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In 1966, a Radio Free Europe (RFE) report estimated that seven in ten Czechs and Slovaks listened to Radio Vienna, making it the most popular foreign station in Czechoslovakia. Yet conventional narratives of Western radio in socialist central Europe highlight the role played by runner-up RFE. By focusing on the practice of listening to German-language radio in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1969, this article shows that cross-border, German-language listening mattered not only between the Germanies, but also in central Europe, where listening habits were shaped by the region's multilingual heritage. In addition to highlighting German's significance as a language of regional communication, the article reveals the importance of cross-border contacts and the significance of light entertainment in Cold War central Europe. Rather than separating listeners out by citizenship, foreign radio listening fostered solidarities that cut across national boundaries and divided people by generation, geography, class, and technical dexterity instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Czechoslovakia was the first industrialized economy to substantially increase tariffs after the First World War. At that time, Czechoslovakia was highly export-oriented, with a large trade surplus in industrial goods. We argue that the introduction of tariffs was a consequence of the ethnically heterogeneous structure of the economy. German capital controlled the highly export-oriented light and consumer goods industries; Czech capital dominated in industries that were far less export-oriented or even import-competing, such as machinery, transportation equipment, and electrical goods. Trade and exchange-rate policy preferences of both groups clearly differed; however, the policy decision-making process (at least until 1926) was completely controlled by Czechoslovaks and Czech capital, explicitly committed to a nationalist takeover of Czechoslovakia's economy. This is why it was possible to implement an exchange rate and trade policy that ran contrary to theoretical expectations based on the general (national aggregate) indicators of the national economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Soviet-sponsored communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in February 1948 prompted hundreds of government officials to seek opportunities to escape or to remain abroad. Among those who sought opportunities to escape were nine Czechoslovakian military intelligence officers from the Main Staff Second Directorate, who defected to American or British occupation forces in Germany and Austria from March 1948 to May 1949 (see Table 1). Based on these lives of these officers as reflected in archival records, this article pieces together a picture of early communist Czechoslovakian intelligence targets, communist suspicion of Western allies, and the officers' motivations for leaving their intelligence positions, to show the effects of the communist takeover of Czechoslovakian on intelligence officers and operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents three case studies of projects to construct new urban areas situated around the capital city of Prague. These urban areas were among the largest Czechoslovak urban planning projects and were intended as comprehensive environmental planning. Indeed, all of these projects included a formal declaration of the importance of protecting the existing environment while also creating a new environment for socialist people. The first of these case studies is the unrealized project of the city of Etarea (1967) planned for 135.000 inhabitants and based on an eco-friendly systems approach. The two other case studies represent implemented projects: Jižní Město (South City) which was, in 1971 planned for 64.000 inhabitants (then in the 1980s for more than 100.000 inhabitants) and Jihozápadní Město (Southwest City) which was, in 1968 planned for 80.000 inhabitants (then in the 1980s for more than 147.000 inhabitants). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presented study reconstructs how the concept of the total united Sudeten German National Community (sudetendeutsche totale einheitliche Volksgemeinschaft) was formed in the national conservative youth camp (i.e., among the bourgeois, rural and Catholic German youth in Czechoslovakia in the interwar period). Although this goal was repeated and highlighted by many youth leaders, they were already diverging in the concrete way of its implementation for they did not want to give up the independence of their associations by "merging" with one "chosen" organization. The study reconstructs the educational programs of the nationally conservative Sudeten German youth from the years 1918–1933 and 1933–1938, when under the weight of the political and economic crisis in Czechoslovakia there was increasingly intense "pressure" on the unity of the German national conservative youth, which, according to educational agitators was to be led under one banner, in the spirit of a unified nationalist and racially pure educational program, and with the aim of replacing politics and achieving a unified national community through education. Its exploitation for national political, undemocratic and pro-fascist goals was evident in the associations and societies in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to discuss the cult of Czech Slavonism in the context of the forming of the modern Czech nation and the subsequent constitution of an independent Czechoslovak state. The primary sources for completing this study are statements of particular people about Slavonism, national identity and the Czechoslovak state. The secondary sources include Czech, Slovak and foreign literature on Slavonism, the idea of Slavic solidarity and Pan-Slavism. The basis of the work is an analytic-synthetic approach with elements of sampling into historical situations in which Slavonism took up the role of a cult. The goal of this study is to offer evidence for the claim that the topic of Cults in History is a wider phenomenon than usually observed and that a thought, idea or ideology is also a part of it. The topic is primarily elaborated upon from the viewpoint of cultural history. However, it also serves as a contribution to the history of ideas and ideologies, focusing on illustrating the impact of Slavonism in different stages of its existence and the attempts to use it to support national and state ambitions. In the first part, the paper clarifies Slavonism as a set of visions of kinship amongst Slavic communities. It focuses on the fact that Slavonism reached its utmost significance while supporting the formation of modern Slavic nations, when it was an inseparable part of the Czech national consciousness that was just being formed, underlining the fact that it was at this time when it was presented as a cult that should (or even could) not be doubted, except by enemies. Thus, the cult of Slavonism took part in defining friend and enemy and the bipolarity in perceiving national types and stereotypes that was never far from escalating nationalism. The cult retained this role well into the interwar period, in the independent Czechoslovak Republic. Furthermore, it was used (and abused) as an important “argument” supporting the independent state in which the Czech community should retain a dominant role. The article does not follow on the cult of Slavonism as a means of supporting the dreamed of Czecho-Slovakship and the desired CzechoSlovak nation per se, but it admits such a role nevertheless – this role, together with the role of the cult of Slavonism in the post-World War II Czechoslovak state, will be elaborated upon in the next work of the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the key role played by the Vienna School of Art History in the art sector in Czechoslovakia. Also cited are the roles played by such personalities as Oldrich Stefan, Antonin Matejcek, and Max Dvorák, Dvorák's Vienna method of historical research, and the baroque principle of artistic development introduced by Vojtech Birnbaum.

Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were two successor states of the Austro-Hungarian empire at great pains in the interwar period to portray themselves, both domestically and internationally, as 'victor states' of the First World War, even though both states inherited societies that were deeply fractured by the experience of war. The symbol of the pro-Entente war volunteer was an important part of both states' interwar cultures of victory. Such volunteers represented just a fraction of war veterans in both countries, but they were given great prominence in their respective state-forming cultures. This article is a study of the origins and the nature of this important entanglement. It begins by defining the problematic nature of the 'culture of victory' in the region, before going on to explore the common origins of the volunteer movements in the wartime pro-Entente émigré groups. It then moves on to a discussion of consequences of the privileging of volunteer veterans in the institutional, political, and commemorative cultures of the two states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The table of contents for this issue are provided in addition to an introduction discusses topics of articles including the geopolitics of Ruthenia before, during, and after World War II, the French Expeditionary Force stationed in Newport, Rhode Island then Williamsburg, Virginia during the American Revolution, and a meta-analysis of book reviews for historian Jonathan Israel's works on the Enlightenment.

This article analyzes the activity of schools and educational courses in the camp for interned Ukrainian Galician Army combatants in Německé Jablonné (Czechoslovakia) in 1919-1920. One of their main tasks was elimination of illiteracy among soldiers. Soldiers who had a sufficient educational background (complete elementary education or incomplete secondary education) attended special courses covering cooperation, milk production, agriculture, etc. Besides, interned soldiers could learn the trade of shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, locksmiths, bookbinders, and electricians; there were also veterinarian and medical studies. Petty officers had an opportunity to finish their school education and prepare to enter higher educational institutions in Czechoslovakia. Due to the above activity, interned Ukrainian soldiers could find a job connected with their professional experience within Czechoslovakia, while university graduates worked as engineers, teachers, doctors, etc. The activity of camp educational courses resulted in a significant drop in illiteracy rates among interned soldiers of the Ukrainian Galician Army. That phenomenon helped them be prepared for civil status. The educational initiative in camps provided Ukrainian soldiers with great opportunities for studying abroad according to their civil qualifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the phenomenon of popular violence in the first months and years after the end of World War I on the basis of a comparison between the Bohemian lands, forming the central part of the newly established Czechoslovakia, and Austria, as another successor state to the former Habsburg monarchy. Aside from the continuities, new forms of violence increasingly emerged in the first years after the end of the war, and also the “language” of violence was transformed. While in Czechoslovakia, the framework within which people were learning to understand the new world was shaped by the national and republican discourse oriented to the future, in Austria the collective identities and mentalities were being formed along the lines of particular party political blocks. In both cases, the nationalization and politicization of violence respectively contributed to the emergence of new forms of popular violence; but at the same time they could also be used for its de-escalation, necessary for the re-integration of society disrupted by the wartime experience. However, even if both countries went out from the war on different paths, the violence stayed part of their political culture and it could be mobilized again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the concepts of work and masculinities proposed by the German language newspaper Der Pionier. The newspaper was published by the Baťa shoe company in Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938. This was also the period when the company had its greatest international impact. Not only did Baťa expand to other industrial branches during that time, but also company towns were built in several continents. Baťa's ideas on gender were based on discourses about national identity, American ideals of the family and the promise of social advancement. But they were, as the article argues, also strongly linked to a gendered notion of work. Men and women were assigned complementary spheres of life. Gender hierarchies were not only promoted by the Baťa media but also realized with the help of the company's gendered policies. Wage work was to be men's responsibility while consumption, household and family work should be performed by women. The desire to work, whether outside or inside the home, should be innate in every human being. Der Pionier imagined the ideal male worker as an entrepreneur, laying the responsibility of his own and his family's fate as well as the future of the Czechoslovak society in the hands of the individual. The biography of the company's founder Tomáš Baťa was used as a model career: it tells the story of a poor artisan who became the boss of an international enterprise. Der Pionier paired the ideal of the entrepreneurial worker with images of working class culture and Americanism. The article shows how these masculinities were designed in relation to femininities and considers Baťa's ideas within the context of gender and work in Czechoslovakia as well as the role of the Baťa Company in Czechoslovak politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Havel's essay The Power of the Powerless described a unique situation in post-war Europe, when the Communist system of power was exhausted and those deprived of power under it were beginning to know each other and cooperate with each other in a new kind of underground. I describe the spiritual condition of a certain kind of young person in this underground, eager to find another cultural identity than the one offered by the official ideology and anxious to "live in truth." I suggest that the sudden collapse of Communism and the advent of a new consumer society left those young people in a certain measure bereft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the monarchy of Czechoslovakia between 1918-1919, and discusses its disintegration with Austria and Hungary, social revolution and Hungarian elites.

Postwar Czechoslovak authorities refused to exempt German-speaking Jews from anti- German policies, forcing them to prove their anti-fascist credentials in order to avoid persecution and expulsion. Documents from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Mission to Czechoslovakia not only shed light on the cases of expelled German-speaking Jews, but also show that many sought to be included on transports because they found conditions in postwar Czechoslovakia unbearable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jan Kavan (b. 1946) was one of the most active émigrés who fled Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring. As his mother was British, Kavan settled in London. A devout socialist, he founded the Palach Press Agency and established a smuggling network for circulating banned literature to and from Czechoslovakia. Kavan was also active in the European Nuclear Disarmament movement. On his return to Czechoslovakia in 1990, Kavan held several important posts, including that of foreign minister of the Czech Republic and president of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Based largely on archival documents, this essay sheds light on some of the more controversial aspects of Kavan’s personality, life, and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to evaluate the challenge posed by folk, country and tramping music to the Communist authorities in 'normalization' Czechoslovakia (1969-89) and the measures taken to limit their impact. It outlines the traditions and the historical context of folkspectrum music, considers the reception of songs by the authorities and the constraints that were imposed upon their performers, analyses the defining characteristics of the compositions-focusing on lexical repetition and the use of recurrent themes and motifs in the creation, exploration and celebration of realities outside the officially promoted discourse of the time and evaluates and exemplifies the use of colloquial language as a means of expressing informality and intimacy. The study concludes that, although it is impossible to quantify the effects of the music on the approved authoritative discourse, on balance, the folk-spectrum phenomenon was an unwelcome distraction to the Communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the issue of Czechoslovak tourists on the Adriatic coast during the Interwar period (1918'1939). Our paper will give a short overview of the beginnings of organized tourism from Czech and Slovak lands to the Eastern coast of Adriatic Sea. In the main part of the text, the article focuses on tourists from Czechoslovakia in the Kingdom of Serb, Croats and Slovenes (from 1929 Kingdom of Yugoslavia). They belonged to the most numerous group of tourists during the entire Interwar period, and their importance in developing tourism in that area was signifi cant. In our text, we will analyse major tourist trends and which were the main obstacles for developing of tourism on Adriatic. The focus will be on the issue of Czechoslovak investments in the eastern Adriatic coast and the issue of tourist industry workers as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the dilemma of the small Bohemian Lands/Czechoslovak nation(-state) in staying “in” or “out” of the larger Habsburg supranational entity in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. It does so mainly through the language of political economy (on national wealth creation and redistribution) articulated in the opinions and political actions of Czechoslovakia’s two founding statesmen, the first president, Thomas G. Masaryk, and the first prime minister, Karel Kramař. The article argues that their choice of staying “in” the large imperial space was premised upon renegotiating a better political and political–economic deal for the Bohemian Lands, whereas the option of abandoning it and of forging the Czechoslovak nation-state was essentially based on political reasons. And while both advocated an interventionist role for the state in the economy during the imperial period, they considered such a prerogative even more essential for their new nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses absences encountered by Jews in postwar Czechoslovakia. Based on two first-hand accounts (by Leo Herrmann and Joseph Wechsberg), the author offers insights into how Jewish exiles, who visited Czechoslovakia in the first postwar months, perceived the absences caused by the Shoah and by the efforts of postwar societies to create ethnically and linguistically homogeneous countries, without any distinct minority cultures. In postwar Czechoslovakia, the survivors had to cope with the physical absence of those murdered during the war, but also with the loss of multi-culturalism, and ethnic and linguistic diversity of the population. It was expected that the Jews, who decided to stay in postwar Czechoslovakia, would undergo a complete assimilation and would become part of the Czech or Slovak nation. The Jews -- a distinct group made absent by the Nazi policies -- were further absented from their societies by the postwar reconstruction of their homeland. Although some of the survivors accepted the new rules of the game and attempted to adjust to the new conditions, a majority of those who returned to Czechoslovakia after 1945 soon left the country forever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the political potentialities of Jan Patočka's philosophy. It begins by situating Patočka's philosophy in the context of the history of Czechoslovakia, and poses the question of whether Patočka's late Kantianism and involvement with the Charter 77 initiative constitutes the sole political potentiality of his philosophy. It then argues that Patočka's status as a political thinker is best understood by demarcating his pre-political philosophical core from its possible political applications. By sketching the essence of his philosophy as a conception of 'ontological wounding', the article then investigates how this core of his philosophy can be politicized in certain circumstances. Ultimately, it argues that Patočka should not be considered a political thinker per se, but that his philosophy nevertheless has