Soudobé dějiny 4 / 2011

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Articles

Men in War, War in Men:

Masculinities and the Two World Wars in Recent Cultural History
Rudolf Kučera

The article offers an overview of Anglo-American and German historiography on masculinities and wars in the twentieth century. It reviews key debates in the field of gender history and places the history of masculinities into the framework of recent cultural history. The main works are presented as well as broader conclusions by which the history of masculinities has enriched historians’ current understanding of World War I, the interwar years and their instability, and Nazi Germany. The article also summarizes recent scholarship on the reformulation of masculinities in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States after World War II and its impact on the establishment of the post-war gender order. It thus offers perspectives hitherto neglected by Czech scholarship on gender and war.

‘Life Begins in the Heat of Love and Ends in the Heat of Fire’:

Four Views on the Development of Cremation in Czech Society
Zdeněk R. Nešpor & Olga Nešporová

In this article the authors analyse mutually related but, at least as regards Czech society, not always directly interdependent aspects of the cremation movement in the twentieth century: the growth in pro-cremation propaganda and its impact, the establishment of new crematoria, the spread of the popularity of cremation as a method of disposing of the dead throughout society and changes in the rituals associated with it. The long domination of ideology over social interests with regard to cremation is evident, for example, in the fact that in the first half of the twentieth century the cremation movement attracted substantially more followers than those who eventually chose this method of disposal for themselves, a method that was later encouraged and eventually accepted throughout Czech society as a result of pressure from the Communist régime. Furthermore, for many years, the construction and decoration of crematoria, as well as ceremonies connected with cremation, reflected ideological perspectives rather than practical social needs. The authors explain this in terms of Czech attitudes towards religion, which were influenced by a number of factors, not just the Communist regime. The subsequent de-ideologization of these various aspects was quite slow, not taking place till the late twentieth century, and then only to a limited extent. Contemporary Czech society has one of the highest cremation rates in Europe, a fact connected both with deep-rooted Czech anticlericalism and with the path dependence of funeral rituals that became firmly entrenched during the Communist era.

‘I Told Myself That I Simply Had to Adapt Somehow’:

Young Czech Women in the Theresienstadt Ghetto
Anna Hájková

Women’s memories of their time interned in the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto are different from those of men internees. But what are the memories and what are the mechanisms behind them? At the centre of the author’s research is the adaptation and coping mechanisms of women in Theresienstadt. What was their daily life there? Which roles did they take on? The author analyses gender-specific aspects of Czech-Jewish women’s lives in the ghetto, focusing on how they influenced their narratives as we know them today. The core of the research is based on a sample of thirty biographical interviews from the 1990s, combined with various contemporaneous sources. Having experienced the deportation chiefly in their twenties, they are representative of middle-class, assimilated, emancipated, mostly Czech-speaking women.
For the most part these young inmates had to abandon their ways of life as modern, independent women, and made a shift towards performing strongly gendered, supportive roles, focusing on the family and the social group. The author examines the relationship between the shift in this social role, the formation of networks and groups, and their chances of survival. The analysis of the position of women in particular and of gender in general seeks to help us to understand the power relationships within this enforced community.

‘We Don’t Want a Youth Association If It Means Red Reins!’

The Political Life of Prague and Pilsen Secondary-school Students in 1945–48
Jakub Šlouf

At three levels (state-wide, regional, and the class of one school) this article examines how political disputes in post-Second World War Czechoslovakia entered the lives of secondary-school students. According to the author, a substantial number of publicly active secondary-school students in 1946–48 refused to be part of the united Czech Youth Organization (Svaz české mládeže), which worked closely with the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPCz), and sought instead to establish a separate Organization of Secondary-school Students (Svaz středoškolského studentstva). Despite clear support from the Czechoslovak National Social Party and the Czechoslovak Populist Party, the attempts to legalize the new association of secondary-school students before the Communist takeover in late February 1948 were unsuccessful. In the region of west Bohemia, moreover, the attempts at emancipation of secondary-school organizations were intensified by students’ sympathies for west European and American culture and by their widespread respect for the US Army, which had liberated west Bohemia towards the end of the Second World War. In Pilsen therefore an independent Regional Secondary-school Council (Krajská středoškolská rada) had emerged already in late 1945 and early 1946. It eventually began to publish its own pro-Western periodical, Studentský hlasatel (The Students’ Herald), which was distributed to other regions as well. After the Communist takeover, Pilsen secondary-school students clamoured for several protest demonstrations and tended to favour the establishment of ‘resistance’ organizations right at their schools. Using the example of one ‘underground’ group formed at a Pilsen business academy, the article demonstrates the way in which erstwhile adherents of the Czech Youth Organization became an instrument for the post-takeover ‘purges’ of schools, and shows how former opponents of the organization, by contrast, became joined student ‘resistance’ organizations and also how naivety, dilemmas, and risks sometimes accompanied this crystallization.

Reviews

The Phenomenon of Communism in Contemporary Russian Historiography:

Topics and Inspirations
Jiří Křesťan

T[atyana] V[iktorovna] Volokitina, et al (eds). Vlast i tserkov v Vostochnoy Yevrope 1944–1953: Dokumenty rossiyskikh arkhivov, vol. 1: 1944–1948; vol. 2: 1949–1953. Moscow: Rossiyskaya politicheskaya entsiklopediya, 2009, 887 + 1223 pp;

A[ndrey] B[orisovich] Zubov (ed.). Istoriya Rossii: XX vek. 1894–1939. Moscow: Astrel – AST, 2009, 1023 pp.; Istoriya Rossii: XX vek. 1939–2007. Moscow: Astrel – AST, 2009, 847 pp.;

Alexander Yuryevich Vatlin, Komintyern: Idyeyi, resheniya, sudby. Moscow: Rossiyskaya politicheskaya entsiklopediya, 2009, 374 pp;

Georgy Yosifovich Chernyavsky, Lev Trotsky. Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 2010, 666 pp.;

Alexander Mikhailovich Dubrovsky, Istorik i vlast: Istoricheskaya nauka v SSSR i kontseptsiya istorii feodalnoy Rossii v kontyekstye politiki i idyeologii (1930–1950-ye gg.). Bryansk: Izdatyelstvo Bryanskogo gosudarstvennogo univerzityeta im. akad. I. G. Petrovskogo, 2005, 800 pp;

Alexander Yakovlevich Livshin, Nastroyeniya i politicheskiye emotsii v Sovetskoy Rossii 1917–1932 gg. Moscow: Rossiyskaya politicheskaya entsiklopediya, 2010, 344 pp.;

Mikhail Kuzmich Ryklin, Komunizm kak religiya: Intyellektualy i Oktyabrskaya revolyutsiya. Moscow: Novoye lityeraturnoye obozreniye, 2009, 136 pp.

In this review article, the author considers seven relatively recent publications by Russian historians. Though of various genres, conceptions, and orientations, all are histories of Communism, primarily in Soviet Russia. The reviewer-author states that in general in contemporary Russian historiography of Communism a clear openness and a plurality of approaches, opinions, and assessments predominate, even if sometimes questionable. There are also returns to the roots of this historiography, including works of prerevolutionary and post-revolutionary émigrés, and also to the fruitful inspiration of foreign scholarship. In addition he emphasizes the importance of contacts with Russian research institutions, universities, and archives for Czech scholars of contemporary history, a fact sometimes insufficiently appreciated by Czechs.

Two Faces of Antonín Novotný

Lukáš Cvrček

Rudolf Černý, Antonín Novotný: Vzpomínky prezidenta. Česká Kamenice: POLART – Jaroslav Polák, 2008, 423 pp.;

Karel Kaplan, Antonín Novotný: Vzestup a pád ‘lidového’ aparátčíka. Brno: Barrister & Principal 2011, 342 pp.

The reviewer compares two relatively recent works on Antonín Novotný (1904–1975), President of Czechoslovakia (1957–68) and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (1953–67). He discusses the complicated origin of the first of the two publications, which was written by Rudolf Černý, a Stalinist journalist, on the basis of interviews he conducted with Novotný after his removal from office and public life in the early 1960s. Unlike the second book, a standard piece of historical scholarship by Karel Kaplan, with its advantages and shortcomings, describing Novotný’s work and relations in high office, Černý’s publication is a clearly subjective statement with much hard-to-verify information from behind the scenes of political events.

A Little Volume Well Worth Reading

Jan Křen

Tomáš Zahradníček, Polské poučení z pražského jara: Tři studie politického myšlení 1968–1981. (Sešity Ústavu pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, vol. 44.) Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i., 2011, 184 pp.

On the basis of published programme statements, the first part of the work under review discusses the ideological development of the Polish opposition and its best-known spokesmen. The second and third parts reproduce and interpret glimpses of the remarkable private diaries of two important Communists, one a member of the Party leadership, Mieczysław Rakowski (1926–2008), the other a journalist, Józef Tejchma (b. 1927). The reviewer praises the publication and appreciates the core of its message – namely, that the Prague Spring of 1968, which was brought to an end by the Soviet-led military intervention, became a factor in the considerations of the Polish opposition, particularly with regard to how far it was possible to go when attempting to change the contemporary system in Poland.

The Opening of a ‘Discourse on Marxism’?

František Svátek

Bohumil Jiroušek, et al., Proměny diskursu české marxistické historiografie: Kapitoly z historiografie 20. století. (Historia culturae, vol. 15; Studia, vol. 10.) České Budějovice: Historický ústav Filozofické fakulty Jihočeské univerzity, 2008, 460 pp.

The volume under review is the fruit of an international history conference organized by the University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, in October 2008. The reviewer considers the collectively authored volume as a whole and also looks at some of its articles individually. He sees it as the continuation of the systematic research on modern and even contemporary Czech historiography, which is being conducted by historians from the University of South Bohemia. He sees its originality in the places where it goes beyond ‘pure’ historiography and moves into the neighbouring fields of the humanities, in its combining a biographical view with analysis of the institutionalization of Marxist-Leninist historiography, in discussions of the continuity, or discontinuity, of its dogmatic 1950s starting points in the more liberal 1960s and, ultimately, in its open approach to Marxist historiography, freed from stereotypes and biases.

A Sound Synthesis of Pre-War Slovak History

Marek Šmíd

Róbert Letz, Slovenské dejiny, vol. 4: 1914–1938. Bratislava: Literárne informačné centrum, 2011, 342 pp.

The book under review forms part of a five-volume work on Slovak history published by the Centre for Information on Literature, Bratislava. The author, according to the reviewer, does not try to glorify Slovak history, but seeks instead to provide a clear, comprehensible, and sensitive interpretation. Despite some reservations, for example, about the author’s criticism of Czech attitudes to Slovak autonomy, the assessment of some politicians, or the handling of the history of religions, the reviewer ranks Letz’s book amongst the best of recent work on pre-war Slovak history.

A Many-sided View of the End of Czecho-Slovakia

Marek Syrný

Valerián Bystrický, Miroslav Michela, Michal Schvarc, et al., Rozbitie alebo rozpad? Historické reflexie zániku Česko-Slovenska. Bratislava: Veda, 2010, 576 pp.

The work under review was published at the initiative of three scholars from the Institute of History at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. It comprises about three dozen essays by historians from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, and Germany. According to the reviewer, it does not provide a clear answer to the question asked in its title, that is, whether the end of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 was the result of interventions from outside or of internal developments. It does, however, provide the most comprehensive view of the causes, circumstances, and course of this historic event, and adds to our understanding mainly with its analyses of the context of foreign policy.

Czechoslovak Espionage in the Land of the Fjords

Pavol Jakubec

Terje B. Englund, Spionen som kom for sent: Tsjekkoslovakisk etterrettning i Norge. Oslo: Aschehoug, 2010, 231 pp., 6 colour + 15 black-and-white photographs, bibliography, index of names.

This original Norwegian publication, whose title translates as The Spy Who Came Late: Czechoslovak Espionage in Norway, is intended for a general readership. It oscillates between investigative journalism and scholarly monograph. From a leading Norwegian publisher, the book has met with considerable success with the general public and specialists alike. According to the reviewer, the book, in an engaging and informative way, describes the work of the Communist Czechoslovak intelligence service against Norway from 1948 to 1989, set against the background of Norwegian-Czechoslovak relations. The author claims that Czechoslovak intelligence managed to infiltrate the Czechoslovak exile community in Norway, but failed in its attempts to get any Norwegian politician to collaborate. The author’s attention here is largely focused on the story of the intelligence agent Stanislav Dvořák, who first worked in the Polish anti-Communist opposition and then, allegedly persecuted by the Polish regime, defected to Norway at the invitation of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, where he continued in his intelligence-gathering activity.

Chronicle

Beneš, Saviour and Demon:

A Conference on Images of Edvard Beneš in the Czech and European Context
David Hubený and Miroslav Šepták

This is a report on an international conference called ‘Different Images: Perceptions of Edvard Beneš in Czech and European Contexts/Unterschiedliche Bilder: Wahrnehmungen Edvard Benešs in tschechischen und europäischen Kontexten’, which was held at the Goethe Institute in Prague, on 13 and 14 October 2011. The conference was organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the Collegium Carolinum, Munich. The aim of the conference was to consider many sides of Edvard Beneš (1884–1948) – often contradictory and controversial – in politics, academia, the mass media, and the public sphere in general, from the declaration of Czechoslovak independence in 1918 to the present day. The papers were delivered mostly by experts from the Czech Republic and Germany, and so their attention was chiefly on the Czech (Czechoslovak) and German milieux.

A Conference on the War Year 1941 at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes

David Hubený

The conference ‘The War Year 1941’, held on 6 October 2011, was organized by the Department for the History of the Second World War at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Prague. In three blocks, the conference considered the Czechoslovak resistance abroad, the resistance at home, and acts of repression by the German authorities in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia together with the forced labour of the inhabitants. The report states that the conference was on the whole not a success, since, with few exceptions, the papers lacked greater context and clear conceptions. Most of them were given by inexperienced historians from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes or by students who could not yet offer the kind of quality one would hope for.

In Memory of Karel Jech

This is an obituary that considers the work of the historian Karel Jech (1929–2012). For many years Jech worked at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague. After graduating from the School of Economics and Social Studies (Vysoká škola hospodářských a sociálních věd) in Prague, he was employed at the Party School (Vysoká škola stranická) and as a docent at the School of Economics (Vysoká škola ekonomická). In the years of the re-establishment of hard-line Communism, called ‘normalization policy’, beginning in 1969, Jech was forced to find employment outside his field. He was active in the publication of the samizdat volumes historical studies. After the changes beginning in late 1989, he joined the just-established Institute of Contemporary History, at the Academy of Sciences, Prague, in 1990, and devoted himself primarily to the dramatic history of the farmers of Bohemia and Moravia and the collectivization of their farms. Together with Karel Kaplan he compiled and edited a fundamental two-volume edition, with commentary, of the Presidential Decrees, Dekrety prezidenta republiky: 1940–1945 (Brno, 1995; 2nd edn, as one volume, 2002). His other publications include Soumrak selského stavu: 1945–1960 (Prague, 2001), a revised edition of which was published as Kolektivizace a vyhánění sedláků z půdy (Prague, 2008).

Soudobé dějiny 4 / 2011

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