Did Chartist Environmentalism Exist? Charter 77 and Environmental Reflection

Kristina Andělová

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):351-384 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2023.044  

The question of ecological critique is an important research area in the study of Czechoslovak dissent and Charter 77, yet it has not received any systematic research attention. Scholarly literature has privileged research on (semi)official ecological movements or expert forms of ecological criticism and reflection on the state of the environment in the so-called grey zone, which became increasingly visible in communist Czechoslovakia during the period of normalization. The author raises the question of how Charter 77 related to environmental issues, and shows that the primary emphasis on human and civil rights initially side-lined their reception...

Charter 77 “Workshop”

Marek Suk

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):385-413 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2023.040  

The subject of the article is the hitherto unexplored process of the creation and publication of the Charter 77 documents - documents that fundamentally presented the opinions and analyses of this most important dissident initiative in Czechoslovakia between 1977 and 1989. They covered the state of human and civil rights in the country, various other social and political issues, and the situation of dissent itself. The author refers to this process as a "workshop", which he understands figuratively as a thinking and creative environment in which ideas, proposals and suggestions are born and implemented. In order to analyse the functioning of the Chartist...

The Anatomy of Another Reticence / Charter 77 Documents on the Third World

Marta Edith Holečková – Veronika Pehe

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):414-442 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2023.039  

Although Charter 77, as the most important Czechoslovak human rights initiative of the second half of the twentieth century, focused mainly on upholding human rights in Czechoslovakia, in its universalistic conception of human rights issues, the initiative was also interested in human rights abroad. The article examines the hitherto unexplored relationship of Charter 77 with the countries of the "Third World", thus pointing to its global dimension. It asks why Charter 77 expressed itself rather sporadically and reticently about events in these countries and why a number of contemporary international political events did not resonate at all within the...

Charter 77 in American “Translation” / The Image of Czechoslovak Dissent in the American Press in 1977

Petra James

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):443-492 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2023.045  

The study traces how the American press covered Charter 77's appearances in the first year of its existence, a subject hitherto unstudied. Czechoslovak dissent attracted international attention after major Western newspapers published the constitutive "Charter 77 Declaration" of January 1, 1977. The subsequent prosecution of the Charter's spokespersons and other signatories sparked a wave of protest and support in the West. The interest of the Western media was crucial for the dissidents, as it was the main way to inform the international public about their activities, and often the only way to get some protection against domestic repression. The situation...

The Czechoslovak Consulate in Kyiv as an Object of NKVD Interest in 1936–1938

Jan Dvořák - Anna Chlebina

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):493-524 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2023.033  

The article aims to map the counterintelligence activities of the authorities of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del - NKVD) of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic against the Consulate General of the Czechoslovak Republic in Kyiv, which existed between June 1936 and April 1938. The authors make primary use of recently declassified documents from Ukrainian security archives and diplomatic reports of Consul General Rudolf Brabec (1884-1955). They first outline earlier Czechoslovak diplomatic representations in Soviet Ukraine and point out that their functioning was of particular importance for the...

Czech Contemporary History – Reflections from Elsewhere / A Survey (Part Two)

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):527  

This year, the journal Soudobé dějiny / CJCH celebrates thirty years of its foundation. On this occasion, we reached out to selected foreign historians with a brief survey. Its purpose is to bring together diverse reflections on the current state of and trends in contemporary history in the Czech Republic. In the current issue, we offer the first set of responses to the following questions: 1. How do you think Czech contemporary history, as a discipline, is doing? How do you perceive the development of Czech contemporary history from the end of the communist regime to today? In your opinion, which topics and research perspectives remain “blind...

