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BALÍK, Stanislav – FASORA, Lukáš – HANUŠ, Jiří – VLHA, Marek: Český antiklerikalismus: Zdroje, témata a podoba českého antiklerikalismu v letech 1848–1938.(Historické myšlení, sv. 69.) Praha, Argo 2015, 500 stran, ISBN 978-80-257-1373-0. The authors view anti-clericalism as an important part of European modernization processes aimed at the church and its instituions. They monitor its character and transformations since the mid-1800s until the end of the first third of the 20th century in the Hapsburg Empire and the first Czechoslovak Republic, taking in to account differences and specific features in various social and ideological environments, in towns and in the country, and also in Czech compatriot communities in the United States. According to the reviewer, their monograph Czech Anti-Clericalism: Sources, Topics and Forms of Czech Anti-Clericalism from 1848 to 1938 permits perceiving the Czech anti-Catholic anti-clericalism in the European context as a multi-layer edphenomenon which had a significant impact on the society and politics of that period. Because of its comprehensive grasp of the topic, inspiring questions it asks, its broad selection of sources and publications it draws from, as well the compact explanations it provides, the book is definitely recommended to all who are interestedin the history of the Czech thinking and politics in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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The author summarizes the life and in particular scientific career of historian Bedřich Loewenstein, describes areas of his professional interest and his intellectual orientation, reminds of his most important works published in Czech and German, and assesses his contribution. Loewenstein was born in 1929 in Prague, in a Czech-German-Jewish family, lived through the German occupation in difficult conditions, and started studying history and philosophy at what was then the Faculty of Arts and History of the Charles University, but was expelled two years later for political reasons. He was allowed to complete his studies later, and in 1957 started working at the Institute of History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, where he remained until his dismissal in 1970. He started intensive contacts with West German historians and other intellectuals during the 1960s, and organized an important international symposium, “Europe and Fascism”, in Prague in 1969. Since the early 1970s, he was not allowed to publish and was employed as an interpreter/translator of the trade mission (since 1973 embassy) of the Federal Republic of Germany. Although watched by the State Security, he managed to make use of his position to establish an important connection between domestic dissenters and their supporters abroad, which was used to exchange publications and other documents. In 1979, he accepted an offer of professorship of recent history at the Free University in West Berlin, where he remained until 1994 and where he could develop and expand his research interests and devote himself to intensive publication activities For a long time, Bedřich Loewenstein was focusing on the German history of the 19th and 20th centuries; since the 1960s, he was also studying ideological, psychological, and social prerequisites of Nazism and later also more general issues of crises of the 20th century, modernism and modernity, civic society, European nationalism, and civilization. In this respect, he was able to integrate approaches and knowledge of other social sciences – sociology, social psychology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, and economy – in a prolific manner. He was a long-time and intensive intermediary of views and ideas between the Czech (or Czechoslovak) and German historiographies. His works, written in a concise, scientific-essayist style, earned him respect among colleagues both at home and abroad. His principal works include Plädoyer für die Zivilisation (Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe 1973), Entwurf der Moderne: Vom Geist der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und Zivilisation (Essen, Reimar Hobbing 1987; in Czech in 1995), Problemfelder der Moderne: Elemente der politischen Kultur (Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1990), My a ti druzí: Dějiny, psychologie, antropologie (Brno, Doplněk 1997; in German in 2003). A synthesis of Loewenstein’s thinking about a broad spectrum of issues is presented in his book Der Fortschrittsglaube: Geschichte einer europäischen Idee (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2008; in Czech: Víra v pokrok: Dějiny jedné evropské ideje. Prague, OIKOYMENH 2009).
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In his article, the author presents, in a concise and condensed fashion, the foundation, contours, principal features, and themes of the thinking of Bedřich Loewenstein (1929–2017), a modern and contemporary history historian spanning a multitude of disciplines. He finds the deepest layer of Loewenstein’s thinking in historical anthropology, in his interest in specific human beings and their actions, motivations, and orientations, explaining the historian’s “frame of mind” by his personal, lived experience of a Central European intellectual confronted with dramatic turns of history in the twentieth century. This also the reason behind Loewenstein’s understanding for the diversity of identities (in Central Europe mainly ethnic and national) and their coexistence, as well as his sensitivity to historical location and conditionality of individuals. According to Havelka, Loewenstein was representing a viewpoint (fairly rare in the Czech environment) which regarded “spiritual sciences” as sciences on creations of the collective and individual human spirit, focusing also on historical forms and influences of these creations, no matter whether his research topic was Fascism, “Bonapartism”, civic society, development and progress, or, more generally, history of ideas. The author points at Loewenstein’s skepticism toward constructions of great theories and his pronounced terminological nominalism refusing to grant essential validity to collective entities such as nations and cultures. This is related to Loewenstein’s conviction about the openness of history, both to the past and to the future, toward potential alternative interpretations. The historical pessimism is counter balanced by Loewenstein’s complementary perception of historical processes of disciplination and emancipation, or the formation of order and human freedom, although he was also a historian of nationalism, violence, and mass manipulation. The author pays special attention to Loewenstein’s concepts of modernity, civilization, and mainly belief in progress, which is viewed in his works in diverse manifestations of its ambiguity. In the end, Havelka emphasizes Loewenstein’s Europeism as a perspective of his historical view and as an integrating civilization principle which is associated with trust in intellect as a means of understanding, tolerance, and consensus.
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The article deals with discourses on sexuality in Ireland and Polandsince the end of World War II. Because of their nature as “Catholic” countries, both societies witnessed harsh debates on sexual morals and affiliated issues such as contraception and abortion, which were fought between supporters of Catholic social thought on the one side and “progressive” reformers in politics, medicine, and education on the other. Therefore, the article seeks to put these debates into context of processes of (de-)secularization of European societies in the 2nd half of the 20th century. The article focuses on the comparison between Poland and Ireland, because on the one hand there were cultural and historical parallels between them, but on the other hand during the “Cold War” they belonged to two antagonistic“ideological camps”. This led to an attempt of a forced secularization in Poland, which also included sexual morals, while the Irish discourses on sexuality were dominated by the Catholic Church. Finally, the article also analyses recent developments that took place since the 1990s and led to a decrease in power of the Hierarchy and changes in sexual morals in Ireland, while current events in Poland show that the debates about sexuality have not come to an end yet.
More...Studentští revolucionáři z listopadu 1989, Václav Havel a (nepolitická) politika
The authoress presents partial results of an oral history time-lapse research project involving a hundred narrators from among former university students who participated in the students’ strike in November 1989, one of the principal triggers of the so-called Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. In doing so, she mainly draws from her chapter in the forthcoming book being prepared by a team of authors led by Miroslav Vaněk and titled Sto studentských evolucí: "Vysokoškolští studenti roku 1989. Životopisná vyprávění v časosběrné perspektivě" [A hundred students’ evolutions: University students of 1989. Biographical narrations in a time-lapse perspective] (Prague, Academia 2019), which is a follow-on of a similar project, "Sto studentských revolucí" [A hundred students’ revolutions], implemented twenty years ago. The authoress first briefly introduces the project, recaps its findings so far, and focuses on how the narrators construe the effect of their revolutionary experience on their lives. In her opinion, interviews with the narrators suggest that the former student revolutionaries assigned key and positive importance of the Velvet Revolution for their personal and social evolution. However, they differ in how they reflect their revolutionary experience in their own civic attitudes, particularly in terms of their personal involvement in the public sphere. The authoress distinguishes three ideal type strategies in their attitudes to their own past, which she labels “revolution as a commitment”, “revolution as a duty fulfilled”, and “revolution as a prepared coincidence”. While the first two groups (also the most numerous ones) are characterized by the narrators’ continuing interest in public affairs, and they differ only in whether should be personally involved in public affairs (the first group) or leave the task to younger generations (the second group), the third group questions the very premise that activities of citizens can trigger desirable changes in the society. In addition, the authoress focuses on forms and transformations of public activities of the narrators since 1989, examining their potential inspirations. In her opinion, the key factor determining the narrators’ opinions and attitudes in this regard is their personal experience of the Velvet Revolution which is, as a rule, personified and symbolized by the person of the dissident and first post-Communist president Václav Havel (1936–2011). Using Havel’s texts of the early 1990s and his thoughts about the civic society and non-political politics, she analyses interviews with the former student revolutionaries, attempting to find why even the narrators belonging to the first (most committed) group generally gravitate toward the role of citizen activists and, save for a few exceptions, systematically avoid traditional party politics.
