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THE SCHOLARSHIP ON TWENTIETH-CENTURY REFUGEE MOVEMENT highlights the persecution of national, ethnic, and religious minorities arising from state and nation-building. (2) The very structure and function of modern nation-states made [...]

In the aftermath of the First World War, a so-called 'minority problem' loomed large in European politics. This problem was understood, moreover, to be peculiar to central and eastern Europe. In fact, however, linguistic diversity was not a unique feature of the east, but also an ongoing challenge in states that had long claimed to have a unified national culture. This article compares policies of national classification and minority rights in France and Czechoslovakia after the First World War. It suggests that even as east/west binaries structured the unequal application of new international minority rights protections, France, rather than Czechoslovakia, implemented a more radical and racist policy of forcible national classification. A la suite de la premiere guerre mondiale, le 'probleme des minorites' etait tres important dans la politique europeenne. De plus, ce probleme etait entendu conune particulier a l'Europe centrale et orientale. En fait, la diversite linguistique n'etait pas une caracteristique unique de l'Est, mais aussi un continuel defi dans des etats qui revendiquaient depuis longtemps une culture nationale unifiee. Cet article compare les politiques de classification nationale et le droit des minorites en France et en Tchecoslovaquie apres la premiere guerre mondiale. Il argumente que la classification de l'appartenance nationale etait, en France, plus radicale et plus raciste qu'en Tchecoslovaquie, meme si oll pouvait encore reconnaitre la divergence traditionnelle dans l'octroi des droits des minorites. Nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg bestimmte ein go genanntes 'Minderheitenproblem' die europaische Politik und wurde besonders auf Zentral-und Osteuropa bezogen. Tatsachlich jedoch trat linguistische Vielfalt nicht nur ira Osten Europas auf, sondern bildete auch eine kontinuierliche Herausforderung in Staaten, welche scheinbar eine vereinheitlichte nationale Kultur aufwiesen. Dieser Artikel vergleicht die Art und Weise, wie in der Politik Frankreichs und der Tschechoslowakei nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg Minderheiten nach nationalen Kriterien klassifiziert und Minderheitsrechte durchgesetzt wurden. Er argmnentiert, dass die Klassifikationen von nationaler Zugehorigkeit in Frankreich radikaler und rassistischer war als in der Tschechoslowakei, auch wenn man den traditionellen Gegensatz in der Gewahrung von Minderheitenrechten noch erkennen kann.

The deficiencies in the existing civil law regulation in Czechoslovakia need to be addressed through structural change. The article summarizes the various attempts at re-codifying the field of private law in Czechoslovakia in the context of the country's new Civil Code.

This article analyses the strategic manipulation and use of contacts by artists and art historians in state-socialist Czechoslovakia, and focuses on the role of friendship, political favours, professional nepotism and bribery in this process. It criticises Howard Becker's belief that totalitarian regimes cannot partake in discourses of patronage common to Western democracies because of the lack of freedom of individuals. Instead, it argues that the conventional concept of patronage can only partly explain the motives behind the use of contacts by individuals, because its focus is limited to exploring vertical relationships between `powerless' and `powerful' social actors. The analysis therefore takes a wider and more dynamic view, and looks at the interplay of vertical and horizontal processes.

Citizens' groups emerged in the 1980s in Israel, Czechoslovakia, and the US to fight against the government for giving priority to national security at the cost of the environment and public health. Three cases demonstrate that highly motivated leaders took advantage of the change in the Cold War atmosphere to mobilize the people. They rejected claims of patriotism and demanded emphasis on public health and local problems. The movements relied on the positive publicity of the findings about environmental hazards.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA IS A LONG, narrow, landlocked country in central Europe, surrounded by Poland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and a small part in the east by Ukraine. Geographically, there are three regional […]

We had to change the system... Nurses and physicians were among the first to play an active part in changes which occupied everybody's minds. For the past 40 years, the [...]

The Czech government's attempts at stimulating university research are not supported by some universities which consider the measures as state interference in their autonomy. Measures aimed at structural reform are also bogged down due to the inability of department heads to sack colleagues. The control of universities over their budgets has further united government options.