This article discusses the birth and early dynamics of Czech post-Communist antiCommunism. It is based on the recognition that during the political takeover in November and December 1989 the policy of radical discontinuity remained a marginal, practically invisible and inaudible phenomenon in the mostly restful period of civil unrest. In the generally shared atmosphere of ''national understanding,'' which led to the historic compromise between the old, Socialist regime and the new, democratic regime, there was no room for a policy of radically settling scores with the Communist Party and the past. It was all the more surprising, therefore, when demands along these lines (the relinquishing of Party property, the outlawing of the Party, the punishment of criminal and treasonous politicians) appeared as if out of nowhere as early as the beginning of 1990, and then intensifi ed. Memory was awakened and its numerous previously buried levels now emerged in public life. The incursion of the dark, unrecognised, and unprocessed past into the artifi cial reality of historic compromise caused frustration with ethics in the ranks of the nascent political élite. It was but a small step from the political prisoners’ awakened memories of crimes committed by the recently defeated regime to the now current problems with the ''nomenclature brotherhoods'' and ''Communist mafi as'' in the provinces and in businesses throughout the country. Calls for a thorough settling of scores were heard with increasing frequency from Civic Forum, the victorious political movement, and they eventually became the catalyst of the pronounced division within the Civic Forum. But these calls never turned into a decisive political strategy and they managed to hold a dominant place only in the programmesof the less important parties and organizations like the Club of Politically-Engaged Non-Party Members (Klub angažovaných nestraníků - KAN) and the Confederation of Political Prisoners (Konfederace politických vězňů). After the break-up of the Civic Forum in late 1990 and early 1991, radical anti-Communism ran out of steam, and the right-of-centre political parties that emerged from the erstwhile Civic Forum - primarily the Civic Democratic Party, the Civic Democratic Alliance, and the Christian Democratic Party - adapted the originally radical demands to a realistic policy of compromise based on the fact that the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, with the support of more than ten per cent of the electorate, remained a part of the democratic political system. The largely ignored sense of frustration with morals, stemming from the fundamental contradiction between the ideal (that is, comprehensive) possibilities of a policy of settling scores and the real (that is, limited) possibilities, was put off for later years, and remains a public problem to this day.
Autorovi první biografie Petr Zenkla (1884-1975) se podle recenzenta podařilo beze zbytku splnit záměr přiblížit a kriticky zhodnotit jeho politický i osobní život a představit myšlenkový rámec, který formoval jeho činy. Čtivě, přehledně a s erudicí líčí jeho životní dráhu od vzestupu v pražské komunální politice mezi válkami, s vrcholem ve funkci primátora Prahy (od dubna 1937 do února 1939 a znovu od srpna 1945 do května 1946), přes léta nacistického věznění v koncentračním táboře, poválečné mocenské boje s komunisty ve funkci předsedy Československé strany národněsocialistické a místopředsedy vlády Národní fronty, porážku v únorové politické krizi roku 1948 a útěk do amerického exilu až po dvacetileté působení ve vedoucích pozicích československých exilových politických struktur (zprvu jako předsedy Rady svobodného Československa). Ve své práci přitom přináší množství cenných poznatků k řadě dalších historických témat, jako je pražská komunální politika a systém sociální péče v období první Československé republiky, a zejména dějiny československého poúnorového exilu., According to the reviewer, the author of this the first biography of Petr Zenkl (1884-1975) has fully succeeded in meeting his aim of giving the reader a good picture of Zenkl´s political and personal life, while critically assessing them, and presenting the intellectual framework that shaped Zenkl´s actions. Readable, clear, and well informed, the book describes the course of Zenkl´s life from his rise in Prague local politics between the two world wars, and when he reached his political peak as mayor from April 1937 to February 1939 and from August 1945 to May 1946 (his two terms as Mayor separated by his year as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps), his