a1_Studie byla původně publikována pod názvem Contesting the Malyn Massacre: The Legacy of Inter-Ethnic Violence and the Second World War in Eastern Europe v červnu 2016 jako č. 2405 ,,Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies'', které vydává Centrum pro ruská a východoevropská studia Pittsburské univerzity (Center for Russian & East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh). Text je online dostupný z: https://www.carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/203. Ráno 13. července 1943 obklíčila německá protipartyzánská jednotka vesnici Malín na západní Ukrajině a její české a ukrajinské obyvatele. Vojáci shromáždili veškeré obyvatele vesnice na návsi a po kontrole dokumentů je pozavírali do vesnického kostela, školy a dalších budov. Poté vše zapálili a prchající lidi stříleli ze samopalů. Navečer toho dne přestal Malín existovat. Na první pohled se masakr v Malíně jeví jen jako další děsivý zločin brutální okupační správy. Bližší pohled na archivní zdroje, populární diskurz a odbornou literaturu však odhaluje zcela jiný, podstatně méně zřetelný obrázek. Autor uvádí, že existuje patnáct různých verzí událostí v Malíně. Liší se v nich etnická identita jednotek, které Němcům asistovaly, podrobnosti tohoto zločinu, důvody údajně vedoucí k represi, a dokonce i etnicita obětí., a2_Studie se snaží objasnit rozdílné a vzájemně si odporující popisy událostí v Malíně na základě analýzy pramenů z více než deseti archivů v šesti zemích, rozboru čtyř historicko-lingvistických narativů i terénního šetření na Ukrajině a v České republice. Autor vymezuje čtyři kontrastní diskurzy o Malínu - sovětský, ukrajinský, polský a český - a podrobně popisuje, jak a proč si každý z těchto diskurzů vytvořil vlastní verzi (či verze) malínské tragédie ve vztahu k širším narativům druhé světové války na Východě. Tato mikrohistorie také ukazuje, jak dlouhý stín vrhá trauma a dědictví válečného mezietnického násilí na současné porozumění válce, a podtrhuje, jak nesmírně náročné výzvě čelí badatelé, kteří se dějinami této oblasti a tohoto období zabývají., a1_The study was initially published in June 2016 as No. 2405 ''Carl Beck Papers in Russian & and East European Studies'', published by the Center for Russian & East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh. The text is available online at hhtps://www.carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/chp/article/view/203. On the morning of July 13, 1943, a German anti-partisan formation surrounded the small village of Malyn and its Czech and Ukrainian inhabitants. The soldiers gathered the entire village population in the town square and, after a document check, proceeded to lock them inside the town church, school and their homes. The soldiers then set fire to these buildings and shot those trying to escape machine guns. By the end of the day, Malyn ceased to exist. On the surface, the Malyn Massacre appears as just another ghastly crime committed by a brutal occupying force. Yet, a closer look at archival sources, popular discourse, and scholarly literature on Malyn reveals a much different picture - and a murkier one. The author states there are over fifteen different versions of what happened in Malyn that day. The ethnic identities of the units that accompanied the Germans vary from account to account, as do the details of the crime, the justification for the reprisal, and even the ethnicity of the victims. The study attempts to clarify disparate and mutually contradicting accounts of the events in Malyn by analyzing materials from over ten archives in six countries and four historiohraphical-linguistic narratives, in addition to field research in Ukraine and the Czech Republic., a2_The author specifies four discursive landscapes about Malyn (Soviet, Ukrainian, Polish, and Czech) and details how and why each of these has come to construct their own version(s) of Malyn in relation to larger grand narratives about the war in the East. This microhistory also underscores how the trauma and legacy of wartime inter-ethnic violence casts a long shadow over the current understanding of the war and highlights the daunting task scholars face writing the history of this region and time period., Jared McBride ; Z angličtiny přeložila Blanka Medková., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
Recenzent představuje monografii jako výsledek dlouhodobého, všestranného a téměř vyčerpávajícího pramenného výzkumu, který je monumentální svým obsahem i rozsahem. Autor se soustředí na subkulturu české mládeže spjaté s jazzovou (swingovou) hudbou v době Protektorátu Čechy a Morava (1939-1945), na její život, zvyky, styl oblékání, mluvu a vztah k okupačnímu režimu i na poměr nacistických a protektorátních institucí k této mládeži a k hudbě, kterou vyznávala. Své téma přitom zasazuje do širokých historických, společenských, politických a kulturních souvislostí, když například erudovaně a poutavě líčí vývoj a šíření jazzových tanců, vznik a působení podobných subkultur mládeže v západní Evropě a Spojených státech nebo přežívání jazzu a jeho fanoušků v nacistické třetí říši. Důkladně pojednává o kritice jazzu a jeho vyznavačů v protektorátu i o represích proti nim, inspirativně uvažuje o vztahu jazzové hudby a svobody a jeho výklady oplývají bohatou faktografií. Recenzent by osobně uvítal jen přehlednější podání