Czech Journal of Contemporary History, 2022 (vol. 29), issue 2
Essays and Articles
Pomalé překračování tradičních mezí. Fašismus v první ČSR jako metodologický problém české, slovenské a československé historiografie z hlediska historiků „nového konsenzu“
Jakub Drábik
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):379-414 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.022 
This review article focuses on the Czech, Slovak and Czechoslovak historiography of fascism and fascist movements in interwar Czechoslovakia. Its aim is to map, characterize and critically analyze the most important works on Czech and Slovak fascism in the First Republic from contemporary publications to the present. Thus, the chronological scope of the study includes journalistic texts from the interwar period, an extensive output from the communist era, mostly more or less ideologically burdened, as well as the numerous and diverse works of Czech and Slovak historians written since the early 1990s. The author approaches the topic from the point of...
„Já a moje žena si děti přejeme!“ Populační politika SS na příkladu příslušníků Gestapa v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava
Jan Vajskebr, Jan Zumr
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):415-440 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2021.032
The article is based on the ongoing research into the personnel composition of the Gestapo command staff in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which is carried out at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR) in Prague. The authors subscribe to the so-called newer research on perpetrators (neuere Täterforschung), which does not see the members of the Nazi administration and security forces as a homogeneous mass but looks for common and distinct features among them. They devote their article to the topic of population and family politics within the German repressive apparatus in the Protectorate and use concrete cases to...
Statistické modely ve výzkumu holokaustu. Mezioborový pohled na historické události na příkladu terezínského ghetta
Tomáš Jelínek, Tomáš Fedorovič, Štěpán Jurajda, Matěj Bělín
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):441-470 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.003
This interdisciplinary article demonstrates the wide-ranging possibilities of the use of quantitative methods in historical research, specifically in the study of the Holocaust in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The authors present the first results of their research focused on the Jewish prisoners of the Theresienstadt ghetto, in which they applied multivariate statistical models to analyse the unique database of Theresienstadt prisoners, the basis of which is the Terezín Memorial Book (Terezínská pamětní kniha), created by historian Miroslav Kárný (1919–2001). They first introduce some examples of these innovative approaches,...
Českoslovenští slavisté v osidlech geopolitiky. Sbor pro výzkum Slovenska a Podkarpatské Rusi při Slovanském ústavu a dilemata mezinárodní spolupráce na výzkumu karpatské kultury mezi válkami
Milan Ducháček
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):471-511 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.024
The article deals with the politicization of science and the changing relationship between the interwar Czechoslovak Republic and the Soviet Union, in relation to the Soviet influence on Czechoslovak Slavic studies and with an emphasis on research in dialectology, literature and, especially, the vernacular culture of the Carpathian Arc region. It therefore also deals with Czechoslovak scholars’ attitude towards the question of Ukrainian cultural and literary individuality within the Russian/Soviet and Czechoslovak territorial context during the 1920s and 1930s. These tensions manifested themselves, among other things, in the editorial policy...
Světový názor a autorská (sebe)reflexe v české historiografii soudobých dějin
Antonín Kudláč
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):512-540 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.021
The aim of this study is to present the opportunities for research into the worldview of historians, especially historians focused on contemporary history, where it can be assumed that their set of values may influence their interpretation of the relatively recent past. The author first defines the notion of worldview and justifies the analytical use of this concept in historiographical texts. He also considers the relationship between memory, history and historiography in the given context. The author states that not many Czech historians have so far reflected on the relationship between (individual and collective) memory and the work of the historian,...
Materials
Česká naděje na duchovní vlast
Jan Patočka
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):641-661
This section presents an unknown text by the prominent Czech philosopher Jan Patočka (1907-1977) from the era of the Second Czechoslovak Republic (30 September 1938-15 March 1939), which was not published in his collected writings. Three commentaries accompany the text. The article "Czech Hope for a Spiritual Homeland" was published in the magazine Naše vojsko [Our Army] on 1 February 1939, in which Patočka reacts to the current traumatic situation of Czech society after the Munich Agreement and the end of the Masaryk's First Republic. In the first brief commentary, Alexander Matoušek shows the importance of this article in the context of Patočka's...
Discussion
Elegantne zvládnutá biografia
Adam Hudek
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):541-549
Zdeněk Doskočil’s biography, V žaláři a vyhnanství: Ladislav Novomeský v éře stalinismu a poststalinismu [In Prison and Exile: Ladislav Novomeský in the Era of Stalinism and Post-Stalinism], presents the fate of the Slovak and Czechoslovak poet, journalist and politician Ladislav Novomeský (1904–1976). In interwar Prague, Novomeský was involved in the activities of the Slovak left-wing cultural group DAV. During the Second World War he became a member of the illegal leadership of the Slovak Communist Party and after the war he was a deputy of the National Assembly and, as Commissioner (povereník) of Education and Enlightenment,...
Český historik o osudu slovenského intelektuála v meandroch dvadsiateho storočia
Elena Londáková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):550-561
Zdeněk Doskočil’s biography, V žaláři a vyhnanství: Ladislav Novomeský v éře stalinismu a poststalinismu [In Prison and Exile: Ladislav Novomeský in the Era of Stalinism and Post-Stalinism], presents the fate of the Slovak and Czechoslovak poet, journalist and politician Ladislav Novomeský (1904–1976). In interwar Prague, Novomeský was involved in the activities of the Slovak left-wing cultural group DAV. During the Second World War he became a member of the illegal leadership of the Slovak Communist Party and after the war he was a deputy of the National Assembly and, as Commissioner (povereník) of Education and Enlightenment,...
Příběh Ladislava Novomeského s otevřeným koncem…?
Markéta Devátá
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):562-568
Zdeněk Doskočil’s biography, V žaláři a vyhnanství: Ladislav Novomeský v éře stalinismu a poststalinismu [In Prison and Exile: Ladislav Novomeský in the Era of Stalinism and Post-Stalinism], presents the fate of the Slovak and Czechoslovak poet, journalist and politician Ladislav Novomeský (1904–1976). In interwar Prague, Novomeský was involved in the activities of the Slovak left-wing cultural group DAV. During the Second World War he became a member of the illegal leadership of the Slovak Communist Party and after the war he was a deputy of the National Assembly and, as Commissioner (povereník) of Education and Enlightenment,...
Book Reviews
Socializmus v Československu ako historický fenomén
Juraj Marušiak
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):569-579
Československo v období socialismu 1945–1989 [Czechoslovakia in the Period of Socialism, 1945–1989] by Jan Rychlík is, according to the reviewer, the first full-fledged expert synthesis of Czechoslovak history in the period from the Second World War to the fall of the communist regime in almost thirty years. Unlike other previous works of a similar focus, the well-known Czech historian and expert on the history of Czech-Slovak relations takes due account of the Slovak dimension of internalpolitical development. He also compares the developments in Czechoslovakia with the situation in the other states of the Soviet bloc. Drawing...
Kmen s mnoha planými výhonky
Šimona Löwensteinová
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):580-589
The book by historian Jan Rataj and political scientists Miloš Dlouhý and Antonín Háka entitled Proti systému! Český radikální konzervativismus, fašismus a nacionální socialismus 20. a 21. století [Against the System! Czech Radical Conservatism, Fascism and National Socialism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries] comprehensively discusses the multifaceted phenomenon of the extreme political right in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic from 1918 to the present. In the first part, the authors cover the period of the First and Second Czechoslovak Republics, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the wartime Slovak Republic. The period...
Kontinuity marxistického myšlení
Vlastimil Hála
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):590-600
Marxismus a skok do království svobody: Dějiny komunistické utopie [Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The History of Communist Utopia], a comprehensive monograph by the Polish historian of ideas Andrzej Walicki, is the Czech translation of the original Polish edition entitled Marksizm i skok do królewstwa wolności: Dzieje komunistycznej utopii (Warszawa, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN 1996) and represents, according to the reviewer, a very serious attempt at an all-embracing interpretation of the genesis of Marxist thought from its “classics” through Leninism and Stalinism to older and more recent revisionism. Walicki...
