No. II.
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Contents
Articles
Zdeněk R. Nešpor
The Study of Czech Migration in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Adéla Gjuričová
Politically Conscious Quixotes:
The Political Thought of Růžena Vacková
Alena Šporková
Lessons from the Crisis:
The Picture of the “Prague Spring” in “Normalization” Prose Fiction
Karel Hrubý
Radical Socialism and Its Recurrences
Ivan Kamenec
Promising Title, Awkward Result:
Mlynárik’s History of the Jews in Slovakia
Lukáš Babka
An Inhuman System Illustrated Using Individual People’s Lives:
An Exceptional Volume on the History of the Soviet Prison System
Blahoslav Hruška
Good Lord! Hus Looks like a Priest!
A Pioneering Volume about Film and History
Jana Čechurová
An Incomplete History of the Free-Thinkers’ Movement
Jiří Ellinger
Trauma – Betrayal – Reminder:
The Munich Agreement Sixty-five Years On
Marek Syrný
An Unsuppressed History of the Resistance
Petr Blažek
A Conference in Warsaw about the Communist Secret Services
Lucie Smegľová
Oral History and Its Interdisciplinary Use
Petr Koura
The Film and History Festival, Humpolec
Articles
The Study of Czech Migration in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Zdeněk R. Nešpor
In this article the author points out the shortcomings in existing Czech research into twentieth-century Czech migration. These shortcomings, he argues, are particularly evident in comparison with research conducted abroad. The author points to the striking disproportion in research into the individual waves of emigration from, and immigration to, the Bohemian Lands, as well as the continuous influence of particular approaches to the research itself or theoretical and methodological starting points. In this connection he sets out 21 structurally different waves of migration from the late eighteenth century onwards, which have ultimately influenced the demographic and socio-cultural development of the Bohemian Lands in the twentieth century. He provides a brief description of them, considering questions of their size, direction, and other development in relation to the host countries and the land and society of what is now the Czech Republic.
Without aiming to present a comprehensive picture, but with regard to relative representation, the author summarizes the existing research into this migration. Apart from the clear disproportion and, in a number of cases, lack of correlation of the existing academic research results, the article highlights and analyzes their systematic variance based on the different starting points and aims of the individual branches of the humanities and social sciences during Communist rule. This, however, has frequently persisted to the present day. The author, however, distinguishes between historical and ethnographic research, and also identifies another type of research – namely, the autobiographical approach, which sometimes claims (usually without success) to be scholarly objective. These three approaches to the study of Czech migration (apart from the descriptive and mostly quantitative demographic approach, which is not discussed here in any detail), which were only recently, and only in part, supplemented with the socio-anthropological and sociological approaches, “divided up” the field amongst themselves, without any real mutual influence or comparison taking place. In connection with the descriptive and analytic parts of the article, the author urges his Czech colleagues to pay closer attention to the sociological and socio-anthropological points of view, to reorient historical research of migratory movement, and, mainly, to work together with other disciplines and researchers in other countries. He also points to these migratory movements, whose research has yet to be done or is only in the early stages.
Politically Conscious Quixotes:
The Political Thought of Růžena Vacková
Adéla Gjuričová
Růžena Vacková (1901–1982) was an important classical archaeologist, philosopher of aesthetics, art historian, and prisoner of both the Nazi and the Communist régimes. The latter tried to expunge her from the history of scholarship and society, but in recent years she has slowly been returning to public consciousness as an expert in her field, a popular figure, and a political symbol. The article examines her essays on the key periods and events beginning in the 1930s, and tries to determine the intellectual basis of her stance as a citizen and also to put her into the context of twentieth-century Czech political thought.
With her journalism, Vacková joined the moderate nationalist rightwing in the 1930s. From her analysis, for example, of conceptions of national unity and the crisis of democracy there emerged the special connection of elements of nationalism, organic thinking about society, and a conception of politics of appeals, which have been typical of modern Czech political thinking. The article also presents an interpretation of Vacková’s problematic journalism in the Second Republic (the six months from the Munich Agreement in late September 1938 to the beginning of the German Occupation in mid-March 1939) and the Protectorate (and then her participation in the resistance to the occupation, followed by her imprisonment). For having organized student groups of the Roman Catholic Action (Katolická akce) after 1945 and for having openly expressed her views on events leading up to the Communist takeover of February 1948, Vacková was first expelled from the Faculty of Arts at Prague, and then arrested, tried, and sentenced to 22 years in prison. She gave meaning to her imprisonment, from 1952 to ’67, with, among other things, protests against the approach of the Communist authorities towards prisoners. She gradually abandoned her rebellious argumentation for a legalistic approach, which in the 1970s and ’80s became the basis of the human rights movement Charter 77 (of which Vacková was also a signatory) and other opposition activity.