některých pasáží a větší pozornost věnovanou samotné jazzové hudbě., The reviewer presents the monograph Swing fans and zoot suiters in the Protectorate night: Czech swing kids and their bitter world as the outcome of long-term, comprehensive, and almost exhaustive research of sources, impressive in both its content and its scope. The author concentrates on the Czech youth subculture associated with jazz (swing) music at the time of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1945), their lifestyle, habits, fashion, speech, and attitude to the occupation regime, as well as the attitude of Nazi and Protectorate authorities to them and to the music they professed. He sets the topic into a broad historical, social, political, and cultural context, for example when describing in an erudite and gripping manner the evolution and propagation of jazz dances, formation and existence of similar youth subcultures in Western Europe and United States, or the survival of jazz and its fans in the Nazi Third Reich. The author covers in depth the criticism aimed at jazz and its fans in the Protecorate and repressions against them, analyzes the relationship between jazz music and freedom in an inspiring manner, and his interpretations and explanations abound with facts. The reviewer would personally welcome only a better arrangement of some parts and more attention paid to jazz music as such., [autor recenze] Vít Hloušek., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
Bedřich Štěpánek (1884-1943) byl významnou osobností domácího protihabsburského odboje za první světové války a prvním československým vyslancem ve Spojených státech amerických. V důsledku rozporů s úředníky vyslanectví a intrik musel v roce 1923 svou funkci opustit a odešel i ze služeb ministerstva zahraničí, poté žil jako soukromník ve Spojených státech, kde zemřel za nevyjasněných okolností. Edice dosud nepublikované korespondence mezi Bedřichem Štěpánkem a kancléřem prezidenta republiky Přemyslem Šámalem (1867-1941) podle recenzenta nejen poodkrývá vyslancovy životní osudy, ale také poskytuje jedinečný vhled do zákulisí formující se československé diplomatické služby, meziválečného politického vývoje ve Spojených státech i tehdejší dramatické mezinárodní situace., Bedřich Štěpánek (1884-1943) was an important figure in the Czech anti-Habsburg resistance at home during the First World War and he was the first Czechoslovak envoy to the United States after the founding of Czechoslovakia in October 1918. Following disagreements with embassy officials as well as intrigues, he had to quit his post, in 1923, and leave the ministry of foreign affairs. He then lived, self-employed, in the United States, where he died in unexplained circumstances. According to the reviewer, this volume of never-before published correspondence between Bedřich Štěpánek and Přemysl Šámal (1867-1941), the chief of staff of the Czechoslovak president, not only partly reveals aspects of Štěpánek life, but also provides a unique look behind the scenes of the Czechoslovak diplomatic service in its early years, as well as interwar political developments in the United States and the dramatic international situation at that time., [autor recenze] Jan Koura., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
This article is concerned with the memory and commemoration of acts of armed force which were committed as part of the civilian resistance to the Communist régime in its ‘founding period’ after February 1948. It focuses on how memory is constituted around this minority form of anti-Communist resistance, particularly by means of memorial sites in the process of their formation in the period before the Changes that began in mid-November 1989 and also afterwards. In the fi rst part of the article, the author looks at armed confl icts at the edge of the Iron Curtain, that is, on the western borders of Communist Czechoslovakia. She seeks to demonstrate that the way of looking at border crossings by people fl eeing to the West is still considerably infl uenced by the memory and commemorative activities of veterans of the former border guards, amongst whom dominates the image of these refugees as internal enemies of the State. The second part of the article isdevoted to instances of so-called ''political murder'', that is, acts of violence against Communist politicians, which are connected particularly with villages. Most of these stories are gradually being forgotten; society does not want to recall them. An exception, however, is the memory of the sad events in the village of Babice, in the Bohemian-Moravian uplands, in 1951, which has repeatedly been used by politicians. In the third part of the article, the author considers the social discourse about the ethical dimension of armed anti-Communist resistance, which is almost exclusively focused on the atypical case of the group led by the Mašín brothers, and the process of forming the memory of the three resistances (the fi rst, against Austria-Hungary during the Great War; the second, against the German occupying forces during the Second World War; and the third, against the Communist régime during the Cold War). She describes the commemorative activities of the Confederation of Political Prisoners as part of the strategy to bolster the social standing of the third, anti-Communist resistance, and she points to certain analogies between the unchallenged memories of political prisoners and the memories of the former border guards in contemporary historiography. and Překlad: Lucia Faltinova
The Treaty on Friendship, Mutual Assistance and Postwar Cooperation between the Czechoslovak Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signed on 12 December 1943 in Moscow had a fundamental impact on the orientation of Czechoslovak foreign policy at the end of the war and in the years that followed. At the same time, the lengthy negotiations in 1943, which ultimately resulted in signing the treaty in question, were one of the few moments during the war when Czechoslovakia became the object of an opinion clash between the Great Powers. In this study, which is based primarily on British and US documents (some of which have not been used before), the author analyses in detail the role of the Czechoslovak-Soviet treaty project in the policies of the two Western powers until the signing of the document, before assessing the impact of the treaty in concern on Czechoslovakia’s relations with the United Kingdom and the United States at the end of the war. He points out that neither the British nor the Americans were prepared to conclude a similar treaty with Czechoslovakia since both Western powers wanted the international security system to be based on foundations different from those which had repeatedly failed during the previous three decades. However, the signing of the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty dramatically reduced any chance for a federative or confederative arrangement in the region of Central Europe, as well as hopes for a multilateral treaty of alliance ensuring security in this region. For this reason, it was accepted without enthusiasm both in London and in Washington.
This was the Opening Address at ''Fateful Eights in Czech History: Historical Anniversaries of 2008 and Their Signifi cance for the Czech Republic Today'', an international conference organized by the Czech Embassy in Washington, held at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C., on 23-24 October 2008. In this essay the author provides a basic overview of twentieth-century Czech history, weighing the gains and losses, the victories and defeats, the ups and downs of the Czechs, the Czech nation, Czech society, on the way from gaining independence in a democratic state to loosing it, and the German occupation, to the renewal of Czechoslovak independence and the destruction of democracy under the Communist regime, to the failed attempt at the reform of that regime, and the victory of the democratic revolution - all marked by the historical milestones of the years 1918, 1938/39, 1945-48, 1968, and 1989 - as well as the author’s refl ections on the long-term changes in the mentality of the country.
This article presents an analysis of Czechoslovak political history of the fi rst half of the 1970s and the question of who would succeed General Ludvík Svoboda (1895-1979) as Czechoslovak President. The emphasis is on the role of Gustáv Husák (1913-1991), who emerged from the political crisis of 1968-69 as the most powerful actor, and was, at the 14th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, confi rmed as General Secretary of the Party. Using Soviet archives, the author points to differences between the individual members of the Party leadership, and particularly to the lack of unity amongst the so-called ''healthy forces''. According to him, it is fair to talk about the disintegration of this bloc, which had been formed during the Prague Spring, into several smaller groups. The secretary of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Vasil Biľak (1917-2014), was, in consequence of this and Soviet pressure, forced to abandon any ambitions tostand at the head of the Party, and had to be satisfi ed, instead, with the position of Number Two in the Party. The Soviet leadership derived social stability in Czechoslovakia from the fi rmness of the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership, and in particular counted on the collaboration of Husák and Biľak, and it made this clear to both men. Svoboda’s failing health prevented him from properly discharging his duties as President of Czechoslovakia, but he did not even try to hold on to the presidency, even though, in the interest of political stability, he was confi rmed in offi ce in March 1973, and remained something of a temporary solution. The article does not seek to challenge or confi rm the hypothesis that he was forced to step down in May 1975; although, in any event, Svoboda was in no condition to have taken this step himself. Husák’s efforts to become President kept running up against the question of the accumulation of offi ces and also the Czech-Slovak national factor, even though, thanks to centrist Czechoslovak policy and support from Moscow, he succeeded in achieving a ‘peculiar unity’ over this question in the CPCz leadership, so that on 29 May 1975 he became the fi rst, and also the last, Czechoslovak President who was a Slovak. In Czech eyes, however, he remained a Slovak who had, after August 1968, considerably participated in the unfortunate re-imposition of hard-line Communism known as ''normalization'', whereas for the Slovak nation he increasingly became a turncoat, a ''Prague Slovak''.
