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In the year 2020, the Hungarian nation throughout the world commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon. As a result of the diktat designed with reference to the right of nations to self-determination, but at the same time defying this principle, not only the borders of Hungary were changed, but—against their will—one third of the Hungarian nation was driven into minority position, including the Hungarian population of Upper Hungary. The Treaty of Trianon, signed on 4th June 1920, thus provided a decisive contribution to the birth of the Hungarian minority community in the former Czechoslovakia, the present Slovakia.To date, no comprehensive monograph or collection of documents on the history of the Hungarian nation´s segment falling under Czechoslovakia has been published. This prompted the Forum Minority Research Institute to gather and present to readers in one volume the most important sources on the history of the Hungarian minority community now living in southern Slovakia, from the founding of the Czechoslovak state in 1918 until its dissolution in 1992.The size constraints did not, of course, allow the publication of all the documents considered important, so documents consisting of only a few lines on the one hand and the too voluminous ones on the other hand were left out of the volume. The published documents were selected in such a way that they provide a comprehensive picture of the history of the Hungarian minority community and present the most important issues of its seventy-five years existence within the Czechoslovak state. Some of the omitted documents are presented in the form of illustrations.The vast majority of the documents included in the collection come from the archives of Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, and partly from the contemporary Hungarian press in Czechoslovakia. Some of them have already been published in various collections of documents, but there are some among them which have been unknown not only to a wider readership, but also to historians. Most of the documents come from the most dramatic and hectic periods in the history of the Hungarian minority, i.e. the years following the formation of the Czechoslovak state, the period of the first Vienna Award, the years of post-World War II disenfranchisement, the Prague Spring and the regime change.The volume consists of five chapters, adapted to the general historical eras of Czechoslovakia. The first chapter contains documents on the First Republic, the second on the Slovak autonomy and the Slovak State, the third on the years after the Second World War, the fourth on the decades of the communist dictatorship, and the fifth on the years between the regime change and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Each document is preceded by the place and time of its origin, followed by a brief introduction to interpret and place the document in historical context. The documents are followed by references indicating their current location. At the end of the collection, there is a selected bibliography containing the most important pieces of academic literature on the history of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia.
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The article presents the program of sexual education prepared and offered by Krakow Branch of the Planned Parenthood Association in the wider context of socio-political situation in Krakow (1956 – 1989). Since the beginning of the Association’s existence, the special attention was paid to the development of educational program, which concerned the different aspects of „family life“. The article is going to answer the questions about its goals, the educational tools used to achieve them and its social targets. To accurately determine the position of the Association in the city‘s community I will analyse its foundation and activities in wider context of the pre-war traditions of the organisation and the activities regarding premarital counselling undertaken by the Krakow Catholic Church.
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The Historical Archives of the National Commission of NSZZ Solidarity (AKKS), based in Gdańsk, apart from archival materials related to the functioning of probably the most famous trade union in Poland, also keep numerous museum objects. Among them, one can find a wide range of artistic manifestations of people engaged in the opposition activities against the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic. These are primarily leaflets, posters, postcards and postage stamps of the underground postal service, badge pins attached to clothing, pennants, decorative calendars, and furthermore banners, commemorative medals, coins, tapestries, devotional articles, sculptures, paintings, photographs of inscriptions on the walls and others. The authors of many of these artworks were not professional artists. Among them there were amateurs, employees of state-owned factories or enterprises not directly related to the world of art, driven to action by personal interests, the need to manifest themselves in the face of the reality, and specific circumstances. In the course of their creative activity, they struggled with various difficulties related to the limited access to materials, the lack of a studio or the need to keep their efforts secret. A selection of some of the material effects of such activities kept in AKKS from the 1980S , are presented in the article. It seems that they can serve to illustrate the methods used by the oppositionists – with artistic spirit – in struggling with the encountered obstacles, in efforts which often allowed the creation of “something out of nothing.”
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The topic of this article is Andrychów’s history after World War II. The time--frame includes the events from 1945 (the city’s liberation by the Red Army and thecreation of the communist system in Andrychów) to 1950 (the beginnings of theSix-Year Plan). The purpose of the article is to present the postwar history of Andrychów regarding the city’s political and social history over the examined period.The article was divided into two parts.In the first part – Political life – I presented the politcal situation in the city afterits liberation in January 1945. The Polish Worker’s Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza,PPR) was active in 1944 in Andrychów. Thanks to the fact that the German armywas driven out of Andrychów by the Red Army, the Polish Worker’s Party couldbegin its activity. The political situation had an influence over the politics of the Andrychów’s authorities. In 1946 was hold a referendum „Three Time Yes referendum”in Andrychów. At the beginning of the year 1948, the most important parties in thecity – the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS) and the PPR strived for unification. Andrychów’s authorities were fighting with the anti-communistresistance. The inhabitants, however, were also affected by the repressions.In the second part – Social life – I described the most important social problems of Andrychów’s inhabitants after the war. As the social life is concerned, thecommunist authorities were well-disposed towards certain pursuits of Andrychów’sinhabitants. In 1948, a radio network was installed in the city. In 1949, the authoritiestried to establish a seondary school.
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The phases of orthodox Socialist Realism art in Latvia (1940 –1941, 1945–1956) are already researched and interpreted in many publications of Latvian art historians (Ilze Konstante, Stella Pelše, Elita Ansone, Sergejs Kruks, et al.). They reveal the robust suppression of local art life by the totalitarian regime during the Soviet occupation, the force of the ideological pressure on artists and describe the considerable body of artworks named Socialist Realism. Tracing the process, an impression of irresistible dominance of this production could arise. Nevertheless, in order to be more realistic, some hidden deviations from the official art policy and canonic requirements of Socialist Realism should be indicated. They emerged already during the first year of Soviet rule as a difference between published conformity and presented artworks, as a specific duality of iconography and its connotations or as a dichotomy between required subject matter and formal style. The double codes of art life of Latvia continued after the Second World War, when artists had to adapt themselves once more to the cultural policies of the totalitarian state. In most cases the reason for it was quite pragmatic because the state institutions were the main art consumers. The prescribed themes for art production were given together with the dogma of Socialist Realism and examples to be followed. For all that, in the course of the first post-war years artists managed to escape in the realm of politically neutral genres and images; landscapes dominated exhibitions, the legitimate and desirable compositions with images of the so-called working people (labourers, farmers) were made according to the tradition of the 1930s without unquestionable features of Soviet life (paintings of Eduards Kalniņš, Ārijs Skride, Jānis Liepiņš, Ģederts Eliass). The same could be said about some graduation works of the Latvian Art Academy of the time. A historical scene “The Kauguri Rebellions” (1945, Riga, Latvian National Museum of Art, further LNMA), painted by the former prominent modernist Oto Skulme, was an ideologically required depiction of the class struggle; on the other hand, it could be read as an anticipation of the national liberation. The picturesque style of the work was far from mimetic Socialist Realism. Versions of “Entangled” (all in the LNMA) modelled by the leading sculptor Teodors Zaļkalns could tell us about artist’s dependence on the changing political powers. The ideological pressure on Latvian art increased from 1949 until the middle of the 1950s; the historical background contains brutal repression, deportations and includes individual stories of deported artists. The result of the growing engagement and conformity – many works of Latvian orthodox Socialist Realism with all the necessary elements of the current policy. The largest exhibitions of 1949 and 1950 were full of artefacts with demanded subjects; painted and sculpted images of the dictator Stalin were inevitable. The most notable examples (the works of Oto Skulme, Arnolds Pankoks, Ojārs Ābols, Semjons Gelbergs, Aleksandra Briede, Jānis Briedis and others) were already examined in Soviet times and in recent publications. Still, the hidden double-coded art life was not totally exhausted. Thematic escapism gradually recovered and already in 1953 landscapes dominated the representative exhibition of Latvian creative artists in Riga once more. In 1954 the official art critic Arturs Lapiņš “unmasked” painters who worked with “two easels” – one for commissioned Socialist Realism works and the other for individual formalism. The dichotomy of subject and form was also preserved. Some artists from the older generation (the aforementioned Eliass and Zaļkalns, graphic artist Pēteris Upītis, et al.) continued to produce works repeating their pre-Soviet style and supplying them with titles typical for Socialist Realism. The youngest generation (students of the Art Academy) acquired another double-coded concept. Painters, who composed conventional scenes with farmers’ work or with happy children, had to create the obligatory optimistic mood not only by postures and facial expressions but also by sunlight effects. Therefore, volumes were modelled using colours dependent on the light of plein air. The role of brushwork increased. Sometimes elementary narratives were reduced to the simple fixation of depicted figures and their dynamics. This development towards Impressionism resulted in a mutation of Socialist Realism and could be called “Sots Impressionism”. Historical Impressionism was rejected by the authorities of the orthodox Socialist Realism, nevertheless, its elements were integrated into some individual versions of the style, including the achievements of some leading Soviet representatives of it (Yuri Pimenov, Arkady Plastov, Tatyana Yablonskaya). The overall phenomenon has recently become a subject for art historians; Vern Swanson praised “Soviet Impressionism” in his monographs of 2001 and 2007, Eha Komissarov staged an exhibition of “Stalinist Impressionism” in Estonian art (Tallin, 2016). In Latvia two graduation works of Art Academy students Bruno Celmiņš and Zigurds Kampars are good examples of “Sots Impressionism” (both 1954, LNMA), the best was an urban plein air scene “At a Book Table” (1955, Latvian Art Academy) by Gunārs Cīlītis. The trend continued in the next years (notable the paintings of Edgars Iltners, Rita Valnere, et al.) during the so-called political “thaw” and led to further mutations of local Socialist Realism.
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The electoral victory of French socialists and the establishment of a socialist government in France brought new hope and new expectations not only to French, but also to all European progressive and socialistically oriented forces, concerning the possibilities of more radical social and political reforms even though capitalism continues to rule beyond that country’s borders. Special interest was provoked by the ideas of French Socialists, which were also proposed in the electoral program, relating to the nationalization of the greater part of private firms and to the inclusion of members of the French Communist Party into the government. Although it fulfilled a large part of its electoral promises of 1981, the Socialist Party of France was defeated in the 1986 elections. The author points to the main reason for this failure and also indicates the main changes which have taken place in French society since the beginning of the 1980s.
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Proč je stále v oblibě chalupářství v českých zemích
Petra Schindler-Wisten's monograph titled "About holiday homes and people: Holiday homes in the Czech Lands in the period of so-called normalization and transformation" (Prague: Univerzita Karlova and Karolinum, 2017) maps the phenomenon of holiday cottages in the Czech Lands since its very beginnings in the 19th century almost until today. In this respect, she focuses on the post-war period of the Communist regime, in particular the 1970s and 1980s, the years of the so-called normalization, when this type of spending one’s free time, and partly also a lifestyle consisting in spending weekends and holidays in own houses and cottages, indeed became a mass phenomenon in Czechoslovakia. Using results of oral history research, she is looking for reasons why the so-called “second housing” became so popular among various groups of the Czech society, social and economic differences notwithstanding. The reviewer appreciates the publication as the first attempt to deal with the topic in question in a clear and comprehensive manner and from a historical point of view rather than from sociological or socio-geographic ones, which represents a significant factual enrichment of the current state of knowledge. However, she also formulates some methodological reservations with respect to the research project whose results are presented in reviewed work, claiming that not enough clear reasons have been given to justify its starting points and outlining untapped opportunities in this respect.
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Teza de doctor habilitat "Imaginarul erotic în romanul românesc postbelic" de Nina Corcinschi.
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In her paper, the author deals with the interethnic relations in Yugoslavia and the phenomenon of Yugoslav integralism in the 1950's. This decade saw the resurfacing of the national question, essential for the preservation of Yugoslavia, which had been underestimated and ignored by the communists for over a decade. This attitude was partly rooted in their conviction that the question bad been definitely resolved with the revolution and the formation of a federal slate, and partly in the fear that a reopening of I be national question might provoke internal conflicts and a disintegration of Yugoslavia. Infatuation with workers' internationalism also played its part. In order to smooth over the interethnic differences they recoursed to the magic formula of "brotherhood and unity" to which was added, in the mid 1950's, the promotion of "Yugoslavism" i.e. an attempt to fashion a (super)ethnic, Yugoslav conscience.
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The article presents the opinions of the Polish society on the events of the Poznań June 1956. Despite official announcements and information blockade, news of the uprising spread across the country. Information was circulated among others by visitors to the Poznan International Trade Fair then staying in the city, by railway staff, as well as soldiers and functionaries engaged in suppressing the revolt. Voices of support dominated and were expressed at rallies and gatherings, in discussions and leaflets but also as inscriptions painted on the walls of buildings, inside factories or on railway carriages. The accounts are presented selectively and in a limited scope due to shortage of space, but are fairly representative for the attitude and reaction of Poles to the events that took place in Poznań on June 28, 1956.
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Alfred Alexander Reisch’s "Horké knihy ve studené válce: Program tajné distribuce knih ze Západu za železnou oponu financovaný CIA" published by Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů – originally published in English as "Hot Books in the Cold War: The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain" (Budapest, Central European University Press 2013) – is the subject of this review. Reisch is an American political scientist of Hungarian origin, and he is also one of the protagonists of the book. The classified project of distributing books, magazines and other publications to the Eastern Bloc countries, which developed under the auspices of the Free Europe Committee (FEC) and with covert CIA funding, lasted from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s. During this time, according to Reisch, some ten million publications of various genres, from political and scientific literature to fiction, art books and dictionaries to fashion magazines, were sent across the Iron Curtain in inventive ways. The project’s organizers avoided shallow propaganda and, with the help of several covert organizations, targeted mainly intellectuals and students, opposition and regime elites and selected institutions. The reviewer admires Reisch for being the first to reconstruct, from fragmentarily preserved sources and interviews with witnesses, the history of the “mail project”, which, according to the reviewer, was one of the most successful and effective tools of American foreign policy in the Cold War. Despite some shortcomings, the book provides a wide range of previously unknown information and draws the reader into the plot like a spy novel.
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Ještě k případu Bieblovy sebevraždy
This article addresses the last creative period of the poet Konstantin Biebl (1898–1951) in the late 1940s and early 1950s and explores it in a broader cultural and political context, taking into consideration the poet’s character, the genesis of his last collection of poems entitled "Bez obav" [Unafraid] (1951), as well as the unexplained circumstances of his tragic death. Biebl was one of the leading representatives of leftist avant-garde art in interwar Czechoslovakia. In the early 1940s he stopped publishing. After the Communist coup in 1948 he tried to adjust to the period’s ideological and aesthetic norms as applied to the new literature in the spirit of socialist realism, which is reflected in "Bez obav". The article focuses on the events taking place after its publication, which culminated with the poet’s suicide in November 1951. The author presents these events and the relationships between the actors in the light of previously unpublished documents from the archival collection of the poet, translator and cultural official, Jiří Taufer (1911–1986), who was one of the key figures in the cultural policy of the period and the conflicts surrounding it. The author sees the main value of these documents in their focus on František Nečásek (1913–1968), the head of the culture and press department of the Office of the President of the Republic and the holder of several other posts, whose role in these events – possibly a very important one – has so far been somewhat overlooked. The article includes an annotated edition of contemporary and later texts, mostly of a personal character and unpublished, which illustrate the context of the described events. The article concludes with a summary interpretation of these documents.
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In the 1980s, in the Polish People’s Republic, the activity of the underground publishing houses was expanding. In the samizdat, there were thousands of various prints, which were a common carrier of historical motifs. The conducted research involves over 1000 printed items including post stamps and cards, which were published to commemorate events and/or people from the past. The underground creators often refer to the Second World War – in the analysed materials, there are over 400 printed items devoted to, e.g., the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the invasion of Poland, chosen battles, especially the Battle of Monte Cassino, the Katyn Massacre, the Warsaw Uprising. Other popular events are, e.g., the decreeing of the Constitution of the 3rd May 1791 (14 items), the national uprisings (72 items), the restoration of Poland’s sovereignty (86 items). It is also worth noting that there are events that were not exposed as, e.g., the Battle of Grunwald (only one item); it can be assumed that it was not promoted by underground publishing houses as it was promoted by the communist authorities. The historic motifs are reproduced not only on postage stamps but also occasionally on, e.g., postcards and envelopes. These kinds of prints were a part of oppositionists’ visual language. The transmitting and receiving strategies were not formalized whereby quite consistent. It can be assumed that such prints could arouse social historic awareness especially in the case of events and/or people that were a ‘terra incognita’ in the politics of memory in the Polish People’s Republic.
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The film is one of few examples of political documentaries produced in Poland after 1989. It is not limited to merely outlining the political argument over General Jaruzelski’s decision to impose martial law. Although it concerns events in Polish history, it is not a historical documentary, as it brings forth present-day political conflicts that have arisen around historical events. Trying to reconstruct this current political argument, Zmarz-Koczanowicz reaches for a method developed in the 1970s by the so-called “Kraków School” led by Krzysztof Kieślowski. ^e “talking heads” method was meant to help documentary filmmakers in the Polish People’s Republic reach what the person in the street actually thought and avoid the distortions of propaganda. For Kieślowski, however, the overriding aim was conciliation and an attempt to understand both sides of the political barricade - the authorities and the vox populi. His attitude, according to the terminology suggested by Chantal Mouffe, was a post-political one striving for an agreement through a rational dialogue. Zmarz-Koczanowicz’s aim, however, is different: she is intent on showing a clash of different hegemonies that do not strive for consensus. Their agonistic argument, played out in the political register, rather than a moral one, is a guarantee, according to this Belgian philosopher of politics, that democracy will continue to exist.