Lessons from the Crisis:
The Picture of the “Prague Spring” in “Normalization” Prose Fiction
Alena Šporková
The article considers the picture of the year 1968 and what is popularly known as the “Prague Spring” as it appears in establishment prose fiction from the “Normalization” period (that is, the return to hard-line Communism with the defeat of the reform wing of the Party and the years of the Soviet occupation, 1970–89). Normalization fiction – in accord with the government publication Poučení z krizového vývoje ve straně a společnosti po XIII. sjezdu KSČ (Lessons from the Crisis Developments in the Party and Society after the 13th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) – tried to legitimize the policy of Normalization as a new stage in the development of Socialism. The author analyzes the plans and model solutions, which helped to form an ideologized interpretation of social development in Czechoslovakia from January to the Soviet-led intervention of Warsaw Pact troops in late August 1968. The article also considers how the authors of this fiction (a total of sixteen novels, the best known of which is Alexej Pludek’s antisemitic Vabank [Going for Broke]) portray the broader historical context, how they explain the motivation and aims of the leaders of the reform movement and describe the participation of various social strata in the political events. Some of these works are instructive models of the future life of the main characters and their orientation in the new circumstances in the phase called “real, existing Socialism” in the 1970s and ’80s. Apart from that, the article considers how established literary critics accepted attempts in belles-lettres to depict the recent “crisis years,” from which the new régime hoped to distance itself as clearly as possible.
One of the aims of the Czechoslovak Communist régime was to create an interpretation of history, which would, by emphasizing Czechoslovak “revolutionary traditions” and the subsequent continuity of development, legitimize the Communist régime. Belles-lettres was supposed to help to achieve that end, by trying to get the establishment interpretation of history fixed in the consciousness of the general public. Consequently the genre of the engagé social novel was emphasized. It depicted the individual’s orientation in society in the broader historical context and his or her identification with contemporary political circumstances. By depicting milestones of history apart from 1968 – such as the Second World War, Liberation by the Red Army, and the Communist takeover of 1948 – belles-lettres corresponded to deep-seated, traditional formulae of materialist interpretations of history, but in particular it created new ideological constructs that reflected the current needs of the régime. An example of this is the expedient “Normalization” reinterpretation of the early 1950s, the years of Stalinist repression in Czechoslovakia.
Debate
Radical Socialism and Its Recurrences
Karel Hrubý
In 2001–05, Zdeněk Kárník led the broad-based grant-funded project called “The Development of Radical Socialism and Communism in Czechoslovakia,” which has so far resulted in three essay-volumes called Bolševismus, komunismus a radikální socialismus v Československu (Prague, Institute of Contemporary History and Dokořán, 2003 and 2004). Kárník, who together with Michal Kopeček is the editor, wrote the introduction to the third volume, in which he analyzes extremist political movements in Czechoslovakia, chiefly Communism and Fascism, between the two world wars, and thus attempts ex post to give the project a conceptual framework. Karel Hrubý considers mainly Kárník’s conception of radical socialism a phenomenon that in certain periods (particularly just after each of the world wars) considerably affected developments in Czechoslovakia, but was eventually more or less absorbed by the Communist Party. The author appreciates Kárník’s work here mainly for having made a hitherto largely neglected set of topics the focus of research and distinguishing it clearly from Communism (including Bolshevism). The treatment of the topic, he argues, however, is not really a systematic outline, and lacks a precise definition of radical socialism, an analysis of its internal differentiation, consideration of the true influence in historical perspective, and broader comparison with other extreme leftwing movements, particularly in the (central) European context.
Promising Title, Awkward Result:
Mlynárik’s History of the Jews in Slovakia
Ivan Kamenec
The author brings up for discussion Ján Mlynárik’s Dějiny Židů na Slovensku (History of the Jews in Slovakia), published by Academia, Prague, 2005. Kamenec argues that the book is a blatant example of unprofessional and lax historical work. Mlynárik began the job with great verve and little background, he notes. With the exception of the attitudes of the Vatican towards the deportation of Slovak Jews during the war Mlynárik has done no research with primary sources, and is thus dependent on the secondary literature. He tries to conceal this shortcoming with the way he uses, or rather, does not use quotation, and completely ignores works published in Slovakia over the past several years. He reveals surprising gaps in his own knowledge of Slovak history, commits numerous factual errors, and frequently tends to overly simple, radical, unfounded claims. The worst thing is, however, that a great many passages of Mlynárik’s book are no just a compilation of other scholars’ work but are outright plagiarism; Kamenec demonstrates this by juxtaposing several quotations from his own Po stopách tragédie (On the Trail of a Tragedy) with passages from Mlynárik’s book.
