological Literature in a Non-ideological Version:
Twenty Years After, the First Modern History of Czech Literature of the Socialist Period
Alessandro Catalano
Janoušek, Pavel et al. Dějiny české literatury 1945–1989. Vol. 1, 1945–1948; Vol. 2: 1948–1958. Prague: Academia, 2007.
This thorough review is mostly concerned with the first two volumes of the four-volume Dějiny české literatury 1945–1985 (History of Czech Literature, 1945–85), which was published in 2007 and 2008. The history is the culmination of a ten-year project at the Institute of Czech Literature, Prague, in which more than fifty authors took part, led by the director of the Institute, Pavel Janoušek. As the reviewer notes, in this collective work of 2,500 pages the ups and downs of Czech literature from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of Communism are systematically, comprehensively, and non-ideologically dealt with for the first time. The result is a fundamental work on the topic, and is a convincing response to recent debates in Czech literary studies, in which the very possibility of writing a history of literature today has been problematized. It is also a challenge to those who would come up with alternative conceptions. The reviewer praises the great reliability of the facts presented in this work and also, despite certain pitfalls, their maximally neutral and dispassionate presentation. He also stresses the high quality and suitable length of the sections devoted to the broader social and cultural-political context of literature in the years of its mass idealogization. He points as well to the useful summary of genres on the boundary of literature included in this history, and argues that some of the published criticisms of this publication are unfair.
Historical Analyses of the Building of Czech Democracy
Jan Bureš
Gjuričová, Adéla and Michal Kopeček (eds). Kapitoly z dějin české demokracie po roce 1989. Prague and Litomyšl: Paseka, 2008, 328 pp.
The reviewer argues that this multi-authored volume is a successful attempt to provide a multidisciplinary view of the last twenty years of political developments, not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the broader framework of the central European societies building democracy. The main strength of the volume, the reviewer claims, is that the individual articles by its thirteen authors (five of whom are from abroad) seek to capture various aspects of these developments in historical, political-science, sociological, economic, legal, and also literary and film-studies analyses. These approaches complement each other nicely. The reviewer devotes attention to each of the contributions, and outlines their main arguments.
European Integration as a Problem
Vlastimil Hála
Csáky, Moritz and Johannes Feichtinger (eds). Europa, geeint durch Werte? Die europäische Wertedebatte auf dem Prüfstand der Geschichte. Bielefeld: Transkript, 2007, 215 pp;
Csáky, Moritz and Elizabeth Grosseger (eds). Jenseits von Grenzen: Transnationales, translokales Gedächtnis. Vienna: Presens, 2007, 225 pp.
The two essay volumes under review contain papers given at conferences in Vienna. The authors, predominantly Austrians, endeavour to apply the historical concept of ‘lieux de mémoire’ (places of memory) in a search for answers to the question about the point of thematization of European values in processes of integration on the Continent today. The reviewer points to certain contributions in particular, and finds that the common feature dominant in them and other works that define the special character of (central) Europe lies in the spirit of anti-essentialism and pluralistic openness.
A Revealing Book about the Post-war Lives of the Czechoslovak Airmen of the RAF
Jan Michl
Kudrna, Ladislav. Jeden ze zapomenutých mužů: Plukovník letectva Petr Uruba, pilot 311. československé bombardovací perutě, jako průvodce ‘krátkým’ 20. stoletím. Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2008, 302 pp.
Taking a biographical approach, the author of the book under review, which tells the story of a Czechoslovak airman in the Royal Air Force, uses this publication as an opportunity to depict the broader historical panorama. Though he presents the pre-war and wartime events concisely, he manages, the reviewer argues, to present a comprehensive analysis of the situation in the Czechoslovak Armed Forces and, partly, also in society in the post-war period. The reviewer considers the book’s greatest contribution to be the information it provides about collaboration between the former RAF airmen and the Czechoslovak State Security Forces (StB) and the airmen’s rehabilitation in the 1960s.
From the ‘Springtime of Nations’ to the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Martin Valenta
Brandes, Detlef, Dušan Kováč, and Jiří Pešek (eds). Wendepunkte in den Beziehungen zwischen Deutschen, Tschechen und Slowaken 1848–1989. Essen: Klartext, 2007, 336 pp.
This is a review of the fourteenth volume in the series ‘Veröffentlichungen der Deutsch-Tschechischen und Deutsch-Slowakischen Historikerkommission / Publikace Německo-české a německo-slovenské komise historiků’. In seventeen contributions this particular volume charts out the turning-points in relations amongst the Czechs, Germans, and Slovaks in the course of the 140 years from the Year of Revolutions, 1848, to another year of revolutions, 1989. The reviewer praises the ability of the historians, who come from the three nations under discussion, to write history together and to hold up mirrors of interpretation for each other. They have, he states, thereby created a publication that is in step with current trends in European historiography.
Sixties Pop Culture in the Recollections of a Slovak Rocker
Jan Blüml
Jurík, Ľuboš and Jozef Šuhajda. Slovenský bigbít. Bratislava: Slováry, 2008, 390 pp.
The book under review, like the television series of the same name, is conceived mainly as an anthology of recollections of participants in the Slovak rock music scene during its dramatic development in the 1960s. An important and successful feature of this superbly designed publication is its lush documentary illustrations, which form an exceptionally comprehensive and detailed part of the book. According to the reviewer, the book demonstrates, among other things, that Slovak rock, unlike MOR and jazz, was more dynamic in the 1960s than its Czech counterpart.
Of Periodicals and Archives
The War and the Post-war Period in Polish History Periodicals in 2008
Jaroslav Vaculík
This is a report on noteworthy articles concerned with contemporary history in Polish history periodicals in 2008, including Dzieje Najnowsze, Zeszyty Historyczne (from Paris), Przegląd Zachodni, Przegląd Historyczny, Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, Sprawy Narodowościowe, Zapiski Historyczne poświęcone historii Pomorza i krajów bałtyckich, and Sobótka, a quarterly.
Chronicle
The Liblice Conference about the Twenty Years since the End of the Communist Régime
Katka Volná reports on the international conference called ‘Society, History, Politics, 1989–2009’, which was organized by the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, and held at Liblice, central Bohemia, from 16 to 18 September 2009. Most of the papers, given in seven conference panels, were devoted to the changes in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic since the collapse of the Communist régime. Problems of the transformation and the transition to democracy, the events of late 1989, the legacy of the past, and questions of historical memory were the most discussed.
