Komunismus znovu nalezený
Communism Rediscovered

Placák´s Gottwaldovo Československo jako fašistický stát

Summary/Abstract: Petr Placák. Gottwaldovo Československo jako fašistický stát. Prague and Litomyšl: Paseka and Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2015, 189 pp., ISBN 978-80-7432-604-2 and 978-80-87912-32-4. The author is highly critical of the book under discussion. He finds Placák’s very broad conception of Fascism problematic; it is, he writes, vague, with an ulterior motive, and unscholarly. Placák’s attempt in this book to describe political developments in post-war Czechoslovakia from May 1945 to late February 1948 fundamentally suffers, according to him, from an absence of research using primary sources and scholarly secondary literature on the topic. The style of argument tends, moreover, to be based on capriciousness rather than on respect for the facts. The author illustrates these shortcomings in detail with sample passages in which Placák defends his argument about the antisemitic nature of Czechoslovak Communist Party policy in that period. He concludes that Gottwaldovo Československo jako fašistický stát (Gottwald’s Czechoslovakia as a fascist state) does not meet the basic standards of scholarly work, and is ultimately irrelevant to academic discussion.

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