political potentialities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study uses unpublished sources from the National Archives in London and scientific literature to analyse the British Legation in Prague's perception of Czech-German relations in Czechoslovakia up to 1933. After some initial fumbling caused by a lack of knowledge of the Central European region following the collapse of Austria-Hungary, responsible officials in London decided to wait for the outcome of the peace conference in Paris. At the same time, British diplomats acknowledged that they would have to rely on co-operation with France in the region, and as a result indirectly supported French claims and demands; once the peace conference had ended, however, Great Britain focused on its own issues and the affairs of its empire. At the start of the 1920s, the British diplomatic mission in Prague also settled in its position and the first Minister, George Clerk, provided unbiased information on Czech-German coexistence within Czechoslovakia, and partially acknowledged that both sides were right (he understood some of the Germans' objections), but on the other hand he clearly recognised the new state and perceived its minorities policy as very accommodating, and respecting international obligations. Following the calm period of the 1920s when even the British Legation in Prague remarked on the qualitative shift in relations between both ethnicities, the beginning of the 1930s arrived alongside the economic crisis, which transformed the domestic political situation within the First Czechoslovak Republic. According to British Minister, Joseph Addison, the position of the largest minority in the country had deteriorated, something he thought was due to the fact that Czechoslovak officials were breaching the Minority Treaty and were not doing enough for the wellbeing of its German population, and that this did not bode well for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hostility that met feminist ideas and gender equality issues in east central Europe (ECE) after the demise of the Communist regimes was accompanied by a notion that feminism was imported to these societies after 1989. In the Czech Republic, the record of the publishing output by feminist scholars in the 1990s, however, speaks against this myth. Drawing on existing scholarship and the author's own research on cultural discourses of gender and on socialist state science policies and censorship, this article argues that there has been a long tradition of gender critique that was present in a variety of discourses even during late state socialism. It proposes that the feminist impulse began in the 19th century and continued in some form throughout the 20th century. It then examines how the myth of the feminist import came to exist and what were the possible sources of the hostility toward feminism in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rhetorics of "proletarian internationalism" and "Lenin's principles of nationality policy", communist regimes in East-Central and Southeastern Europe more often than not pursued similar projects of forced assimilation and forced migration towards national minorities as their "Bourgeois" predecessors. Thus, the communist obsession with social homogeneity was paralleled by a strive for ethnonational homogeneity. This is clearly demonstrated by three out of the four case studies presented - post-WWII Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria - while Tito's Yugoslavia furthered the emigration of Muslims and others without pressuring them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In general terms, this study is concerned with the use of political memory in the processes of creating, maintaining and transforming symbolic boundaries and the role political memory plays with regard to legitimization of state policies. The aim of the study is to show on both theoretical and empirical levels how the concept of political memory could be fruitfully combined with that of symbolic boundaries. To achieve this, the study draws on analysis of various types of material related to a historical event that in the Czech context bears special relevance - World War I and the establishment of the independent Czechoslovak state after its end. The focal point for analysis was presidential speeches from the period 1990 to 2013, but the analysis also included their media coverage to indicate contextual information. The study identifies basic oppositions present in political memory related to the war events and shows how these oppositions serve as basis for drawing symbolic boundaries, which eventually translate to particular state policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung is the property of Herder Institut e.V. 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 article examines the architecture of housing estates in Czechoslovakia during the late socialist period from the 1970s to the 1980s. The differences and similarities between postmodernism and socialist realism are discussed as well as the historico-phenomenological changes in late socialist architecture. Also explored are how postmodernism and socialist realism represent strategies of turning to meaning and history, rethinking of socialist realism and reception of postmodernism, and architectural industrialization and typification.

The article discusses various presentations made at a conference on minorities in Europe after the First World War. Topics discussed at the conference included the establishment of minority protection in Germany; emergence of folklore minority concepts in the Weimar Republic; and national movements for education of German minorities in Czechoslovakia before the First World War.

