Anotace

Author(s): Jan Fišar,Vojtech Čelko,Zdenko Maršálek,Dominik Vu,Natálie Vaidišová / Language(s): Slovak,Czech Issue: 4/2016

František Bartík. Vzpomínky chovance Jaroslava Vojtěcha a historie táborů nucené práce. Prague: Academia, 2014, 254 pp., ISBN 978-80-200-2328-5; Staša Fleischmannová. Vrstvami. Prague: Torst, 2014, 220 pp., ISBN 970-80-7215-471-5; Martin Flosman. Padre a Rebe: Vojenští duchovní československé zahraniční armády u Tobruku a Dunkerque. (Traumata války, vol. 4.) Prague: Epocha, 2015, 290 pp., ISBN 978-80-7425-260-0; Jiří Kocian, Vít Smetana and others. Květnové volby 1946 – volby osudové? Československo před bouří. (Prostopravdy, vol. 4.) Prague: Euroslavica, 2014, 244 pp., ISBN 978-80-87825-09-9; Gerhard Scholten. Mezi všemi tábory: Život v době, která zešílela. Prague: Argo and Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2015, 265 pp., ISBN 978-80257-1708-0 and 978-50-87912-40-9

Krajina na rozhraní

Author(s): Pavol Jakubec / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 3/2017

Smetana, Vít. Ani vojna, ani mír: Velmoci, Československo a střední Evropa v sedmi dramatech na prahu druhé světové a studené války. Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2016, 664 pp. and 33 photographs, ISBN 978-80-7422-358-7. Using selected topics, the monograph Neither war, nor peace: The powers, Czechoslovakia and Central Europe in seven dramas at the threshold of the Second World and Cold Wars describes the relationship of the powers to Czechoslovakia during the dramatic decade between 1938 and 1948. The reviewer comments on how these topics are dealt with in each chapter, appreciating the author’s erudition, ample use of sources, as well as a broad contextualization and convincing power of interpretation. He concludes that Smetana’s work deviates from traditional Czech and Slovak approaches to the themes in that it assigns priority to attitudes and motives of foreign political players and takes into account the international context in all its complexity the analysis of which leads the author to conclusions open for further discussion rather than to categorical judgments. The author’s approach does not make the personality of President Edvard Beneš (1884–1948) stand out as much as is usually the case; instead, the author views President Beneš rather critically. According to the reviewer, Smetana’s monograph, which he characterizes as a colourful canvas of historical plots stretched in a solid frame, should become a classical work for historians studying the period of the Second World War and beginnings of the Cold War.

Swing a jeho posluchači v době protektorátu

Author(s): Vít Hloušek / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2017

KOURA, Petr: Swingaři a potápky v protektorátní noci: Česká swingová mládež a její hořkej svět. (Šťastné zítřky, sv. 23.) Praha, Academia 2016, 922 strany, ISBN 978-80-200-2634-7. The reviewer presents the monograph Swing fans and zoot suiters in the Protectoratenight: Czech swing kids and their bitter world as the outcome of long-term,comprehensive, and almost exhaustive research of sources, impressive in both itscontent and its scope. The author concentrates on the Czech youth subculture associatedwith jazz (swing) music at the time of the Protectorate of Bohemia andMoravia (1939–1945), their lifestyle, habits, fashion, speech, and attitude to theoccupation regime, as well as the attitude of Nazi and Protectorate authoritiesto them and the music they professed. He sets the topic into a broad historical,social, political, and cultural context, for example when describing in an eruditeand gripping manner the evolution and propagation of jazz dances, formation andexistence of similar youth subcultures in Western Europe and United States, or thesurvival of jazz and its fans in the Nazi Third Reich. The author covers in depththe criticism aimed at jazz and its fans in the Protectorate and repressions againstthem, analyzes the relationship between jazz music and freedom in an inspiringmanner, and his interpretations and explanations abound with facts. The reviewerwould personally welcome only a better arrangement of some parts and more attentionpaid to jazz music as such.

Ze života pražského bohéma

Author(s): Martin Šrajer / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2017

Wanatowiczová, Krystyna: Miloš Havel: Český filmový magnát. Prague: Knihovna Václava Havla, 2013 and 2017, 552 pp., ISBN 978-80-87490-75-4. Miloš Havel (1899–1968) was the most prominent fi lm industry entrepreneur of the inter-war Czechoslovakia, and the uncle of dissident-turned-President Václav Havel (1936–2011). The reviewed publication Miloš Havel: The Czech movie tycoon is his first biography, and the authoress intent was to depict his career and private life,particularly with a view to his status as a gay in the society at that time, relations and alleged collaboration with German authorities in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, of which he was accused after the war, and Havel’s life as an émigré in Munich after 1952. The publication aims at a broad audience, and this cannot be judged using criteria of film history; still, the reviewer regrets that the capture of the fate of the chief protagonist and other characters lacks a broader historical context. In his opinion, the amount of information the authoress collected in Czech and German archives, from other period sources, or from interviews with contemporaries is more admirable than the manner in which she treats it. It is true that she generally sticks to verified facts, but she prefers attractive episodes and colourful details to asking more poignant questions or undertaking a deeperanalysis. The reviewer also views the resulting portrayal of Miloš Havel as overly emphatic and not critical enough.