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In this essay the concept of »new wave« is related to the concept of »crisis«, on the basis of accordance of the main topics that have emerged out of these two different kinds of cultural discourse. The very term »new wave« indicates the period of the beginning of eighties characterized by the specific cultural expressions bounded with the phenomenon of the youth subculture in Yugoslavia. Although initiated by impulses from other cultures (first of all by the phenomenon of anglo-american punk), the »new wave« expression has elaborated the considerable segment of local reality. For example, the concept of »New primitivism« on one hand, and the »Neue Slowenische Kunst« on the other, have developed their symbolic activities playing with a stereotype of the two main cultural identities that »cross« the Yugoslav space: on is »Balkan«, »oriental«, the other is »European«, »western«. Modified in numerous ways, but loosing its stylistic, ironical quality that characterized its sub-cultural elaboration, this stereotype has become the leit motiv of the later explanation, even official, of the political crisis in Yugoslavia. In a similar way, the »new wave« activity, partially leaned on the western formula in creation of music, art, images and life styles, has anticipated the destruction of the myth of originality and uniqueness of our culture. What was then considered to be an »epigone«, a »dishonest imitation of the West«, hardly a decade later has merged into the common desire for »entering Europe«, which has characterized the discourse of crisis.
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Credo si possa esser d'accordo sul fatto che i totalitarismi restano tali finché riescono a mantenere il loro appiglio, o meglio forse dire "artiglio", appunto, totale sulle società che controllano.
More...analiza preseljevanj Slovencev na ozemlje držav nekdanje Jugoslavije in njegove posledice
The following contribution analyses the history of emigration from the Slovenian ethnic space to the countries of the former Yugoslavia and its contemporary consequences. The main thesis builds on the understanding that the Slovenian emigrant community in the “Yugoslav state” was largely neglected from the viewpoint of operative politics as well as from the scientific study perspective. The analysis is divided into four historical periods, which differed significantly as far as the migration dynamics is concerned: the first migration stage (1850–1914), dominated by economic reasons; the second migration stage (1919–1941), when the political and cultural reasons also became important; the third migration stage (1945–1991), when the main reasons for migration were economic and ideological; and, finally, the article is concluded with the analysis of policy towards the Slovenian immigrants to the Yugoslav territory in the time of the independent Slovenia, together with all of its advantages and shortcomings.
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Marek Hendrykowski’s essay presents the importance of Janusz Morgenstern’s early short film Radishes made after Stalin’s death, in 1954 as a student work produced by Film School in Łódź. The main character, old worker Gruliński loses his clear hopes and human illusions. The pessimistic conclusion is closed further by the simultaneous description of the hero’s social image within a discourse of origins and the sacred which evacuates analysis of class conflict and sociological approach in the narrative of an “ordinary good man” brutally disturbed in his desires and works by the irruption and power of an omnipotent destructive Stalinist “red tape” bureaucracy. The poetics of Radishes is deeply influenced by the style of an Italian neorealism, first of all by its famous masterpiece, Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D. (1952).
More...spomin na prosti čas in delo žensk v obdobju socialistične Slovenije
In her contribution the author focuses on understanding the interconnection of work and leisure time in the period of the socialist Slovenia/Yugoslavia (1945-1991). She is interested in the meaning that women ascribed to their leisure time (understood as a reward for the workers during socialism) in comparison with gainful employment. She also pays special attention to the issue of how women experienced their leisure time in comparison with unpaid housekeeping and through the perspective of the so-called »double burden« in socialism, and how they experience it today, in the context of the capitalist market economy. The contribution is based on the fieldwork analysis, focused on the interviews with retired women, revealing their everyday life on the micro level. The goal of the »oral history« approach, used in the contribution, is not to reconstruct the socialist past and record it chronologically, but to present the perspective based on the women’s experience and their everyday practices, contributing an additional perspective to the existing official political and economic history descriptions.
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