After befriending a small group of Czech writers and intellectuals, most of whom were high-profile targets of the Communist regime, Philip Roth returned annually to Prague in the early seventies. In Prague, Roth was the target of secret police surveillance until his visa application was finally rejected after his 1976 visit. During these years, Roth initiated the landmark Penguin paperback series “Writers from the Other Europe” and served as its general editor until the series’ end in 1989. The Other Europe series was originally conceived as a way to help Roth's friends in Czechoslovakia get their banned work into wider circulation, but as this essay argues, it should also be understood as Roth's great counter-realist project: the creation of an alternative canon that stood in contrast to dominant literary categories on both sides of the Cold War divide. This essay incorporates previously unexamined sources—including Roth's personal correspondence, manuscript drafts of his work, and Czech-language secret police reports—in order to reconstruct Roth's experiences in Prague and discover how Roth's political imagination was transformed through its encounter with the Other Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of Czechoslovak history, permanent institutional and state attention is evident in the possibilities of using biotechnology in industry, agriculture and pharmacy. In the hierarchy of time already in 1924 (28.12.1924) at the founding of the Czechoslovak Academy of Agriculture. In the 1950s of 20th century, an utmost importance in animal breeding was attributed to artificial insemination, as a biotechnique of intensification of the reproductive potential of livestock (cattle, pigs, horses and sheep). The issue of biotechnology in animal production is a permanent part of the research of the Department of Farm Animal Genetics and Reproduction at NPPC-RIAP Nitra. Laboratories of the department are focused on the research in fields of in vitro fertilization, molecular genetic analysis, transgenesis, generation of cloned (genetically identical) and chimeric individuals, stem cells and cryopreservation of reproductive cells to create a gene bank and preserve animal genetic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the radio broadcasting that was carried out by the Czechoslovak Government-in- exile from London, England using the British Broadcasting Corporations' (BBC) European Service around the period of the Second World War. Topics include the conflict between the exile government's political agenda and the BBC'S priority for supplying accurate news and how Czechoslovak history and their national identity were some of the key themes that their exile government broadcasted.

This essay discusses the use of class in Czech sociology. Czech social stratification research has used the concept of class as part of its standard vocabulary. The approach to class was distinctively shaped by postcommunist legacies. As an analytical concept, socio-economic status was preferred over class, particularly in the 1990s. The middle class played a prominent role as a subject of research and also a rallying cry. An important legacy that shaped the approach was the intellectual formation of Czech sociologists through the critique of the social stratification system in state socialism. This specific form of anticommunism shaped the type of questions typically asked in the stratification research and its subject matter. Moreover, the anticommunist legacy shaped interpretations of the broader implications of the stratification mechanisms and class effects, giving rise to an overly functionalist approach to the class system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report from a March 31 to April 4, 2015 conference in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic on the 20th-century history of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Czechoslovakia hosted by the East Bohemian Museum. Topics of presentations delivered included economic effects of totalitarian governance, the development of the sociopolitical theories of Czech philosopher Karel Kosík, and the lack of Western scientific literature in socialist Czechoslovakia.

After the Second World War, Czechoslovakia expelled around three million Germans from the border region known as the Sudetenland. Close to two million Czechs and Slovaks moved from the country's interior to settle the region. Though cut off from their former homes by international borders soon hardened by the Cold War, expelled Germans vigorously engaged their homelands. They wrote odes to their lost Heimats, travelogues of trips through ‘Sudeten’ landscapes, critical essays on Czech management of the borderlands, and demands for restitution or return. For Czechoslovak settlers and communist officials, the specters of Germans past and present were persistent reminders of the shortcomings of resettlement and the need to consolidate conditions in the borderlands. This article traces an ongoing conversation from the 1940s to the 1980s among communist officials, Sudeten German expellees, communist reformers, and dissidents about the Czechoslovak borderlands. By the 1980s, most parties to the conversation had come to understand the borderlands in ecological terms, stressing the inter-relationship of mental, social, and physical geographies. Though communist officials and critics largely shared a diagnosis of borderland decline, there was a wide range of prescriptions for how to restore the region to ecological and social health. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article analyzes the development of the party historiography as a discipline within the historiography of Czechoslovakia which is intended to chronicle the history of the political Communist Party and the Labour Movement. Topics mentioned include the primary task of the party historiography which played a role in building real socialism in the country, different stages of party historiography, and the theoretical and methodological bases of the stages of the party historiography.

The article offers information on the conference "Between Politics and Culture: New Perspectives on the History of the Bohemian Lands and the First Czechoslovak Republic" held in Prague, Czech Republic from May 30-31, 2014. Participants included scholars such as Claire Morelon, Sarah Lemmen, and Katharina Wessely. Topics discussed include interwar Czechoslovakia, the development of railroads, and the history of the Bohemian Lands.

