Česká naděje na duchovní vlastMaterials

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...

Óscar „býčí hlava“ mezi Afrikou, Paříží a OlomoucíBook Reviews

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...

Překvapivě svěží biografie Mussoliniho i po šedesáti letechBook Reviews

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...

Orálněhistorické sondy do polistopadové firemní kulturyBook Reviews

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...

Mezi Maputem, Lisabonem, Moskvou a Prahou. Autobiografie přední portugalské komunistkyBook Reviews

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...

Sluhové dvou pánů? Právnická fakulta Humboldtovy univerzity v letech 1945-1989Book Reviews

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...

Historie krušnohorského uranu v nesouměrné české a německé opticeBook Reviews

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...

Kontinuity marxistického myšleníBook Reviews

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...

Kmen s mnoha planými výhonkyBook Reviews

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...

Socializmus v Československu ako historický fenoménBook Reviews

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...

Příběh Ladislava Novomeského s otevřeným koncem…?Discussion

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,...

Český historik o osudu slovenského intelektuála v meandroch dvadsiateho storočiaDiscussion

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,...

Elegantne zvládnutá biografiaDiscussion

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,...

Světový názor a autorská (sebe)reflexe v české historiografii soudobých dějinEssays and Articles

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,...

Českoslovenští slavisté v osidlech geopolitiky. Sbor pro výzkum Slovenska a Podkarpatské Rusi při Slovanském ústavu a dilemata mezinárodní spolupráce na výzkumu karpatské kultury mezi válkamiEssays and Articles

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...

Statistické modely ve výzkumu holokaustu. Mezioborový pohled na historické události na příkladu terezínského ghettaEssays and Articles

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,...

„Já a moje žena si děti přejeme!“ Populační politika SS na příkladu příslušníků Gestapa v Protektorátu Čechy a MoravaEssays and Articles

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...

Pomalé překračování tradičních mezí. Fašismus v první ČSR jako metodologický problém české, slovenské a československé historiografie z hlediska historiků „nového konsenzu“Essays and Articles

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...

AnnotationsAnotations

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...