Czech Journal of Contemporary History - Latest articles
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Jiří Křesťan, Oldřich Tůma, Pavel Kreisinger
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):345-353 
Looking Back by the First Bishop of PilsenBook Reviews
Michal Sklenář
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):336-343
The protagonist of the book V Boží režii: František Radkovský v rozhovoru s Tomášem Kutilem [In God's Direction: František Radkovský in conversation with Tomáš Kutil] is the Roman Catholic priest and the bishop František Radkovský (born 1939). From 1990 to 1993 he was the auxiliary bishop of Prague and then, until 2016, the first bishop of the newly established diocese of Pilsen. The reviewer first situates the publication in the context of other biographical interviews with contemporary Czech church figures and reflects on their significance for modern church history and for historiography in general. He finds it in the genre of testimony, not only...
American Saviours in the Shadow of Nicolas WintonBook Reviews
Radovan Lovčí
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):330-335
The heroes of the book Vzdorovali nacistům: Sharpovi a jejich válka, originally published in English as Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War (Boston, Beacon Press 2016), are the Unitarian reverend Waitstill Sharp (1902-1985) and his wife, Martha Sharp (1905-1999) of Massachusetts. Both received outstanding credit for humanitarian missions commissioned by the American Unitarians to provide asylum, on the eve of and during the Second World War, to those at risk in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and Vichy France. The author of the book is the American publicist and documentary filmmaker Artemis Jukowsky, the Sharps' grandson. In his biography he...
Institutions as Organizers of Social Life in the Moravian CountrysideBook Reviews
Lucie Marková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):324-329
Babičky na bigbítu: Společenský život na moravském venkově pozdního socialismu [Grannies at a Big-Beat Party: Social Life in the Moravian Countryside in LateBabičky na bigbítu: Společenský život na moravském venkově pozdního socialismu [Grannies at a Big-Beat Party: Social Life in the Moravian Countryside in Late Socialism] by ethnologist Oto Polouček is a successful contribution to a better understanding of not only of the cultural and social life of the Moravian countryside, but also of the history of everyday life during the normalization era in Czechoslovakia. The central theme of the book are the social activities of the inhabitants of Dolní Kounice,...
An Empathic Portrait of Abbot Opasek and His “Good Work”Book Reviews
Marta Edith Holečková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):318-323
In his book Křesťanský zápas o českou věc: Působení opata Opaska a organizace Opus bonum v československém exilu v letech 1972-1989 [The Christian Struggle for the Czech Cause: The Work of Abbot Opasek and the Opus Bonum Association in Czechoslovak Exile, 1972-1989], Petr Placák, writer, historian and columnist, deals with the history of the Czechoslovak Christian association "Opus Bonum" in exile and its main representative, the abbot of the Břevnov monastery in Prague, Anastáz Jan Opasek (1913-1999). This lay Catholic association, founded by Opasek and the theologist Vladimír Neuwirth (1921-1998) in 1972, operated in Frankfurt am Main...
“The Marshall Plan for the Mind” Behind the Iron CurtainBook Reviews
Martin Nekola
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):311-317
Alfred Alexander Reisch's Horké knihy ve studené válce: Program tajné distribuce knih ze Západu za železnou oponu financovaný CIA published by Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů - originally published in English as Hot Books in the Cold War: The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain (Budapest, Central European University Press 2013) - is the subject of this review. Reisch is an American political scientist of Hungarian origin, and he is also one of the protagonists of the book. The classified project of distributing books, magazines and other publications to the Eastern Bloc countries, which developed under the...
Cultural and Historical Images of the Enemy in Postwar CzechoslovakiaBook Reviews
Johana Kłusek
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):305-310
Obrazy nepřítele v Československu 1948-1956 [Images of the Enemy in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1956] by Czech cultural historian Denisa Nečasová examines four groups of enemies constructed by the Czechoslovak media between 1948 and 1956: the bourgeoisie; the so-called "kulaks"; Catholic priests; and the United States of America. The study follows the postmodern linguistic turn and focuses on the relationship between power, ideology and language. The discourses she examines are described and interpreted in four consecutive chapters. Nečasová captures the generally diminishing intensity of pejorative images, which corresponds to the loosening of the regime...
Czechoslovak Intelligence on the Eve of the Cold WarBook Reviews
Klára Staňková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):299-304
Na prahu studenej vojny: Československé vojenské výzvedné spravodajstvo v rokoch 1945-1946 [On the Threshold of the Cold War: Czechoslovak Military Intelligence in the Years 1945-1946] by Slovak historian Matej Medvecký comprehensively maps the functioning of Czechoslovak military intelligence in the first two years after the Second World War. The work is the result of the study of a wide range of official sources and fills a vacuum that existed in the scholarship on the topic in Czech and Slovak historiography. The book describes the structure and the essential changes which took place in the intelligence services in these two years, and elucidates...
A Voluminous Compendium of the Communist Secret ServicesBook Reviews
Prokop Tomek
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):285-298
The comprehensive publication Čekisté: Orgány bezpečnosti v evropských zemích sovětského bloku [The Chekists: Security Organs in the European Countries of the Soviet Bloc] by the editors Krzysztof Persak, Łukasz Kamiński, Pavel Žáček and Petr Blažek is the Czech edition of the work produced by an international team of historians, which emerged from a project run by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. The book was originally published in English in 2005 in Warsaw under the care of the two Polish editors with the title: A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe 1944-1989. A German edition followed in 2009 in Göttingen,...
A Joint Czech-Austrian Book on the History of Both CountriesBook Reviews
Miroslav Šepták
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):277-284
Sousedé: Česko-rakouské dějiny [Neighbours: A Czech-Austrian History Book] edited by Václav Šmidrkal, Ota Konrád, Hildegard Schmollerová and Niklas Perzi and its parallel Austrian version Nachbarn: Ein österreichisch-tschechisches Geschichtsbuch (Weitra, Bibliothek der Provinz 2019) is a remarkable and unique attempt by a collective of twenty-seven Czech and Austrian historians to work together on the history of Austria and the Bohemian/Czech lands (and Czechoslovakia) and their mutual relations from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book is a product of the Permanent Conference of Czech and Austrian Historians on Common Cultural Heritage, which...
Dimensions of Post-Stalinist ThinkingBook Reviews
Marián Lóži
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):267-276
The review deals with two monographs that examine the post-Stalinist period from different perspectives: Soudruzi a jejich svět: Sociálně myšlenková tvářnost komunismu [Comrades and Their World: The Social Mindset of Communism] by Pavel Kolář, originally published in German under the title Der Poststalinismus: Ideologie und Utopie einer Epoche (Köln/R. - Weimar - Wien 2016) and "Rehabilitovat Marxe": Československá stranická inteligence a myšlení post-stalinské moderny ["Rehabilitate Marx!" The Czechoslovak Party Intelligentsia and Thought in Post-Stalinist Modernity] by Jan Mervart and Jiří Růžička. The review describes both studies and focuses on...
An Attempt at an Objective View of Jozef TisoDiscussion
Michaela Lenčéšová
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):260-263
The subject of the review is a biography of the Slovak Catholic priest and politician Jozef Tiso (1887–1947). Tiso was the head of the independent Slovak Republic from 1939 to 1945 under the patronage of Nazi Germany and was executed as a collaborator in April 1947, following a judgment of the National Court in Bratislava. The book Kněz prezidentem: Slovensko Jozefa Tisa [Priest as President: Jozef Tiso's Slovakia] is a translation of the Polish original Słowacja Księdza-Prezydenta: Jozef Tiso 1887–1947 (Kraków, Znak 2015). Its author, Andrzej Krawczyk, is a Polish historian and diplomat, the former ambassador to the Czech Republic and...
This New Biography of Tiso Does Not Reach the Level of Today’s Historical KnowledgeDiscussion
Miloslav Szabó
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):252-259
The subject of the review is a biography of the Slovak Catholic priest and politician Jozef Tiso (1887-1947). Tiso was the head of the independent Slovak Republic from 1939 to 1945 under the patronage of Nazi Germany and was executed as a collaborator in April 1947, following a judgment of the National Court in Bratislava. The book Kněz prezidentem: Slovensko Jozefa Tisa [Priest as President: Jozef Tiso's Slovakia] is a translation of the Polish original Słowacja Księdza-Prezydenta: Jozef Tiso 1887-1947 (Kraków, Znak 2015). Its author, Andrzej Krawczyk, is a Polish historian and diplomat, the former ambassador to the Czech Republic and then to Slovakia....
Jozef Tiso Through the Eyes of a Polish Historian and DiplomatDiscussion
Aleš Černý
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):243-251
The subject of the review is a biography of the Slovak Catholic priest and politician Jozef Tiso (1887-1947). Tiso was the head of the independent Slovak Republic from 1939 to 1945 under the patronage of Nazi Germany and was executed as a collaborator in April 1947, following a judgment of the National Court in Bratislava. The book Kněz prezidentem: Slovensko Jozefa Tisa [Priest as President: Jozef Tiso's Slovakia] is a translation of the Polish original Słowacja Księdza-Prezydenta: Jozef Tiso 1887-1947 (Kraków, Znak 2015). Its author, Andrzej Krawczyk, is a Polish historian and diplomat, the former ambassador to the Czech Republic and then to Slovakia....