Jews in Moravia, a mixed Czech- and German-speaking province of Habsburg Austria and later Czechoslovakia, spoke German and formed a part of the German community. Nevertheless, they always formed a separate German Jewish group within the community of Germans, and not because of antisemitism. Rather, the primary identity of Moravian Jews was as Jews who spoke German, not Germans who practiced Judaism. The settlement patterns of Jewish life sustained this German Jewish group and made German into a Jewish language. In interwar Czechoslovakia, which suspected Germans of disloyalty, Jews demonstrated their loyalty by declaring on the census that they belonged to the 'Jewish nationality.' That they spoke German did not mean that they belonged to the German nation. Their easy switch to Czech in the mid- 1930s, in response to the increased popularity of radical German nationalism, reveals the fluidity of national identities and the primacy of Jewish identity for the Jews of Moravia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk could be called the most famous Czech novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of a Czech soldier during the First World War. He carries out with devotion all kind of commands he receives from the military authorities; but in doing so he constantly causes problems in absurd situations. It remains unclear if the main character gets into all this trouble due to mere stupidity or if his behaviour is a form of passive resistance. Between 1921 and 1923, when the first editions of the novel were published, literary criticism did not pay much attention to it. This general observation is not tied to a specific political or ideological camp. The positive reviews by Ivan Olbracht and Max Brod were two of only a few reviews to appear until 1925. Only then did Švejk become the subject to a debate about the ideal image of a Czechoslovak soldier. The actors in this discourse were soldiers and Czechoslovak legionaries who claimed to have played a significant role in the founding of the state. They felt offended by articles that declared the Švejk character to be a typical Czech soldier during the First World War. When the German translation of the novel came out in 1926, Hašek's novel became surprisingly popular abroad. Because of this unexpected success, Czechoslovak literary criticism also started to examine the Švejk character, debating its role as an archetype of a Czech soldier. A new aspect to this debate was added in the discussion of whether the main character symbolized the typical behaviour of all Czechs during the First World War. These two aspects of the novel's reception led to a polemical article by the Catholic writer Jaroslav Durych, who totally condemned it. Furthermore it resulted in a controversy between the nationalist Viktor Dyk and the communist Julius Fučík about whether the "Švejk behaviour" is dangerous or advantageous for the Czechoslovak state and its population. In 1928, on the 10th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, these controversies reached a climax in the play Plukovník Švec, written by the former legionary Rudolf Medek. He tried to contrast Švejk with his main character, who was seen in nationalist and military circles as an honourable Czech World War One hero. Communist writers saw Švejk as a typical representative of the working class and they declared him a pioneer in the fight for a world revolution. Broad sections of the interwar Czechoslovak public dealt with Hašek's Švejk in different ways. In the second half of the 1920s after having gone unnoticed for several years, the novel and its main character became an instrument of ideological debates which even in the 1930s were far from complete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on Czechoslovak and Polish history topics which include the anti-communist demonstrations in Czechoslovakia, they year 1953 in South Bohemia, and the involvement of Czechoslovak Security Services in the preparation and implementation of the monetary reform in 1953.

This paper examines the transformation of medieval figures from state "heroes" during the interwar years into "villains" of the Communist state in Czechoslovakia (St Wenceslas and Jan Hus) and Hungary (St Stephen) through their national day commemorations. I argue that the negative treatment of these medieval heroes was not clear-cut and, especially in Hungary, they enjoyed a comeback of sorts during the second half of the Communist era. This article thus demonstrates, through official commemorative events, that the Communist regimes of Czechoslovakia and Hungary to some extent were ready to continue with national symbols and traditions that were firmly established in the previous era and had apparently been abolished by the Communist regimes themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Historyczne is the property of Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawska Drudkarnia Naukowa 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 Studia Historyczne is the property of Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawska Drudkarnia Naukowa 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.)