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Surmiak-Domańska, Katarzyna: Ku-klux-klan: Tady bydlí láska. Translated from the Polish original by Jarmila Horáková. Žilina: Absynt, 2017, 294 pp., ISBN 978-80-89876-49-5. In the reviewer’s opinion, the educative book "Ku-Klux-Klan: This is where love lives" by the Polish reporter (initially published under the title "Ku Klux Klan: Tu mieszka miłość". Czarne, Wołowiec 2015), is a catching story about the immortality of a legend centered around the idea of chosenness and certain superiority of the white Christian American nation. The authoress provides a fitting and plastic description of Ku-Klux-Klan’s history since its birth after the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, detailing the movement’s changes and constants, rises and falls,and permitting an interesting insight into today’s American society and politics through the movement’s optics. The reviewer appreciates that the authoress gives the floor not only to critics, but also to current members and leaders of KKK. Even a rather weaker setting of the book in the context of wider research of extremist movements cannot, in the reviewer’s opinion, diminish its value, particularly fora broader community of readers.
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The paper discusses two key aspects of the second presidency of Edvard Beneš: his involvement in the 1948 Coup in Czechoslovakia, and also the portrayal of both president Beneš and the February 1948 political crisis in history textbooks. The first part tackles president Beneš’s strategy in handling the governmental crisis and its limitations with regard to domestic as well as foreign affairs. The paper simultaneously examines the strategy of the Communist Party alongside that of the non-Communist Parties, the resignation of cabinet ministers of the latter having ultimately triggered the crisis. The second part provides a thorough analysis of primary and secondary school history textbooks published both during the so-called ‘Normalisation’ period (1969–1989) and the post-1989 democratic era. The aim of the analysis is to establish which issues related to the 1948 events were considered important and which facts, on the other hand, were being deliberately misinterpreted or suppressed. The author also addresses the questions of how much space in the history curriculum has been provided for individual crisis’ participants, how historical reality is being constructed and how the key players – Edward Beneš and Klement Gottwald – are being represented.
More...Sourozenci Gerta a Harry Freundovi – oběti trockistického stigmatu
The case study describes dramatic lives of siblings Gerta (Gertruda) Freundová and Harry (Hermann) Freund in the context of the inter-war Communist movement. Born in 1908 (Harry) and 1909 (Gerta) into a middle-class, ethnically mixed (with German, Jewish and Czech identities) in Prague, they both were devoted under the influence of their mother, Terezie Freundová (1885–1982) to Communist ideals since their youth. Gerta was active in the Communist Student Fraction (Kostufra), became a dancer and ran a private dancing school in Prague. In 1932, she married Alexander Yakovlevich Arosev (1890–1938), a Soviet revolutionary, diplomat and writer, who was the Soviet Union’s plenipotentiary representative in Czechoslovakia (before diplomatic relations between the two countries were established). She then followed him to Moscow, where Arosev became the chairman of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (Vsesoyuznoe obshchestvo dlya kulturnoy svyazi s zagranitsey – VOKS), whose mission was to arrange trips and visits of Western intellectuals and artists to the USSR. However, Arosev fell into disfavor during the Great Terror and the couple was arrested in the summer of 1937. Gerta was accused of espionage, sentenced to death, and executed in December 1937, Arosev followed her in February 1938. Harry Freund soon started sympathizing with the so-called Left Opposition in the Soviet Union and was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia for criticizing its bolshevized leadership. He founded a radical left opposition platform under the name “Leninist Opposition” strongly opposing the centralized Stalinistic course of the Communist movement, but also the alternative faction represented by Lev Davidovich Trotsky (1879–1940). After the demise of the First Republic in the autumn of 1938, Harry Freund with his group went underground, was arrested and imprisoned for several months. When released, he joined the resistance movement in the occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and perished in January 1944 while being arrested. Freund’s mother was the only survivor of the family the remaining members of which died in concentration camps. The author’s narration presents hitherto unknown biographic facts concerning the Freunds and also reveals a tragic link between their fates, showing that it was Harry’s opposition activities which provided alleged evidence on his sister’s espionage to Stalin’s repressive bodies. It also captures the place of Freund’s “Leninist Opposition” on the radical left-wing scene of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, and describes its political activities, opinion clashes and ideological dogmatism. It also shows how fatal the Trotskyist stigma was for non-conformist members of the Communist movement and how symptomatically the fate of both protagonists reflects the turbulent evolution of the domestic radical left-wing movement and Czechoslovak-Soviet relations during the inter-war period.
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The review compares two collective monographs published simultaneously, which examine one of the key trends in Czechoslovakia’s history since the mid-1950s: expert thinking, management and ruling, technocracy, and the social role of experts from various segments of the society. The publication "Architekti dlouhé změny: Expertní kořeny postsocialismu v Československu" [Architects of the Long Change: Expert Roots of Post-Socialism in Czechoslovakia] (Prague: Argo, Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, and Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i., 2019) was written by a team of authors under the leadership of the book’s editor Michal Kopeček, the book "Řídit socialismus jako firmu: Technokratické vládnutí v Československu, 1956–1989" [Running Socialism Like a Company: Technocratic Governance in Czechoslovakia,1956–1989] (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny and Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i., 2019) is a product of trio of authors led by Vítězslav Sommer. While Sommer’s project captures, in a comprehensive manner, the evolution of expert approaches in relation to the management of the economy, society, and state and to the scientific-technological revolution at the time of post-Stalinism and the so-called normalizationin Czechoslovakia, Michal Kopeček and his collaborators made several probes into specific fields of expertise (law, management, psychotherapy, sociology, ecology, urbanism) during the period of normalization and in the early 1990s. The entire publication is permeated by a proposition claiming that a number of essential aspects of the post-socialist rule in the country had their roots in the political and economic thinking, mental patterns, and social and cultural practices of the 1980s, and thus were not just imports of Western neo-liberalism. In the reviewer’s opinion, both monographs help understand the relative stability of the state socialism in Czechoslovakia by showing how much efforts aimed at scientific management of the society were contributing to it; at the same time, however, they also identify the subversive potential of these efforts, as expert criticism of the system’s dysfunctions at the time of the so-called perestroika (přestavba) was undermining the system’s legitimacy. The reviewer also appreciates that both publications emphasize longterm historical continuity, have a trans-national dimension, and dispute the alleged impermeability of state socialism.
More...Od konca stalinizmu do kapitalistickej transformácie
The review analyzes contact areas and divergences of two publications with a similar topic: "Řídit socialismus jako firmu: Technokratické vládnutí v Československu,1956–1989" [Running Socialism Like a Company: Technocratic Governance in Czechoslovakia, 1956–1989] (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny and Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i., 2019) by Vítězslav Sommer and his two co-authors, and "Architekti dlouhé změny: Expertní kořeny postsocialismu v Československu" [Architects of the Long Change: Expert Roots of Post-Socialism in Czechoslovakia] (Prague: Argo, Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, and Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i., 2019) by a team of six authors led by Michal Kopeček, who is also the book’s editor. The reviewer sees both collective monographs as the Czech historiographic feats of 2019, particularly from a methodological viewpoint. In his opinion, their key common feature is an emphasis on historical continuity, where by they question the traditionally perceived periodization of Czechoslovakia’s socialist and post-socialist history in the Central European context and also show how it was contributing to maintaining the power’s legitimacy. Sommer’s project also uses the continuity as a tool of comparison of different (socialist and capitalist) political regimes from the viewpoint of governance expertization, while Kopeček’s project permits advancing beyond the historical milestone of 1989 and finding sources of acceptance of the “liberal consensus” after the restoration of capitalism in the previous period of Czechoslovakia’s existence. The reviewer illustrates the above approach using selected studies from the latter publication, which deal with different spheres in which experts were active: legal science (with Kopeček’s provocative proposition of a “socialist legal state” – socialistický právní stát), psychotherapy, urbanism and ecology. He opines that both publications deal with contemporary history and the formation of capitalist systems in Czechoslovakia and Central Eastern Europe rather than the history of the previous regime. At the same time, they also present the history of the formation of languages of criticism of the restored capitalism, which the reviewer sees as their greatest contribution.