post-war power struggle with the Communists when he was chairman of the Czechoslovak National Social Party and deputy premier in the National Front government, followed by his defeat in the political crisis of February 1948 and then his escape to America, where he worked for twenty years in senior posts in Czechoslovak exile organizations, for instance, as chairman of the exile Council of Free Czechoslovakia. The book, according to the reviewer, provides much valuable information on a number of other historical topics, including Prague local politics, the social security system of the first Czechoslovak Republic, and, in particular, the history of Czechoslovak exiles after February 1948., [autor recenze] Ondřej Koutek., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
Politik Petr Pithart (1941), bývalý disident, premiér české vlády a později dlouhá léta předseda či místopředseda Senátu Parlamentu ČR, je také autorem řady knih o politice a moderních českých dějinách. V poslední z nich reflektuje svou roli v politice v období od února 1990, kdy se stal předsedou české vlády, do volební porážky jeho Občanského hnutí v červnu 1992. Recenzentka připomíná zvláště pasáže věnované rozdělení kompetencí mezi republikové vlády a federální vládu, scénářům ekonomické reformy, privatizaci průmyslových podniků nebo fungování tehdejší politiky. Autor se pohybuje mezi sebekritikou a sebeobhajobou a je podle ní silný tehdy, když příliš nemoralizuje a věcně popisuje., From the 1960s to the 1990s, Petr Pithart (b. 1941) was a leading dissident. After the Changes beginning in late 1989 he became Premier of the Czech Government and, later, was for years the Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the Czech Senate. He is also the author of a number of books about politics and modern Czech history. In his most recent publication, whose title translates as "After Eighty-nine: Recollections and meditations" (the third volume of Pithart´s collected works), he considers his role in the period from February 1990, when he was elected Czech Premier, to the defeat his party, the Citizen´s Movement (Občanské hnutí), in the general elections of June 1992. The reviewer notes in particular the passages devoted to the division of powers between the Czech and Slovak governments on the one hand and the Federal Government on the other, the scenarios for economic reform, the privatization of industries, and politics in practice. According to the reviewer, Pithart moves in this publicaton between self-criticism and self-defence and is at his strongest when he avoids moralizing and sticks instead to factual description., [autor recenze] Adéla Gjuričová., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
Světlana (Svjatlana) Alexijevičová (narozena 1948), spisovatelka s bělorusko-ukrajinskými kořeny, která píše rusky a pokládá své dílo za součást především ruské literatury, obdržela Nobelovu cenu za literaturu za rok 2015. Kniha Doba z druhé ruky je poslední částí volné pentalogie o pozdní sovětské a postsovětské (hlavně ruské a ukrajinské) společnosti „Hlasy Utopie“ (Golosy Utopii) a poprvé vyšla v českém překladu v roce 2015 (původní ruské vydání: Vremja sekond chend. Moskva, Vremja 2013). Recenzentka přibližuje způsob tvorby autorky na pomezí dokumentu a beletrie a její přijetí v Rusku a na Západě. Doba z druhé ruky je založena na řadě rozhovorů, které Alexijevičová vedla s lidmi různého sociálního postavení (většinou „obyčejných lidí“) v Rusku v letech 1991 až 2012 a jež poté zpracovala do působivého celku. Recenzentka dává nahlédnout do výpovědí dotazovaných, v nichž se prostřednictvím svých životních příběhů i osudů blízkých osob vracejí hluboko do sovětské minulosti, a konstatuje, že kniha je pronikavou sondou do podob postsovětské mentality., Svetlana Alexievich (/born in 1948), a writer with Byelorussian-Ukrainian roots who writes in Russian and sees her work mainly as a part of Russian literature, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2015. The book Secondhand time. The last of the Soviets is the last part of the loose pentalogy "Voices of Utopia" (Golosy Utopii) on the late Soviet and post-Soviet (mainly Russian and Ukrainian) society, which was whose Czech translation was first published in 2015 (original Russian edition: Vremya sekond chend. Moscow, Vremya, 2013). The reviewer describes her writing style bordering on both fiction and non-fiction and, Alexievich´s acceptance in Russia and in the West. The Secondhand Time is based on a number of interviews that Alexievich had with people with a diverse social status (mostly "ordinary people") in Russia between 1991 and 2012, which the authoress amalgamated into an impressive work. The reviewer provides an insight into life stories of the interviewees and their close relatives and friends, in which they return deep into the Soviet past, concluding that the book is a penetrating probe into forms of post-Soviet mentality., [autor recenze] Dagmar Petišková., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