This article evaluates once more the historiographic and literary images of John of Bohemia and his son Charles IV in Italian texts from the 14th and early 15th centuries. What we find is a peculiar mixture of criticism and apotheosis, sometimes stated by the same authors, depending on the point in time they were writing, and of course the expectations of their potential readers. While John of Bohemia faced overwhelming expectations from Dante after the death of his father, he was branded a naïve yet greedy papal mercenary from the beginning of his Italian Expedition in the early 1330s. His son was more successful in avoiding negative stereotypes and harsh criticisms during his Italian expeditions in his youth, as well as in 1354/55 and 1368/69. In the end, however, even chroniclers that are traditionally considered to have had a positive view of the Luxemburg king and emperor harshly rejected his political actions in Italy. Most of the time, this is connected with the financial interests all foreign monarchs had when establishing temporary rulerships in Italian cities, and the monetary pressures this bore on their citizens; the worn-out cliché, both of contemporaries and historical researchers, that labelled foreign, Central European monarchs as barbaric intruders, could hardly be confirmed. Charles and his father are blamed for being unable to solve the structural problems of Italian and Imperial politics.
The Czech ''Silesian identity'', obvious throughout the twentieth century, was based on a mixture of strong regional, even local, patriotism, which was determined by historical developments. This patriotism developed on the ethnically mixed territory of Czech Silesia (formerly Austrian Silesia). After the Second World War, this phenomenon was quickly revived, but unlike in the pre-war period, it took a clearly Czech national form. The territorial factor, by contrast, receded into the background. Behind this activity and new interpretation stood intellectual circles and institutions in Opava, some leading fi gures from Ostrava, and the Silesian Cultural Institute in Prague. In addition to cultural-educational activity, their efforts were concentratedon claiming some border areas of Polish and German Silesia as being historically Czech, and also on ensuring the distinctive administrative status of the territory of Silesia in Czechoslovakia, the seed of which they saw in the Ostrava branch of the Moravian National Committee (Zemský národní výbor) in Brno. During the Communist regime, according to the authors, the top state authorities showed an intentional lack of interest in the problems of Silesia when solving related economic and other questions. A consequence of this was a ''silencing of the offi cial sources'' about Silesia. In the 1950s, the ''Silesian-ness'' was condemned as a form of ''bourgeois nationalism'' and was identifi ed with the period of Czech-Polish national friction in the region. From the administrative point of view, Silesia was dissolved in the Ostrava area, later in the North Moravian Region, and was recalled practically only by artistic expressions of an ''Old Silesian-ness'', such as folklore and museum exhibitions. Silesian organizations and societies were, with few exceptions, dissolved or renamed and the newly established Silesian Research Institute in Opava had to orient its historical research chiefl y to the labour movement. The works of the poet Petr Bezruč (born Vladimír Vašek, 1867-1958) and his collection of verses, Slezské písně (Silesian Songs), presented a problem because of their questionable depiction of Silesian identity, and the publication of the complete collection led to disputes in cultural policy. The Ostrava-based arts and politics periodical Červený květ (Red Flower), which repeatedly included debates about regionalism, began to be published in the mid-1950s. At the end of the decade, however, the Communist Party launched a campaign against parochialism (lokálpatriotismus), which was refl ected also in the condemnation of publications seeking to exonerate the poems and ideas of Óndra Łysohorsky (born Ervín Goj, 1905-1989), who during the war promoted the theory of a ''Lach nation.'' In the 1960s, the local authorities and fi gures of Opava again began to emphasize the role of their town as a regional centre. During the Prague Spring of 1968, there were calls for the restoration of Silesian self-government, but that remained more or less limited to the Opava region, and consequently some ''Silesian'' cultural initiatives from this period were of greater importance.