The Documentary Context of the Konstantin Biebl Case (1940–1988)Essays and Articles
Jana Tůma Königsmarková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):189-242
“Don’t Put a Full Stop at the End of My Manuscript...”: More on the Case of Konstantin Biebl’s SuicideEssays and Articles
Jana Tůma Königsmarková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):147-188 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2021.036
This article addresses the last creative period of the poet Konstantin Biebl (1898–1951) in the late 1940s and early 1950s and explores in a broader cultural-political context, taking into consideration the poet’s specific character, the genesis of his last collection of poems entitled Bez obav [Unafraid] (1951) as well as the unexplained circumstances of his tragic death. Biebl was one of the leading representatives of the leftist art avant-garde in interwar Czechoslovakia. In the early 1940s he stopped writing. After the Communist coup in 1948 he tried to adjust to the period’s ideological-aesthetic norms applied to the new literature...
Insights into the Changing Mood of Society. Czechoslovak Radio and the Letters of Its Listeners, 1948–1989Essays and Articles
Oldřich Tůma
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):130-146 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.018
The article deals with the letters sent to the Czechoslovak Radio by its listeners during the communist era. The author first characterizes this type of source and suggests that its testimonial value is diminished by the fact that the letters have not survived and have only been reproduced in selective samples (with varying degrees of reliability), mostly in overview reports for a certain period. In terms of the subject matter, the author distinguishes four stages during this forty-year period. From February 1948 until roughly the mid-1950s, propagandistic rhetoric dominated radio broadcasts with the surviving letters from the listeners being mostly...
Under the Supervision of the VLK. The People’s Control Committee of the Slovak Socialist Republic and Citizen Complaints and Suggestions, 1971–1990Essays and Articles
Jaroslav Pažout
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):90-129 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.017
The People's Control Committee of the Slovak Socialist Republic (Výbor lidové kontroly - VLK SSR) was the highest control body in the eastern part of the Czechoslovak Federation from its establishment in 1971 until its termination in 1990. An important part of its work was monitoring the agenda of citizen complaints, statements and suggestions, which represent an important source for our understanding of society and its interactions with the state authorities and bodies during the period of Czechoslovak normalization. The People's Control Committee dealt with submissions directly addressed to them, but also kept records of submissions addressed to...
“Dear Comrade President!” Complaints of Czechoslovak Citizens Addressed to the President of the Republic between 1970 and 1989Essays and Articles
Tomáš Vilímek
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):43-89 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.001
The study focuses on the hitherto neglected issue of complaints that citizens of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic made to their President and his Office between 1970 and 1989. The author describes the activities of the Complaints Department of the Presidential Office and how the complainants' agenda evolved both quantitatively and qualitatively during the period of normalization. He presents the social, ethnic, regional and gender profile of the authors of the complaints, their motivation, common themes and the typical linguistic means the writers used. Using archival sources, he then analyses the five most numerous and important problem areas of...
The Shifting Boundaries of Dictatorship in the Light of Citizen ComplaintsEssays and Articles
Tomáš Vilímek, Václav Rameš
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(1):17-42 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.002
In the introductory essay to the thematic section “Citizen Complaints in Communist Czechoslovakia”, the authors present the theoretical background of this project as well as foreign research into complaints made to official institutions in communist dictatorships (especially in the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union). They draw on the concept of the “shifting boundaries of dictatorships” that has emerged in German historiography since the 1990s in an attempt to clarify the embeddedness of communist rule in the interactions and interrelationships between power structures and society in the GDR and how it played out...
From Where and to Where? / New Impulses at the 7th COHA International Conference on Oral History in Times of CrisisChronicle
Přemysl Vacek
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):804-809
A Conference Commemorating 100 Years Since the Founding of the KSČChronicle
Lucie Marková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):801-803
Transforming Worlds of Work / Post-1989 Privatization in Poland through the Eyes of Factory WorkersBook Reviews
Veronika Pehe
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):791-797
The subject of this review is the monograph Cięcia: Mówiona historia transformacji [Cuts: An Oral History of the Transformation] by Aleksandra Leyk and Joanna Wawrzyniak. The book is the output of a larger project conducted at the University of Warsaw between 2010 and 2018. The project gathered the life stories of workers of initially socialist enterprises in Poland, which were then privatized through foreign direct investment in the 1990s. The review argues that although the volume lacks a comprehensive analytical and interpretive framework, the highly readable oral histories that form the core of the book are an invaluable historical source in themselves....