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The third reflection of two collective monographs dealing with similar topics – "Řídit socialismus jako firmu: Technokratické vládnutí v Československu, 1956–1989 [Running Socialism Like a Company: Technocratic Governance in Czechoslovakia,1956–1989] (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny and Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i., 2019) by Vítězslav Sommer and his two co-authors, and "Architekti dlouhé změny: Expertní kořeny postsocialismu v Československu [Architects of the Long Change: Expert Roots of Post-Socialism in Czechoslovakia] (Prague: Argo, Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, and Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i., 2019) written by a team of authors under the leadership of the book’s editor, Michal Kopeček – starts with the reviewer’s sigh reflecting his difficult task, as he has no other option but to praise both books, which do not contain any factual errors. In his opinion, the publication "Running Socialism Like a Company", which focuses mainly on the evolution of technocracy in socialist Czechoslovakia is more compact and somewhat more gripping. He highly appreciates the authors’ effort to link technocratic thinking of the second half of the 1950s to remarkable and not much explored technocratic reflections dating back to the pre-war republic, as well as their convincing interpretations of the transformation of visions of expert management of the 1960s to practical applications of so-called social planning, a tool to rule the depoliticized society, and concepts of “socialist enterprise” in the next two decades of the normalization. The authors’ warning against technocratic populism, which highlights successful businessmen as experts who can manage public matters better than democratic politicians is very topical in today’s context. The "Architects of the Long Change" team is probing an even less explored field, pursuing the topic of experts in selected areas of their social activities during the transition from the Czechoslovak normalization period to the 1990s. The reviewer was particularly captured by case histories from specific fields of expertise, such as psychotherapy, sociology, urbanism, and ecology. In the reviewer’s opinion, both books are excellent proof positive that the Czech historiography of contemporary history can produce superb works bearing international comparison.
More...Kontinuity urbánní expertízy na příkladu Bratislavy v "krátkém" dvacátém století
Between 1918 and 1989, Bratislava witnessed at least four major political upheavals, formed part of different states, and its entire social, political and economic order fundamentally changed several times, as well as the position of the city – from the centre of part of Czechoslovakia to the capital of the formally independent state. The main aim of this study is to analyse the development, planning and construction of Bratislava throughout this entire turbulent period, while pointing mainly to the continuities and connections that go beyond these political upheavals. The study focuses on a largely Slovak epistemic community of architects and urban planners inspired by modernism, who were active in Bratislava or influenced its development during the researched period. The first generational cohort of these urban experts was formed by people who, since the 1920s, had drawn inspiration mainly from the environment of the Prague Czech Technical University, where they had the opportunity to become acquainted with modernism in architecture. After the Second World War, some of these figures created an important expert and academic background, from which, in the local context, emerged another extremely influential generation of architects and designers, which had a fundamental influence over the development of the city in the 1960s and 1970s. While some of them remained active well into the 1990s, it is possible to observe as early as in the normalization period (and this is the focus of the final parts of this study) how the approach towards the urban environment they represented was being gradually challenged and was becoming less important. The author analyses the relationship between the urban experts of several generations, as well as between the urban experts and other important actors who influenced the development of Bratislava. He shows how these experts built their positions and secured the continuity of their own approaches to the construction, or more generally, to the development and operation of the city. He also outlines how the ways they exercised their influence changed over the course of several decades and what factors – on the political, institutional and discursive level – strengthened or weakened this expert community.
More...Přehledový esej k úmrtí předního historického sociologa
This review essay is published on the occasion of the recent death of the American historical sociologist Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1930–2019) and seeks to present, in outline, his ambitious work resulting in a major theory of the evolution of global capitalism. The author therefore looks first into the origin, expansion and structure of the world capitalist system and later examines the way in which Wallerstein explains the persistence or increase of inequalities in this system. In this context, he develops thoughts on Kondratieff waves, but also offers other alternative views on the long economic cycles not explored by Wallerstein. Apart from these long cycles, the study also critically presents the concept of periphery and the related unequal exchange between the global centre and the periphery, or semi-periphery. Finally, the author pays special attention to the late phase of Wallerstein’s scientific career, when his attention shifted to the issue of culture. The review is motivated by the fact that in the Czech environment the extensive work of this prominent historical sociologist has been reflected in a systematic way only by Stanislav Holubec, and apart from this, it has been reflected only marginally. The author presents a detailed critical argument challenging Wallerstein’s general thesis on the increase of global inequalities between the centre and the periphery by showing that different methodological approaches to measuring these inequalities lead to different, or even contradictory, conclusions.
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The review presents a collective monograph entitled "War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus" (London, Palgrave Macmillan 2017, Memory Studies series), which is a work by an international team of authors and was published thanks to the care of four editors: Julie Fedor, Markku Kangaspuro, Jussi Lassila and Tatiana Zhurzhenko. In the individual studies that are grouped into bigger parts, the authors seek to capture the place and role of World War II in the politics of memory and collective historical memory of three East European countries. The reviewer praises the work for giving Ukraine and Belarus the same attention as Russia and also fore choing current political events and debates in these countries. According to the reviewer, this still unique attempt to map conceptually the issue in question in a larger part of the post-Soviet space, using methods of historiography, reveals the diversity as well as incompatibility of different versions of commemorating the war within these national societies. The publication convincingly demonstrates that in this region the Great Patriotic War remains a topical, emotional event that the majority of the population perceive as a positive, identity-making chapter of their history.
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Bringing back into actuality a personality as important as Ioan Boroș (1850-1937), a reference figure of the Banat Greek Catholicism during the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the next, represents a significant acquisition, an important result of the research efforts that were conducted after 1989 in the area of church history. In this respect, two major historiographical restitutions must be mentioned; after they saw the light of the printing press, they contributed in a the decisive manner in placing in the spotlight the proposed archiereus Ioan Boroș to the Romanian historiography and to the contemporary Greek-Catholic ecclesial and community consciousness; it is the publication of his memorial notes, along with his will, correspondence and documents proving his elevation to the rank of honorary archiereus, in the period immediately following the Great Union. A first book containing his historical writings is of great importance in understanding his intellectual profile and the great diversity of the concerns that animated him. Considering the intellectual formation, the life experience and the exceptional church administrative skill that Ioan Boroș showed, we consider that it is not without interest to see how his memorial notes and, on a broader level, his scientific and publishing activity, reflect the multi-confessional character of Banat and especially the relations between the two Romanian confessions, Orthodoxy and Greek Catholicism. This is the aim of the present research paper.
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The article investigates the financial situation of the workers and employees of the Imandra railway station during the Russian Civil War and the intervention on Murman. The key research questions are: what legal acts established the workers’ wages, and how these wages correlated with the general socio-economic situation of the inhabitants of the Northern Oblast. The main sources of research are archival materials containing information on the salaries of employees who held various positions, reports on the average wages of women and men, and the minutes of meetings of officials discussing the economic problems on the Murman. Archival data on the life of workers at the Imandra depot are used for the first time. It is concluded that at the Imandra station there was a significant gender inequality in terms of wages, with the average wage of men being almost twice the average wage of women. Nevertheless, despite all the difficulties, the station workers had access to the free purchase of consumer goods, although the prices for these goods were relatively high. It is concluded that one of the main problems of the Northern Oblast population was the rapid inflation of the ruble that resulted in higher prices, while wages could not match them.
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The review deals with two monographs that examine the post-Stalinist period from different perspectives: "Soudruzi a jejich svět: Sociálně myšlenková tvářnost komunismu" [Comrades and Their World: The Social Mindset of Communism] by Pavel Kolář, originally published in German under the title "Der Poststalinismus: Ideologie und Utopie einer Epoche" (Köln/R. – Weimar – Wien 2016) and "„Rehabilitovat Marxe!“ Československá stranická inteligence a myšlení post-stalinské modernity" [“Rehabilitate Marx!” The Czechoslovak Party Intelligentsia and Thought in Post-Stalinist Modernity] by Jan Mervart and Jiří Růžička. The review describes both studies and focuses on their common and different features. Kolář, over five different thematic areas – the concept of history, the Communist Party, the nation, enemies and of time – attempts to grasp the “world of meaning” of the Communist Party members in Czechoslovakia, Poland and the German Democratic Republic in the period from Stalin’s death to the end of the 1960s. Mervart and Růžička examine the thinking of Marxist philosophers in Czechoslovakia in the same period, focusing on their conceptions of structure, people, nation, revolution and new subjectivity. Despite the stark differences between the actors under study and the obvious diversities in the concept of post-Stalinism, both studies seek to establish the period as a distinct historical era during which the questioning of Stalinist dogmas and the search for new possibilities of socialism were decisive. The end result is two very stimulating monographs. However, their – also common – major weakness lies in their lack of regard for the social context of the actors examined.
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The purpose of this article is to identify the place and the particular aspects of the Historical and Legal Method as a tool used in scientific research. In order to achieve this purpose, the ‘Analysis’ and ‘Summary’ Methods have been applied. In particular, a juxtaposition was also used when comparing the "Historical and Legal Analysis” with its variety of “Comparative Historical and Legal Analysis”. The productiveness of this method has also been established not only in legal but also in historical research. The spontaneous application of the latter in historical science was also ascertained. For the first time, the benefit of using the method as an interdisciplinary research tool on the watershed between law and history has been revealed in the theory.
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