Řeč obžaloby namísto nezaujatých argumentů

Author(s): Luboš Veselý / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2017

In the beginning of his work, the author presents a brief list of publications on Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, which has hitherto been published in the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), noting the politicized perception of this historical figure and mutually conflicting national narratives which his life story is set into. While Ukrainian view mostly adores Bandera as the founder of the Ukrainian statehood and national hero, the Polish and Russian (formerly Soviet) ones generally condemn him as a radical nationalist, fascist, and anti-Semite responsible for crimes perpetrated by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiya Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv – OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiya – UPA) in Western Ukraine in the 1940s. The author then proceeds to the publication of Polish-German historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe,Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide,and Cult (Stuttgart, Ibidem 2014), which is so far the first attempt at a scientific biography of Bandera. The author questions and argues against Rossoliński-Liebe’sapproach to the topic, which he claims to be conforming to many negative patterns in Bandera’s appraisals, failing to describe historical events without an a priori biasor presenting new views, although Rossoliński-Liebe used almost all published works on the topic, as well as a mass of archival sources and memoir testimonies. Rossoliński-Liebe equals Bandera with the Ukrainian nationalism, and regards the latter as a violent movement without setting it in a context. The author argues that ignoring the historical context, one-sided optics, and emotional judgments are significant weaknesses of the work, which thus fails to meet the demands placed upon a balanced scientific biography.

Středoevropský historik Bedřich Loewenstein

Author(s): Tomáš Hermann / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1+2/2018

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).

Evropský Středoevropan Bedřich Loewenstein

Author(s): Miloš Havelka / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1+2/2018

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.

Pragmatické souručenství Vatikánu s fašistickým Římem

Author(s): Marek Šmíd / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2+3/2019

Kertzer, David I.: Papež a Mussolini: Tajemství papeže Pia XI. a vzestup fašismu v Evropě. Translated from the English original by Radka Knotková. Brno: Jota, 2017, 534 pp. including annexes with illustrations, ISBN 978-80-7565-102-0. In his book titled "The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius IX and the Rise of Fascism in Europe" (original edition: New York and Oxford, Random House Publishing Group and Oxford University Press 2015), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the category of biographies and autobiographies in 2015, the American historian examines, in particular, diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Italian Fascist regime at the time of the pontificate of Pius IX (1922–1939). In the reviewer’s opinion, he follows their changes, from initial sympathies to disputes and a calculated compromise to cool mutual tolerance out of necessity after the outbreak of the war, against a wide backdrop of political and religious events in the inter-war world, making use of his rich historical erudition, readable style, and attention to attractive details to produce a plastic picture of the topic. At the same time, his work can be read as parallel biographies of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) and Pius XI (1857–1939), whom the author blames (in the reviewer’s opinion in a rather exaggerated manner) for co-responsibility for the rise of Fascism.

Komplexná biografia posledného komunistického prezidenta

Author(s): Marek Syrný / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2020

The author analyzes in detail the extensive biography of the Slovak Communist politician Gustáv Husák (1913–1991) who, ups and downs notwithstanding, ultimately became the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1969 and the President of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic six years later. In doing so, he focuses mainly on chapters from the book "Gustáv Husák" by Michal Macháček (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2017) which deal with Husák’s activities in the Slovak Republic during the WWII, when he gradually joined the anti-fascist resistance and later participated in the Slovak National Uprising, and in post-war Czechoslovakia, when he, a top-ranking representative of the Slovak Communist Party, was actively participating in the struggle for power culminating in February 1948. He generally appreciates Michal Macháček’s extraordinarily extensive research of sources (including Russian archives) which the latter undertook, ample information on Husák’s political career and private life, convincing nature of most interpretations that Macháček presents, as well as accuracy and aptness of his characterizations. At the same time, though, he notes some factual errors and inaccuracies, provides missing historical contexts, and shows how the biographer – perhaps much too often – followed Husák’s self-styled renditions of various historical events and episodes.

Historie jedné hereze

Author(s): Jan Dvořák / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2021

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.

Zdlouhavý zápas o retribuční spravedlnost

Author(s): Vojtěch Češík / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2021

In the reviewer’s opinion, the extensive work of historian Vojtěch Kyncl named "Bestie: Československo a stíhání nacistických zločinců" [The Beast: Czechoslovakia and the Prosecution of Nazi Criminals] (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2019) substantially complements and enriches the knowledge of the administration of retributive justice in post-war Czechoslovakia. Thanks to a broadly conceived and precisely executed archival research and his excellent professional expertise, the author was able to present a high-quality monograph structured in a well-arranged manner. Its first part analyzes theoretical presumptions and context of the post-war prosecution of Nazi criminals and also maps historical developments in this field, while the second part presents reconstructions of some ninety case histories of indicted Nazi officials from different levels of the Nazi hierarchy who worked in the German occupation apparatus (mostly in its security elements) in the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic between 1939 and 1945, and also of a few Slovak representatives. The author also provides revealing facts on the cooperation of Czechoslovak investigators with authorities of other socialist countries, as well as with those of the Federal Republic of Germany, where the investigation of Nazi crimes often encountered judiciary obstructions.

Postsovětské války o Velkou vlasteneckou válku

Author(s): Klára Trávníčková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2021

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.

The Quest for Freedom under the Starry Sky

Author(s): Zdeněk R. Nešpor / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

The review deals with an extensive book on the history of a quintessentially Czech leisure activity, the “tramping movement”, entitled "Putování za obzor: Tramping v české společnosti 1918–1989" [Wandering Beyond the Horizon: Tramping in the Czech Society, 1918–1989] (Praha, Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2020) and written by five Czech historians (Jan Randák, Jan Krško, Jan Mareš, Jan Pohunek, Jan Špringl). The movement emerged in the early twentieth century and its popularity lasted throughout the whole of the century. In the book under review, five Czech cultural historians describe the history of the tramping movement in Czechoslovakia in admirable detail and also provide supplementary material and unique pictures. The reviewer welcomes the analysis of a highly interesting and academically overlooked phenomenon and recommends a shortened version for publication in English.

The Legionary Movement from Cold War Exile to Post-Communist Romania, 1986 – 1993

Author(s): Francesco Zavatti / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2021

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the continuities and changes that far-right movements undergo throughout historical changes. It does so by focusing on the transnational and transgenerational dynamics through which the Legionary Movement fostered its existence from the settings of the Cold War exile to post-communist Romania. In order to illustrate these transnational and transgenerational dynamics, the paper compares the activities of the legionaries in their late Cold War exile with their activities in early post-communist Romania.

Fritz Fischer. Hitler war kein Betriebsunfall. Aufsütze. 3 unveränderte Auflage, München, 1993. 272 S. (Фритц Фишер. Хитлер не беше случайност. Съчинения, 3 издание. Мюнхен, 1993. 272 с.)

Author(s): Maria Koleva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/1996

Book Review

Piotr M.A. Cywiński, Auschwitz. Monografia Człowieka

Author(s): Piotr Filipkowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 17/2021

Review of: Piotr Filipkowski - Piotr M.A. Cywiński, Auschwitz. Monografia Człowieka; Oświęcim: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2021, 584 s.

Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, Islands of Memory. The Landscape of the (Non)Memory of the Holocaust in Polish Education from 1989 to 2015

Author(s): Katarzyna Stecz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 17/2021

Review of: Katarzyna Stec - Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, Islands of Memory. The Landscape of the (Non)Memory of the Holocaust in Polish Education from 1989 to 2015, Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press, 2020, 485 s.

Gabriel N. Finder, Alexander Prusin, Justice behind the Iron Curtain: Nazis on Trial in Communist Poland

Author(s): Katarzyna Person / Language(s): Polish Issue: 17/2021

Review of: Katarzyna Person - Gabriel N. Finder, Alexander Prusin, Justice behind the Iron Curtain: Nazis on Trial in Communist Poland, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018, 377 s. Katarzyna Person - Andrew Kornbluth, The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021, 352 s.

Желю Желев. Фашизмът. София, Изд. на БЗНС, 1990

Author(s): Plamen S. Tsvetkov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/1991

Společná česko-rakouská kniha o dějinách obou zemí

Author(s): Miroslav Šepták / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2022

"Sousedé: Česko-rakouské dějiny" [Neighbours: A Czech-Austrian History Book] edited by Václav Šmidrkal, Ota Konrád, Hildegard Schmoller and Niklas Perzi and its parallel Austrian version "Nachbarn: Ein österreichisch-tschechisches Geschichtsbuch" (Weitra, Bibliothek der Provinz 2019) is a remarkable and unique attempt by a collective of twenty-seven Czech and Austrian historians to work together on the history of Austria and the Bohemian/Czech lands (and Czechoslovakia) and their mutual relations from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book is a product of the Permanent Conference of Czech and Austrian Historians on Common Cultural Heritage, which was established in 2009, and it is conceived in a consistently reciprocal manner: all its thirteen chapters (ten chronological and three thematic) were co-authored by a Czech-Austrian duo. In addition to the overall concept, the reviewer appreciates the professional quality and reliability of the volume, its language that encourages reading, and its unusually attractive design, which visualizes the narrated history with several documentary photographs. The authorial teama voided one-dimensional assessments and the book offers a rich story of the mutual coexistence of the two countries through periods when cooperation, estrangement and disinterest alternated. The work is an important contribution to the transnational history of Central Europe and helps us to understand why the relationship between the two successor states of the Habsburg monarchy did not develop in a friendly and straight forward manner.