Historie krušnohorského uranu v nesouměrné české a německé optice
Tomáš Dvořák
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):601-606
The publication by Czech historian Zbyněk Zeman and his German colleague Rainer Karlsch Na uranu záleží! Středoevropský uran v mezinárodní politice 1900–1960 is a translation of the English edition Uranium Matters! Central European Uranium in International Politics, 1900–1960 (Budapest – New York, Central European University Press 2008). The original was published in German in 2002. As a result of this time gap, the work is, in some respects, outdated compared to current research. It deals with the history of mining and processing of uranium ore in the Erzgebirge region near the Czech-German border, but as the review...
Sluhové dvou pánů? Právnická fakulta Humboldtovy univerzity v letech 1945-1989
Petr Kreuz
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):607-616
Diener zweier Herren: DDR-Juristen zwischen Recht und Macht [Servants of Two Masters: GDR Lawyers Between Law and Power] written by German-born American legal scholar Inga Markovits, discusses the history of and everyday life at the Humboldt University Law School in Berlin between 1945 and 1989. Markovits examines the development of the East Berlin Law School and its teachers from three different perspectives. First, she traces the school’s adjustment to the communist dictatorship and its ideology, which was completed at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. Second, she seeks the signs of reluctance to make such adaptations. Third, she attempts...
Mezi Maputem, Lisabonem, Moskvou a Prahou. Autobiografie přední portugalské komunistky
Marta Edith Holečková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):617-621
The autobiography of the Portuguese communist intellectual and politician Cândida Ventura Můj rozchod s komunismem [My Break with Communism] was originally published in Portuguese under the title O „Socialismo” que eu vivi: Testemunho de uma ex-dirigente do PCP (Lisboa, O Jornal 1984). The review presents the extraordinary life story of Ventura. She was born in 1918 in what is today the Mozambican capital Maputo, and, after joining the Portuguese Communist Party, became involved in the illegal resistance against Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal. She then became a member of the Communist Party leadership, but was imprisoned...
Orálněhistorické sondy do polistopadové firemní kultury
Josef Havránek, Štěpán Truhlařík
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):622-628
Lenka Krátká based her book Letos musíme být spokojenější než loni! Proměny české firemní kultury po roce 1989 [This Year We Must Be Happier Than Last Year! Transformations of Czech Corporate Culture After 1989] on her analysis of oral history interviews with thirty respondents who were employed in the management of Czech and Czechoslovak branches of Western companies in the 1990s, mostly in the financial sector and information technology. Krátká’s intention is to use Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality to uncover the constitution of neoliberal subjectivity in Czech post-socialist society and to explore the degree...
Překvapivě svěží biografie Mussoliniho i po šedesáti letech
Marek Šmíd
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):629-633
The book Mussolini: Vzestup a pád duceho by the extremely prolific and widely read British historian Christopher Hibbert is a translation of the English original, Mussolini: The Rise and Fall of Il Duce (London, Longman 1962). The reviewer points out that, although the book does not consider more recent historical research, it has hardly aged in the sixty years since its first publication and it is one of the most accomplished biographies of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945). It comprehensively discusses the Italian fascist dictator’s career and places it in a broader historical context. While it concentrates mainly on the last...
Óscar „býčí hlava“ mezi Afrikou, Paříží a Olomoucí
Hana Bortlová-Vondráková
Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(2):634-640
The parallel bilingual Spanish-Czech publication Óscar Domínguez en Checoslovaquia / v Československu 1946–1949 edited by Pavel Štěpánek and Isidro Hernández Gutiérrez also served as the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name which was held at the Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (TEA) museum from October 2016 to May 2017. The Spanish painter Óscar Domínguez (1906–1957) was born in the capital of the Canary Islands and joined the international surrealist movement in Paris. He visited Czechoslovakia from 1946 to 1949, where he participated in several exhibitions and socialized with Czech and Slovak artists. A large number of his...