Journalists as Communism's Fellow Travellers? / A New Look at the International Organization of JournalistsBook Reviews
Mikuláš Pešta
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):787-790
The author of the book under review here is at the same time an important actor in the history presented. This presents an opportunity to assess not only the role of this "Communist front organization" in the Cold War and the authenticity of representation of journalists' interests, but also generally the role of non-communists in such organizations. In the reviewer's opinion, the book often reads more as a chronicle rather than as a historical analysis, but given the lack of other syntheses, it serves its purpose as an introduction to the history of the IOJ.
Childhood and Youth in Socialist CzechoslovakiaBook Reviews
Veronika Knotková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):776-786
The ten-member team of authors, under the lead of Jiří Knapík and Martin Franc, in their collective volume entitled Mezi pionýrským šátkem a mopedem: Děti, mládež a socialismus v českých zemích 1948-1970 [Between a Pioneer Scarf and a Moped: Children, Youth and Socialism in the Czech Lands in 1948-1970] (Praha, Academia 2018) deals fairly successfully with the task of sketching a comprehensive picture of childhood and growing up in the Czech lands in the period between the communist coup and the beginning of the normalization era in Czechoslovakia. In the chapters thematically focused on the perspectives of state, party and parents as authorities,...
The Quest for Freedom Under the Starry SkyBook Reviews
Zdeněk R. Nešpor
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):771-775
The review deals with an extensive book on the history of a quintessentially Czech leisure activity, the "tramping movement". The movement emerged in the early 20th century and its popularity lasted throughout the whole of the century. In the book under review, five cultural historians describe the history of the tramping movement in Czechoslovakia in admirable detail and also provide supplementary material and unique pictures. The reviewer welcomes the analysis of a highly interesting and academically overlooked phenomenon and recommends a shortened version for publication in English.
Social History of State Security in Postwar Poland, Czechoslovakia and East GermanyBook Reviews
Marián Lóži
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):766-770
In Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe (New Haven - London, Yale University Press 2020), historian Molly Pucci approaches the difficult topic of the State Securities in Stalinist Eastern Europe. She examines the formation and development of the security forces during the crucial years of 1945-1953 in three countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. This allows for comparative findings on both the personnel and the functioning of the respective institutions in these countries. In the reviewer's opinion, Pucci offers a highly descriptive, informative analysis, providing a deeper understanding of the State Securities...
Beyond Economic Growth in Postwar East-Central Europe?Book Reviews
Martin Babička
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):760-765
The book Austerities and Aspirations: A Comparative History of Growth: Consumption, and Quality of Life in East Central Europe Since 1945 (Budapest, Central European University Press 2020), written by the Hungarian historian Béla Tomka, provides a "triple approach" to economic development in East-Central Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia and its successor states, and Hungary). Aiming to go beyond the perspective of economic growth alone, Tomka considers economic growth along with consumption and quality of life. Taking a comparative perspective, he assesses convergences and divergences between East-Central Europe and Western Europe. In the reviewer's...
The Many Faces of European Parliamentary Cultures / Revisiting the Latest ResearchBook Reviews
Adéla Gjuričová
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):751-759
The review article discusses several publications dealing with various aspects of parliamentary history in 20th century Europe. It argues that although the books deal with very different topics and have been created at research institutions with varied backgrounds, they share the approach of studying parliamentary cultures. This perspective has the capacity to include rhetorical, procedural, social, gender, visual and other characteristics in the analysis and as such represents a rare opportunity to make political history research highly relevant, sensitive and interdisciplinary.
The Myth of Defending the Homeland / Combat Preparation in Conscripts’ Reflections of Compulsory Military Service (1968–2004)Essays and Articles
Jiří Hlaváček
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2021, 28(3):725-747 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2021.051
The article focuses on conscripts' reflections of compulsory military service in the Czechoslovak and Czech army in 1968-2004, as experienced by different generations. I pay attention mainly to the narrative representation of certain aspects of the meaning of compulsory military service, namely the conscripts' preparedness for the defence of their country and actual deployment in combat. This is done through an analysis and interpretation of oral history interviews. On a practical level, I explore reflections of military exercises, the relation of contemporary witnesses to weapons and their potential use, evaluation of combat vehicles and effectiveness...