Recenzent rekapituluje historické publikace věnované od roku 1990 Filozofické fakultě Univerzity Karlovy v Praze v době komunistického režimu (1948-1989) a hodnotí Petráňovu rozsahem impozantní knihu jako završení dosavadního výzkumu. Podle něj si autor klade podstatné obecné otázky po důvodech snadného přijetí a dlouhodobého trvání komunistického režimu, rezignace společnosti a izolovanosti disentu za takzvané normalizace, domnívá se ale, že přesvědčivějším odpovědím na ně brání částečné zatížení výkladu „totalitárněhistorickým narativem“, stavícím do protikladu vládnoucí režim a společnost. Oceňuje, že profesor Josef Petráň (1930-2017) jako historik raného novověku, který již od šedesátých let přednášel na pražské filozofické fakultě, propojuje líčení její historie s vlastním příběhem v žánru ego-histoire, nevyhýbá se přitom problematickým momentům a neusiluje o sebeobhajobu. Hlavní teze, v níž Petráň částečně rehabilituje kvalitu odborné produkce Filozofické fakulty UK v komunistickém období, je podle něj podložená a největší přínos knihy vidí v mimořádně bohaté faktografii., The reviewer recaps historical publications since 1990 deducated to the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague at the time of the Communist regime (1948-1989), assessing Petráň´s impressive book Philosophers making a revolution: Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague during the Communist experiment (1948-1968-1989) as the climax of the author´s research efforts so far. In his opinion, the author is asking himself essential general questions concerning the reasons of easy acceptance and long-term existence of the Commmunist regime, resignation of the society, and isolated nature of the dissent during the so-called normalization; however, he argues the author´s answers could have been more convincing if the book had not been partly burdened by the "totalitarian historical narrative" presenting the ruling regime and the society as opposite entities. He appreciates that Professor Petráň (1930-2017) as an early modern era historian lecturing at the Faculty of Arts in Prague since the 1960s, connects the portrayal of its history with his own ego-histoire story while not avoiding questionable moments and not attempting to defend himself. The main principle of the book, namely Petráň´s partial rehabilitation of the quality of professional production of the Faculty of Arts at the time of the Communist regime, is, in the reviewer´s opinion, substantiated, and the reviewer sees the book greatest contribution in its exceptionally rich factography., [autor recenze] Petr Andreas., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
The article looks at how emotion is represented in Bohemian folk chronicles, i.e. texts of a historiographic character, written by autodidacts - mostly peasants and artisans. At the core of our analysis is the most famous work of this kind, Paměti Františka Jana Vaváka z let 1770-1816 (Memoirs of František Jan Vavák 1770-1816). Other writings from the turn of the 19th century (e.g. those of Václav Jan Mašek, Jan Petr, Ondřej Lukavský) are also considered. Our initial question is: How, and in which contexts, did Czech-speaking authors of the late 18th and early 19th century, having no opportunity to get acquainted with contemporary philosophical theories, express affects? The study shows that the emotions, especially joy and grief, are expressed in a way recommended by early modern rhetoricians (e.g. Cypriano de Soarez or Bernard Lamy): particular figures are associated with particular affects. Though the principle is the same, the figures used by autodidacts differ from those recommended by the rhetoric manuals. Being unable to read Latin, German or French rhetorics, the authors had probably grasped the principles of how to represent affect from their reading, but adapted them according to their own talent and vision. As might be expected given the rural origin and values of the authors, joy is expressed mostly in the context of weather favourable for the harvest, while grief is realised in the context of rising prices and natural disasters., Dmitrij Timofejev., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy