Hitler’s Priests in Slovakia? On the Convergence of Catholicism and Fascism in Nazi “New Europe”Essays and Articles

Miloslav Szabó

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):691-723 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.020  

Historians of the Czech Lands Met in Ústí nad LabemChronicle

Veronika Pehe

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):944-946  

An Active Participant and Witness to a Century / Karel Hrubý (9. 12. 1923 – 6. 6. 2021)Chronicle

Petr Zídek

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):941-943  

First Steps Towards a Fruitful Analysis of the Causes and the Outcome of the Kosovo Crisis / Reflections on the Book by the Serbian Historian Petar RistanovićBook Reviews

Jan Pelikán

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):928-938  

On Todor Zhivkov's Tastes, Shkembe Chorba and Food for AstronautsBook Reviews

Martin Franc

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):920-927  

On the Most Diligent Chronicler of the Eastern BlocBook Reviews

Tomáš Zahradníček

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):911-919  

Czechoslovak Women in British Uniforms during the Second World WarBook Reviews

Daniela Spenser

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):906-910  

Recalling the Story of a Forgotten UniversityBook Reviews

Michaela Budiman

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):901-905  

"Made in Czechoslovakia" Socialism as a Failed Social Experiment / Searching for the Causes of FailureBook Reviews

Denisa Nečasová

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):897-900  

The Struggle for Legitimacy / A Contribution to the Scholarship on Domination and Participation in the Socialist Dictatorships of East-Central EuropeBook Reviews

Václav Sixta

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):889-896  

The Munich Agreement and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as a Tool of Russian Revisionist PropagandaDiscussion

Ivan Beliaev

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):877-885 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.041  

Socialism as Ideology, Socialism as Legacy / Attitudes of the (Socialist) Republic of Slovenia Towards Its Socialist Past (1980–2004)Essays and Articles

Tjaša Konovšek

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):852-873 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.043  

The Museal Production of Hungary’s Inorganic Past and Poland’s Postponed Victory / The Case of the House of Terror and the Warsaw Rising MuseumEssays and Articles

Rose Smith

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):825-851 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.042  

The Iron or Rustproof Felix? Felix Dzerzhinsky as a Symbol of Revolutionary Fanaticism, Trivialization of Injustice and Dubious Democracy in Soviet and Post-Soviet Era RussiaEssays and Articles

Tomas Sniegon

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):801-824 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.036  

Interpreting the Creation of Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989 / Shifts and Changes in the Politics of History and MemoryEssays and Articles

Jan Hálek – Jakub Štofaník

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):772-800 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.044  

The Eternal Legacy of the Great Patriotic War? The Political Instrumentalization of the Soviet Victory over Fascism and Its Utilization in Czechoslovakia after 1968 and in the Czech Republic TodayEssays and Articles

Marie Černá

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2022, 29(3):724-771 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2022.037  

The Czech Hopes for a Spiritual HomelandMaterials

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 “The Bull’s Head” Between Africa, Paris and OlomoucBook 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...

The Surprisingly Fresh Biography of Mussolini Even After Sixty YearsBook 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...

Oral History Probes into Post-socialist Corporate CultureBook 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...

Between Maputo, Lisbon, Moscow and Prague. Autobiography of a Prominent
Portuguese CommunistBook 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...

Servants of Two Masters? Humboldt University Law School in the Years 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...

The History of the Erzgebirge Uranium in an Asymmetric Czech-German PerspectiveBook 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...

The Continuities of Marxist ThoughtBook 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...

A Trunk with Many Dead Branches. Mapping the Czech Radical Right
Over the Last CenturyBook 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...

Socialism in Czechoslovakia as a Historical PhenomenonBook 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 internal political development. He also compares the developments in Czechoslovakia with the situation in the other states of the Soviet bloc. Drawing...

The Story of Ladislav Novomeský with an Open Ending...?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,...

A Czech Historian on the Fate of a Slovak Intellectual in the Labyrinths
of the Twentieth CenturyDiscussion

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,...

An Elegantly Handled BiographyDiscussion

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,...

The Worldview and the Author’s (Self)Reflection in Czech Contemporary HistoriographyEssays 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,...