Reviews
An Inhuman System Illustrated Using Individual People’s Lives:
An Exceptional Volume on the History of the Soviet Prison System
Lukáš Babka
Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: Dějiny. Trans. from the English by Petruška Šustrová. Prague and Pilsen: Pavel Dobrovský – BETA & Jiří Ševčík, 2004. 604 pp.
This history, for which the author, a young American journalist and historian, received a Pulitzer Prize for the best work in history in the USA in 2004, constitutes, according to the reviewer, a milestone in our understanding of the machinery of totalitarian repression in the Soviet Union, as was Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago twenty-five years ago. Applebaum has written this book (her second so far) in a readable way. It is for a general audience, but in no way has she dispensed with high academic standards. She has managed suitably to compress the huge scope of her topic and to structure it clearly, without omitting anything essential. This means her work can also serve as a textbook. With astonishing depth she manages to convey the atrociousness of this empire of evil and to formulate cogent conclusions. She has succeeded owing chiefly to her method of interpretation, in which she takes pains to demonstrate the operation of various aspects and parts of the system, using concrete examples of individual lives. With this aim, she did research in Russian archives, not only the central ones, and conducted interviews with many witnesses. None the less, the reviewer points to some imprecise terms and facts, excessive brevity in her account of the post-Stalinist years, and shortcomings in the footnotes, as well as partial errors by the translator.
Good Lord! Hus Looks like a Priest!
A Pioneering Volume about Film and History
Blahoslav Hruška
Kopal, Petr (ed.). Film a dějiny. Prague: Lidové noviny, 2005, 406 pp.
According to the reviewer this is the first time Czech readers will have a volume of essays about the use of film as a historical source, and, moreover, in their contributions the authors open up new ways of handling these topics. These include the illusion of authentic conveyance of historical reality by the documentary film, ideological manipulation, and national stereotypes in film or the intersection of cinematography and historiographic conceptions of interpretation.
An Incomplete History of the Free-Thinkers’ Movement
Jana Čechurová
Kudláč, Antonín K. K. Příběh(y) Volné myšlenky. Prague: Lidové noviny, 2005, 190 pp.
The author, according to the reviewer, has written a history of the organized movement of Czech atheists mainly on the basis of material from the archive of the Free-Thinkers society as the ups and downs of institutional splits and changes. This means that the lives of individual people are missing, thus preventing one from seeing the hidden side of events. The relations between the Free Thinkers and various political movements and the Free Masons would also, she argues, have merited more attention.
Trauma – Betrayal – Reminder:
The Munich Agreement Sixty-five Years On
Jiří Ellinger
Němeček, Jan (ed.). Mnichovská dohoda: Cesta k destrukci demokracie v Evropě. Prague: Karolinum, 2004, 390 pp.
This essay volume (whose title translates as The Munich Agreement: The Road to the Destruction of democracy in Europe) is a result of a conference held in Prague in autumn 2003. According to the reviewer it could hardly claim to have discovered never-before investigated areas of the Munich mosaic or approaches that would show it in a new light. Most of the individual contributions that the review discusses, however, are a solid recapitulation of the state of research on the international diplomatic context of the crisis in autumn 1938, the situation in Czechoslovak at that time, and the legal aspects.
An Unsuppressed History of the Resistance
Marek Syrný
Jablonický, Jozef. Samizdat o odboji: Štúdie a články. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2004, 528 pp.
The volume, whose title translates as “Samizdat about the Resistance: Studies and Articles,” comprises eleven articles about the Slovak uprising and the resistance, which Jablonický wrote in the 1970s and ’80s, when he was prevented from working openly as an historian and the state authorities were systematically trying to hamper his scholarly work. (For example, the original versions of the some of the essays were confiscated during police searches of his home). According to the reviewer these essays continue to be a contribution and also, in some senses, even the best or almost the only treatment of the topic. Here, Jablonický provides detailed, unbiased pictures of historical events and portraits of the actors in them, and puts the resistance legends of Communist historiography in their proper perspective.
Chronicle
A Conference in Warsaw about the Communist Secret Services
Petr Blažek
This is a report about the international conference “The Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe, 1944–45 to 1989”, which was held in Warsaw on 16–18 June 2005. It was attended by more than 350 historians and political scientists from nineteen countries. The programme included openings of three exhibitions on the work of the machinery of repression in Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia, as well as the launching of A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe, 1944–1989, which is the work of an international team and the first attempt to present the topic comprehensively.
Oral History and Its Interdisciplinary Use
Lucie Smegľová
This is a report of the fourth meeting of practitioners and proponents of oral history. The meeting, organized by the Oral History Centre at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, was held at Sovinec Castle in June of this year.
The Film and History Festival, Humpolec
Petr Koura
This is a report on the fifth “Film and History” festival, which was held at Orlík Castle near Humpolec, in late August of this year, thanks to Castrum, a not-for-profit organization.
