When Stalinism was at its peak, between 1948 and 1953, there was a marked escalation in anti-Jewish manifestations by the Soviet regime, which has often been called “state,'' ''offi cial,'' or ''Stalinist'' antisemitism. This article endeavours to provide an account of this by analysing the image of the ''Jew'' in the propaganda of the time. The basis for the analysis is the concept of the ''image of the enemy'' as a basic fi gure of the totalitarian ideological canon. The article traces the way in which the image was fi lled with meanings linked with the term ''Jew.'' To this end, the author employs the so-called semiotic textual analysis, which enables her to gradually uncover the character of the signs in the propagandistic language. She focuses on two propaganda campaigns that dominated the Soviet public space in this period. One was against so-called ''cosmopolitanism,'' from January to March 1949; the other was the so-called ''Doctor’s Plot'' from January to March 1953. The method in concern enables her to provide evidence of the anti-Jewish orientation of the campaigns, which have so far been deduced chiefl y from quantitative lists of acts of repression against specifi c individuals of Jewish descent. Analysis of the semantic fi eld of the image of the ''Jew'' then reveals the mechanisms that, because of the many layers of the sign character of this image, were used to provide reasons for the home and foreign policies of the Soviet regime, as well as to justify its problems at home and abroad. The last part of the article consists of conclusions that the author fi nds applicable to the Czechoslovak case at that time.
In this article the author raises several theoretical questions connected to an insuffi ciently researched topic, Czech society in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (15 March 1939-8/9 May 1945). He considers, on the one hand, possible theoretical starting points, which he sees as residing in the thorough application of sociological approaches to historical research, and, on the other hand, the debates over the terms ''collaboration'' and ''resistance''. The term ''collaboration'' (kolaborace) was imported into the Czech milieu, and is generally used to mean dishonourable work with, or for, the enemy. The author therefore sees the use of this term as being chiefl y in research on public policy, in which the extant sources usually provide enough information to form a reliable picture of the individual actors and their motives. In this respect the author also refers to the views of some Czech historians who have already pointed out that when discussing the behaviour of Czech society in the Protectorate it is extremely diffi cult to set a clear, universally valid boundary between resistance and collaboration. For actual research on Czech society in the Protectorate the author prefers semantically neutral terms, free of moralizing connotations. He sees inspiration in sociology, whose approaches enable the development of a more complex model than the hitherto widely held view of a society that lived in some kind of permanent dilemma between resistance and collaboration. Apart from research on everyday life in the Protectorate - the milieu which the individual actors moved about in - the author recommends exploring also the ''extent of adaptation'' (the way theactors accommodated themselves to the conditions of the new regime) and the ''extent of identifi cation'' (whether the actors identifi ed with the new regime and to what extent they considered it something unchangeable). From a comparison of both factors the author then deduces the actors’ basic attitude to the regime (positive, neutral, potentially hostile, hostile) and their basic modes of behaviour (loyalty, law-breaking, opportunism, resistance). The ''extent of identifi cation'' in particular constitutes the dynamic factor whose value was dependent on a whole range of circumstances. In researching Czech society in the Protectorate one must therefore consider other important topics, for example, the effect of Nazi and Allied propaganda, the responses in Czech society to the news about the course of the war, and, last but not least, fear, an integral part of Protectorate reality. To understand the behaviour of Czech society in the years of the Second World War (and therefore its values and orientation at the time of Liberation), one must in historical research devote suffi cient consideration to the elementary fact that this society found itself in the grip of a totalitarian regime and was consequently not operating on the principle of freedom of choice.
The paper offers a synthetic overview of the historical and social sciences writings on 19th and 20th century Romanian elites. Following the original local sociological constructs developed
during the interwar period, the early socialist regime stopped almost all research on the topic for the next two decades. The interest rose again slowly in the 1970s and 1980s, when preliminary investigations highlighted some of the future research subjects: intellectuals,
economic, and political elites. After 1989, historians were the first to enter the field, opening workshops on the previously mentioned categories, and more recently on ecclesiastical, military, and administrative elites. Social and political scientists followed shortly, focusing mainly – but not exclusively – on the socialist and post-socialist elites. Despite the flourishing period of the last two decades, and the generally positive trend, the historical research on elites in Romania produced mainly empirical studies. The methodological and theoretical framework was left unapproached, partly due to a lack of tradition, partly because of the low level of collaboration between historians and social scientists.
Autor se podle recenzenta pokusil o dosud nejkomplexnější analýzu vztahů mezi Varšavskou smlouvou a Rumunskem od poloviny padesátých let téměř do konce let šedesátých. Svou práci zakládá na rumunských, západních a ojediněle i sovětských pramenech. Vychází přitom z národní perspektivy Bukurešti a soustředí se na její politickou a vojenskou strategii vůči této organizaci. Zhodnocuje tak posun od poslušného satelitu ke vzdorujícímu spojenci v rámci širší perspektivy mezinárodních vztahů a reality bipolárně rozděleného studenoválečného světa. Vedle toho objasňuje i četné doposud nedostatečně probádané epizody z celkové historie Varšavské smlouvy. Přes výtky vůči struktuře výkladu a příliš selektivní pramenné základně, která vede k některým nesprávným závěrům, podle recenzenta pozitivní přínos Dumitruovy práce převažuje., The author of the book under review has, according to the reviewer, attempted the most comprehensive analysis of relations so far between the Warsaw Pact and Romania, covering the period from its establishment in May 1955 almost to the time of the Soviet-led military intervention in Czechoslovakia. He has based his work on Romanian, Western, and to a far lesser extent, Soviet sources. His starting point is the national perspective from Bucharest, and he concentrates on its political and military strategies towards this military organizations. He thus assesses the shift from obedient satellite to defiant ally in the broader perspective of international relations and the reality of the bipolar division of the Cold War world. In addition, he also clarifies numerous hitherto insufficiently researched episodes in the overall history of the Warsaw Pact. Despite having reservations about the structure of the intepretation and the overly narrow range of sources, which has led to some incorrect conclusions, the reviewer considers Dumitru´s work to be a positive contribution to our knowledge of the topic., [autor recenze] Matěj Bílý., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy