Etnické čistky, komunismus a devastace životního prostředí. Vytváření nové identity severočeského pohraničí (1945–1989)
Ethnic Cleansing, Communism, and Environmental Devastation in Czechoslovakia’s Borderlands, 1945–89

Summary/Abstract: In this article (originally published as ‘Ethnic Cleansing, Communism, and Envi¬ronmental Devastation in Czechoslovakia’s Borderlands, 1945-1989,’ Journal of Modern History, vol. 78, [March, 2006], no. 1, pp 65-92) the author considers the causes of the devastation of the landscape and natural environment of north Bo¬hemia from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Communist ré-gime. Unlike some Sudeten-German critics or former Czech dissident intellectuals (like Petr Příhoda), the author does not look for the explanation in the mere fact of the expulsion of the German population, whose place in the borderlands was then taken by new arrivals who lacked both an attachment to place and a sense of belonging with the region. Instead, he aims to demonstrate that in Czechoslovakia immediately after the Second World War three phenomena interacted – namely, ethnic cleansing, Czechoslovak Communist socio-economic policy, late industrial modernity. All, according to him, derived from a complex, for which he uses David Harvey’s terms ‘universal modernism’ and ‘high modernism.’ Its roots go back to the Enlightenment and are usually identified with faith in linear progress and ab¬solute truths, rational planning of the ideal social order, and a desire for reshaping the identity of people and where they live.

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