This article introduces the paintings and graphic art on Chinese themes by Zdeněk Sklenář, the eminent Czech artist who became interested in Chinese culture in his youth. In 1955, he had the opportunity to visit Peking as one of the organizers of a Czechoslovak exhibition. During his stay, he kept a diary which, together with the testimony of the surviving observers, and the archives of the Ministry of Culture became the source of my writing. He met with the cultural elite (Ai Qing, Li Keran, Guo Moruo etc.) and formed friendships, visited historic sites and collected antiques. Consequently, he created more than 30 unique oil paintings and many more book illustrations inspired by ancient Chinese ornament and the seal script.
Two brothers, František (1891-1956) and Alois (1897-1992) came from the family of a small farmer in the village of Senetářov in the Drahany Highlands. The older František was in the second year of his military service when the First World War broke out, the younger Alois was conscripted. Gradually they were both taken captive, and later got into the legions, with which they went along the whole Siberian railway. They met in Siberia as late as on Christmas Eve 1919. They were demobilized at the turn of the year 1920-1921. Several letters by František addressed to his chosen one and later wife have been preserved; the younger Alois wrote fresh memoirs immediately after his return describing not only war events, the situation in Russia where Soviets were assuming power, but also the relationships among legionnaires. These are unique sources offering authentic personal testimonies of WW1 participants.
Studie reaguje na nedávné debaty o odporu vůči státnímu socialismu v Československu a zabývá se metodologickými přístupy ke studiu rezistence ve vztahu k současnému českému bádání o „třetím odboji“. Autor nejdříve nastiňuje vývoj výzkumu rezistence v historiografii a dalších společenských vědách. Zabývá se zejména pracemi britských marxistických historiků z padesátých a šedesátých let minulého století, konceptem „každodenních forem rezistence“ (James C. Scott) či přístupy indické školy „subalterních studií“ (Subaltern Studies) v následujících dvou desetiletích a uvádí některé vlivné typologie rezistence. Zvláštní pozornost věnuje německým výzkumům rezistence vůči nacismu a státnímu socialismu, americkému bádání o odporu v éře stalinismu a souvisejícím odborným kontroverzím. Z perspektivy mezinárodního bádání o rezistenci pak autor kriticky analyzuje český výzkum „třetího odboje“ a v závěru studie nabízí možná východiska ze současného neradostného stavu bádání na tomto poli se záměrem podnítit historiografickou diskusi., This article is a response to a recent debate on resistance to state socialism in Czechoslovakia. It focuses on the methods used in contemporary Czech research on the ‘Third Resistance’. The author begins by outlining developments in historical and other research on resistance. He considers in particular works by British Marxist historians in the 1950s and 1960s, James C. Scott’s concept of ‘everyday forms of resistance’, and the Indian school of ‘Subaltern Studies’ over the next two decades. He also presents some influential typologies of resistance, with special attention paid to German research on resistance to Nazism and state socialism, American research on resistance in the Stalinist era, and controversies that emerged amongst scholars in these areas. From the perspective of this international research, he then analyzes Czech scholarship on the ‘Third Resistance’. In his conclusion, the author offers possible ways out of what he sees as the currently desolate state of research on the topic, hoping thereby to provide an impulse to the historiographical debate., and Vítězslav Sommer.
Minister of Education, Youth and Sports Professor Petr Fiala presented the Milada Paulová Award in the historical sciences to Professor Zdeňka Hledíková, professor emeritus at Charles University in Prague. The festive ceremony took place October 16 in Liechtenstein Palace in Prague. Professor Hledíková is a prominent and internationally recognised Czech historian and university teacher. Her research con- centrates on church history and the history of the Medieval Age in general. She was allowed to get her habilitation only after 1989, and in 1996 she became a professor. At this time she was Director of the Czech Historical Institute in Rome. The Award is named after the first Czech woman to lecture at a university (1925) and to receive a professorship (1939), the late historian and byzan- tologist Milada Paulová. and Alena Ortenová.
The 1950s were a period of profound changes in Czechoslovak science, both on an institutional level and with respect to its ideologization and indoctrination. These changes also applied to ethnology and ethnography. The reasons for this development are not hard to fi nd: under the new regime, the goal of any investigation of ''the people'' was to legitimise plans for the establishment of a new people’s democracy and to produce a detailed scientifi c report about the society’s historical journey towards communism. In this new environment, a totalitarian regime thus assigned these sciences a specifi c function: its goal was not only to ideologize these sciences, but also, and above all, to indoctrinate the population and to promote atheism. This contribution follows the life and work of some of the leading personages of Czechoslovak post-war ethnology and ethnography, such as Otokar Nahodil, and the careers of these sciences’ main institutional representatives, such as Otokar Pertold, the long-serving departmental head at the Charles University Faculty of Arts. Special attention is paid to the new regime’s popularisation strategies which involved post-war ethnologists and ethnographers. Mention is also made of Antonín Robek, Josef Macek, and Jiří Loukotka. The main objective of this contribution is to use a brief excursion into the development of post-war ethnography and ethnology in order to describe the phenomenon of education towards scientifi c atheism. Special emphasis is on the communication channels which the Communist leadership used to secure for its propaganda the broadest impact possible and on describing the role which scientists played in this effort.
Tato recenze je upravenou verzí článku, který autor zveřejnil na webové stránce http://www.fronta.cz/kniha/nakonecny-cesky-fasismus. Reakce Milana Nakonečného vychází v aktuálním dvojčísle Soudobých dějin pod názvem „Odpověď na kritiku mé knihy o českém fašismu“. Autor upozorňuje na četná faktografická pochybení recenzované práce, která podle něj pramení z toho, že Milan Nakonečný nepracoval dostatečně s archivními materiály úřední povahy, zejména pro dobu první republiky, a přebíral mnoho informací z fašistických tiskovin. Vytýká mu také slabou reflexi dosavadní historické literatury. Pozastavuje se nad jeho hojnými kritickými soudy na adresu meziválečného Československa a jeho představitelů. Na závěr konstatuje, že se otevřeně staví na stranu českých nacionalistů a kritiků prvorepublikové demokracie, což podle něj může být impulzem ke koncepčnějšímu uvažování a polemikám o fenoménu českého fašismu. and This review is an edited version of an article that the reviewer published at the website http://www.fronta.cz/kniha/nakonecny-cesky-fasismus. The reaction of the author of the book, Milan Nakonečný, appears in the current issue of Soudobé dějiny, under the title ‘Odpověď na kritiku mé knihy o českém fašismu’ (A Reply to the Criticism of My Book on Czech Fascism). The reviewer points to the numerous errors of fact in the work under review, which, according to him, stem from Nakonečný’s not having worked sufficiently with archive records of official provenance, especially for the period of the First Republic, and his having drawn much of his information from the Fascist press. He also reproaches Nakonečný for his insufficient consideration of the existing historical literature. He is puzzled by Nakonečný’s many criticisms of interwar Czechoslovakia and its politicians. In conclusion the reviewer claims that Nakonečný openly sides with the Czech nationalists and critics of the democracy of the First Republic, but this, according to the reviewer, may provide an impulse for more profoundly conceptual reflections and debates about Czech fascism.