České soudobé dějiny – viděno odjinud (II. díl)

Christiane Brenner, Chad Bryant, Peter Bugge, Adam Hudek, Mark Kramer, Piotr M. Majewski, Niklas Perzi

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):528-566  

Displaced Persons as a Stand-Alone Research Topic? On Current Issues and Trends in Displaced Persons Research

Jana Kasíková

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):567-578 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2023.036  

Displaced persons as a result of the Second World War have been the subject of long-term research, which has gradually developed into a stand-alone discipline. The author reflects on its development, current trends and future prospects. Using the examples of several thematic conferences abroad and the panel discussion at the Congress of Czech Historians in Ústí nad Labem in September 2022, she illustrates the specific areas of interest, the proclaimed challenges of the field, and possible interconnections with other topics. She finds the publishing and popularization activities of scholars studying the issue of displaced persons to be abundant while...

The One-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named

Jiří Křesťan

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):581-593  

Jan Chadima's book, simply entitled Rudolf Slánský, is a biography of one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1921, who eventually became a victim of the largest trial of "internal enemies of the party" in post-war Czechoslovakia. Between the wars, Slánský (1901-1952) served in various positions in the regional and central party apparatus, and by the 1930s he was already in the party leadership. He spent the war in exile in Moscow. In 1945 he became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the KSČ, and as such he had the main organizational role in building the mass party that took power in Czechoslovakia...

As Told by a Diplomat

Jan Koura

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):594-599  

Diplomat and author of numerous award-winning books George F. Kennan (1904-2005) became an influential figure in American foreign policy shortly after the Second World War. As chargé d'affaires to Moscow, in the so-called Long Telegram, he articulated the principles that became the basis of the strategy of containment between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1938–1939, he worked at the embassy in Prague and thirty years later published a selection of diplomatic reports on the situation in the Czechoslovak Second Republic and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which he sent from Prague (and later also from Berlin) to Washington....

A Deep Insight into the Sad End of a Successful Man

Martin Franc

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):600-604  

In her book Soukromá válka Huga Vavrečky: Mikrohistorie z rozhraní soudobých dějin (1945-1952) [Hugo Vavrečka's Private War: A Microhistory from the Edge of Contemporary History, 1945-1952)], the historian Jana Wohlmuth Markupová presents the fate of journalist, economist, manager, diplomat and for a short time also politician Hugo Vavrečka (1880-1952). The first Czechoslovak ambassador to Hungary and then to Austria, in the interwar period Vavrečka was also commercial director of the Baťa Works and, in autumn 1938, at a critical time for Czechoslovakia, a government minister. He was also the grandfather of the playwright and president Václav Havel...

The Revived Fates of the Ravensbrück Women

Monika Vrzgulová

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):605-610  

In her monograph Zpřetrhané životy: Československé ženy v nacistickém koncentračním táboře Ravensbrück v letech 1939-1945 [Broken Lives: Czechoslovak Women in the Nazi Concentration Camp of Ravensbrück, 1939-1945], Pavla Plachá focuses on the fate of women imprisoned in this camp who were citizens of the Czechoslovak Republic before 1 October 1938. This framework allows her to comprehensively and at the same time diversely examine women from diverse ethnic, social, cultural and territorial backgrounds: from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, from the Czech borderlands occupied by the Germans after the Munich dictatorship, from the wartime...

The Story of Lidice’s Last Pastor

Marek Šmíd

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):611-615  

In his biography Nejvyšší oběť: Poslední lidický farář Josef Štemberka (1869–1942) [The Ultimate Sacrifice: The Last Parish Priest of Lidice, Josef Štemberka (1869–1942)], the church historian František Kolouch tells the life story of a Roman Catholic priest who was executed by the German occupiers on 10 June 1942, along with other male inhabitants of the destroyed Central Bohemian village of Lidice. The biography of the extraordinary personality of Josef Štemberka, who had served as a parish priest in the village since 1909, is intertwined with the political, economic and social history of the village of Lidice, the local region...

Past Futures of Czechoslovak Economic Transformation

Matěj Moravanský

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):616-625  

In his monograph Trh bez přívlastků, nebo ekonomickou demokracii? Spory o podobu vlastnické transformace v porevolučním Československu [A Market without Attributes, or Economic Democracy? Disputes over the Form of Property Transformation in Post-revolutionary Czechoslovakia], the historian Václav Rameš deals with the discussions and conceptual disputes on the form of economic transformation in post-communist Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s. In this, a group of liberal politicians and economists led by the then federal Finance Minister Václav Klaus came to the fore with a programme of rapid and massive expropriation of economic enterprises...

The Meaning of Life, Inner Exile, and Creative Activity / The Many Faces of the Folkloric Movement of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

Oto Polouček

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):626-631  

The collective volume Tíha a beztíže folkloru: Folklorní hnutí druhé poloviny 20. století v českých zemích [The Gravity and Weightlessness of Folklore: The Folkloric Movement of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century in the Czech Lands] edited by the ethnochoreologist Daniela Stavělová, details the history of the folklore movement in the western part of Czechoslovakia in the second half of the last century. The reviewer reminds us that the phenomenon of representing stylized artistic creation inspired by traditional folk culture is an important and still understudied chapter of the cultural history of the Czech lands in the twentieth century....

With Humour on the Lips Across Contemporary History

Pavel Mücke

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):632-641  

The subject of the review is the book "Stretnú sa v lietadle…" Politický vtip v druhej polovici 20. storočia a v súčasnosti ["Three Blokes Meet On a Plane..." Political Jokes in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century and Today] by Slovak ethnologist Eva Šipöczová. The reviewer first reminds us that folk humour has long been a privileged object of interest of folklore studies and ethnology and that historiography only recognized its research potential in connection with methodological innovations in the second half of the twentieth century. He points to the basic works on this topic produced in Czech history in recent decades, and then...

The Merciless Memories of President Beneš’s Nephew

Radovan Lovčí

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):642-648  

Bohuš (Bohuslav) Beneš (1901–1977) was the nephew of the second Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš (1884–1948). He worked as a journalist and diplomat in the United States and Canada, and also wrote both non-fiction and fiction. The reviewer appreciates the publication of his memoirs Synovcem prezidenta [The President's Nephew], written in American exile and edited by historians Pavel Carbol and Martin Nekola. The memoirs are a unique source for better understanding of the fates of many members of Beneš' extended family and relatives, who played larger or smaller roles in Czechoslovak public life, including his uncle Edvard Beneš,...

Milan Hauner, a One of a Kind Historian of International Relations (4. 3. 1940 – 26. 9. 2022)

Vít Smetana

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):651-660  

The obituary commemorates the distinguished Czech historian of international relations Milan Hauner. He was born on 4 March 1940 in Gota, Thuringia, into a Czech-German family, but grew up in Prague. His grandfather and uncle, resistance fighters in the Second World War, fell victim to the Nazis, generating Hauner's professional interest. He studied history at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. After the Soviet invasion in 1968, however, he decided to emigrate. He was awarded a scholarship at St. John's College in the University of Cambridge where he also earned his doctorate in international relations in 1972. In the following decades he worked...

Political Personalities of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and Their Family (Dis)Entanglements / A Colloquium Report

Kristýna Bernardová

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):661-664  

The colloquium entitled "Ancestors and Descendants of the State Socialism Elites: The Fates of Families in the Czech Lands in the Long Twentieth Century", which the author reports, was organized on February 15, 2023, in Prague by historians Stanislav Holubec and Vojtěch Čurda under the auspices of the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Its main goal, which was fulfilled, was to present selected leading figures of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from various periods of its existence in the broad context of intergenerational family ties during the twentieth century. The colloquium had a strong sociological overlap, as the speakers...

Prague Conference on Identities in Former Yugoslavia

Ondřej Vojtěchovský

Soudobé dějiny / CJCH 2023, 30(2):665-673  

The author reports on the international historical conference "Centralist Ambitions and Peripheral Realities in the Twentieth Century: Contested Identities in Yugoslavia", which took place on 14 May 2023 in Prague and was co-organized by the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of World History of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast Europe Studies (Leibniz-Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung) in Regensburg and the Croatian Historical Institute (Hrvatski institut za povijest) in Zagreb. Researchers from the former Yugoslavia, Belgium and the Czech Republic participated...