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Copyright of Cultural History / Kultúrne Dejiny / Kulturgeschichte is the property of Verbum - Vydavatel'stvo KU and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The life and work of the lawyer, politician and publicist Aleksey Yulianovich Gerovskiy was influenced by his family affiliation. Many members of his extended family were persecuted and punished by the Habsburg Monarchy regime due to their Russophile political orientation and activities. Gerovskiy himself was imprisoned in 1913 for allegedly preparing a coup to annexe Transcarpathia to the Russian Empire. He managed to escape from prison and emigrated to Russia, where he experienced both revolutions. During the Civil War, he joined the White Army fighting the Bolsheviks. After its defeat, he found a new home in Carpathian Ruthenia, which became an integral part of the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic. He was an intellectually gifted, organisationally capable, and extremely active man who, since the early 1920s, devoted all his efforts to the idea of promoting the Carpathian Ruthenia autonomy within the Czechoslovak Republic. He believed that the Czech political elites deliberately refused to grant autonomous status to the territory, thereby violating the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He had a wide network of international contacts and constantly established new ones with the aim of creating political pressure on the Prague government and especially Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš, which would force them to change their policy towards Carpathian Ruthenia. He also subordinated his involvement towards this goal in the then rapidly developing Orthodox movement. He first tried to establish his connection with the Russian Orthodox Church, but when that failed, his efforts were aimed at supporting the goals of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia. He directed the activities of the Central Executive Committee of the Religious Communities of the Carpathian Ruthenia Church, which he headed, in its intentions. Gerovskiy's anti-Czechoslovak activities serving the interests of the enemies of the successor state and the irredenta in 1927 resulted in the loss of citizenship, forced departure to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and finally to the USA. However, even then, he did not give up on them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study concentrates on the analysis of "Operation 100", which was drafted by the Communist Czech and Slovak State and party authorities in 1951 in the connection to the attempts for consolidation of the situation in Eastern Slovakia after dissolution the Greek Catholic Church. It was believed by the organisers that after the liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church (1950), the fusion of two Churches would take place very quickly and the believers would be transferred to the successor Orthodox Church. The reality of the years 1950-1951 was, however, different and the organisers needed to prevent a scandal. One of the solutions was a forced resettlement of all the priests (without reference to their age, health condition, or civil profession), who rejected to convert to the Orthodox Church. The "State Church office" in Prague in cooperation with their colleagues in the Bratislava branch drafted in mid-1951 a plan called "Operation 100", on the basis of which the priests were supposed to be moved to the Czech lands, especially the border areas, with their families (originally about 100 priests). The aim was to incorporate them into Czech society as workers. The plan was implemented in 1951-1952. The study analyses the conditions, course of events and the aftermath of the resettlement and hints at the circumstances of the 1956/1962 revision of the persecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study intends to reconstruct the trip of a squire-vicar of the Orthodox eparchy of Michalovce, Metod (Kančuha), into the American Carpatho-Russian diocese, in the jurisdiction of Constantinople Patriachate, and to Johnstown, in Penssylvania, in the USA, in 1964, which, in fact, changed into an emigration. One year later, he came back to his home country, because of an amnesty by the president, but the totalitarian regime and the leadership of the Church precluded him, in consequence, from a return to his pastoral activities. The case is set within the broader contexts of the squire’s life story. The study has the character of a primal outline of the problematic, with the aim of summing up the known facts to date, detect any empty spaces and identify follow-up research for this topic, concerning the history of the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia, in the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historiographical problems also include a problem of the jurisdictional affiliation of Orthodox Christians in the territory of Czechoslovakia in the inter-war period, or the conflict between the Serbian and Constantinopolitan Orthodox Churches over the administration of the Orthodox community in the aforementioned territory. As a matter of fact, up to the present, both the Orthodox themselves and historiography have been tackling this problem with difficulties. They have mostly tried to solve it by one-sided preference of one or the other side and have interpreted and evaluated the activities of both Orthodox factions, symbolized by the personalities of bishops Gorazd and Sawatij, accordingly. In this context, the need for a deeper knowledge of the life and work of archimandrite Sawatij (whose civil name was Antonín Vrabec), the most important figure of the early Orthodox Church after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, is also becoming urgent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the period of the First Republic, the journalist Alfred Fuchs stood, as he stated of himself, between two sides – as a Christian he was close to the Catholic Church, but at the same time his views were those of the so-called Castle and he put himself at the service of the state press. His straddling of the two conflicting sides was particularly evident in his reflections on the connection between political views and religious convictions. This paper analyses Fuchs’s defence of democracy from the position of a Catholic intellectual and his efforts to find harmony between the two sides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of the article are religious conflicts in the 1920‘s judged by the Regional court in Uherské Hradiště. In most cases, paragraphs 122 and 303 of the Criminal Code were used. Those paragraphs protected the churches against criticism and disruption of their ceremonies. Other laws were used to protect religion in cases of violence between members of different confessions. The analysis focuses on the discourse of the criticism. Besides that, the causes of conflicts are another topic of the research. The author pays his attention to how the state was solving the conflicts and how the offenders were punished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the conclusion of World War I, questions were raised about the fate of Germany's overseas territories. In the weeks leading up to the Paris Peace Conference in Janu -ary 1919, plans circulated among the European powers about a mandate system in which former colonies would be placed under the "tutelage" of "advanced" European nations. This paper examines the campaign which took place during the first months of independence to appoint Czechoslovakia as a mandate power charged with overseeing Germany's former colonies. By describing the actors behind the campaign and analyzing the rhetoric in the Czech-language press, the paper argues that the demand for Czechoslovak colonies was deeply intertwined with postwar debates about civilizational development and Czech leaders' desire to demonstrate their nation's capacity for self-rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historica Olomucensia: Journal for Central European History is the property of Palacky University in Olomouc and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Constantine's Letters / Konštantínove Listy is the property of Institute for Research of Constantine & Methodius's Cultural Heritage and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)