Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1)
Studie a eseje
The British, the Americans, and the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty of 1943
Vít Smetana
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):5-24 
The Treaty on Friendship, Mutual Assistance and Postwar Cooperation between the Czechoslovak Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signed on 12 December 1943 in Moscow had a fundamental impact on the orientation of Czechoslovak foreign policy at the end of the war and in the years that followed. At the same time, the lengthy negotiations in 1943, which ultimately resulted in signing the treaty in question, were one of the few moments during the war when Czechoslovakia became the object of an opinion clash between the Great Powers. In this study, which is based primarily on British and US documents (some of which have not been used before),...
Renegades, Traitors, Murderers in White Coats. The Image of the "Jew" as the "Enemy" in the Propaganda of the Late Stalinist Period
Kateřina Šimová
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):25-56
When Stalinism was at its peak, between 1948 and 1953, there was a marked escalation in anti-Jewish manifestations by the Soviet regime, which has often been called "state," "official," or "Stalinist" antisemitism. This article endeavours to provide an account of this by analysing the image of the "Jew" in the propaganda of the time. The basis for the analysis is the concept of the "image of the enemy" as a basic figure of the totalitarian ideological canon. The article traces the way in which the image was filled with meanings linked with the term "Jew." To this end, the author employs the so-called semiotic textual analysis, which enables her to...
The Tool of Power Legitimisation and Guardianship. Social Policy and Its Implementation in the Pension Systems of Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic (1970-1989)
Tomáš Vilímek
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):57-89
The article deals with the topic of socialist social policy as a special feature and an extremely important instrument of legitimating power and of guardianship. Drawing on his extensive archival research, the author compares the starting points of the social-policy measures of the Czechoslovak and the East German CP leaderships from 1970 to 1989. He discusses the fundamental systemic prerequisites and ambitions of social policy, points out the limits of economic policy, and outlines the individual stages in the development of social policy in the two countries in the period under scrutiny. The focal point of the article is a systematic comparison...
Zdeněk Mlynář and the Search for Socialist Opposition. From an Active Politician to a Dissident to Editorial Work in Exile
Alessandro Catalano
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):90-156
The presented essay was originally published as "Il samizdat tra dialogo e monologo: Le attività editoriali di Zdeněk Mlynář e la scelta degli interlocutori" in the Italian online journal eSamizdat: Rivista di culture dei paesi slavi (2010-11, pp. 261-80). This double issue is based on papers given at the conference "Samizdat between Memory and Utopia: Independent Culture in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century," which was held at Padua University in late May and early June 2011, and is freely accessible on the periodical website (http://www.esamizdat.it/rivista/2010-2011/index.htm). For its publication...
The War Conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Phenomenon of Ethnic Cleansing
Ondřej Žíla
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):157-188
The article is deals with ethnic cleansing, that is, the violent methods that constituted the central element of the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. The article aims to show the fatal consequences of the military operations that were conducted with the aim of the ethnic homogenisation of the individual territories, and were rooted in the differences in the demographic development of the constituent peoples (the Serbs, Croatians, and Muslim Bosniaks) of Bosnia and Herzegovina before the outbreak of the conflict and the impact of this development on the transformation of the ethnic composition of the individual regions. After defining...
Prague Chronicle
Ninety Years of the Fruitful Life of Lenka Kalinová (1924-2014)
Václav Průcha
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):189-198
The author sums up the life and career of Lenka Kalinová (1924-2014), who was for a long time the leading authority on the social history of Czechoslovakia, particularly of the years after the Second World War. In the 1960s, she established and led a team of scholars to analyse the social structure of Czechoslovakia as it had developed from 1918 onward. In 1970, she lost her job, but in the following years worked with specialised institutions in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and eventually also published intensively in both countries. New opportunities opened up for her in the early 1990s, when she began to work closely with the Institute of Contemporary...
Re-thinking the Revolution
Petr Kužel
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):199-202
The report describes a two-day conference organised on the 25th commemoration of the collapse of the communist regimes in East Central Europe entitled "1989: Thinking Revolution," held in Prague in September 2014. It characterises five main panels focusing respectively on the character of the revolution (democratic, liberal, or neoliberal?), the phenomenon of post-dissidence and the memory of Communism, the transformation of the disciplines of Sovietology, the evolution of the theories of Soviet-type societies and, finally, the second life of the 1968 Prague Spring in 1989. The main aim of the conference was to historicise the theoretical concepts...
Recenze
Křesťan's Nejedlý (With a Small Addition)
Petr Čornej
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):203-214
Jiří Křesťan's Zdeněk Nejedlý: Politik a vědec v osamění [Zdeněk Nejedlý: A Politician and Scholar All Alone]. Praha - Litomyšl, Paseka, 2012, 569 pp.The author assesses Jiří Křesťan's biography of Zdeněk Nejedlý (1878-1962), which won the prestigious Magnesia Litera prize in the category of non-fiction in 2013, as the most detailed, largest, factually reliable, and clearly the best biography of this figure of Czech history written so far. He points out some of the traditional legends, which Křesťan, thanks to his almost exhaustive and honest research, has been able to debunk. Křesťan offers an exceptionally thorough treatment of the subject,...
Disgruntled Fighters against Tito
Přemysl Houda
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):213-216
Vojtěchovský, Ondřej: Z Prahy proti Titovi! Jugoslávská prosovětská emigrace v Československu [From Prague against Tito! Yugoslav Pro-Soviet Emigration in Czechoslovakia]. Praha. Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2012, 695 pp.The publication in question describes the live of almost 200 Yugoslav political exiles, who, after the dispute between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1948, settled permanently in Czechoslovakia, where they could manifest their loyalty to Stalin and opposition to Josip Broz Tito. The reviewer appreciates the depth with which the author discusses the microcosm the exiles lived in, which in some respect resembled a...
A Fruitful Asymmetry. A Precise Book on Cultural Exchange across the Iron Curtain
Soňa Mikulová
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):217-222
Lizcová, Zuzana: Kulturní vztahy mezi ČSSR a SRN v 60. letech 20. století [Cultural Relations between the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and West Germany in the 1960s]. Praha, Dokořán - Fakulta sociálních věd Univerzity Karlovy, 2012, 194 pp.The book under review discusses cultural and cultural-political developments in Czechoslovakia and the Federal Republic of Germany from the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the 1970s, with the main focus on the 1960s. In the spirit of new political history and new cultural history, the author explores the role of high-level politics and social groups outside the state structures, mainly the...
Socialist Friendship between Indestructible Unity and a Press War
Michal Pullmann
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):223-226
Zimmermann, Volker: Eine sozialistische Freundschaft im Wandel: Die Beziehungen zwischen der SBZ/DDR und der Tschechoslowakei (1945-1969). Essen, Klartext, 2010, 639 pp.This publication by a German historian focuses on the relations between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet-occupied zone in Germany and later the German Democratic Republic in the first 25 years after the end of the Second World War. The reviewer is impressed by the breadth of the material covered here, which goes beyond diplomatic and institutional relations in general, and includes relations in the arts and sciences, amongst the youth, and trade unions, as well as travel. It thereby...
Havel's Anti-Politics à la Different Modes. On Suk's Book on Václav Havel
Milan Znoj
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2015, 3(1):227-240
Suk, Jiří: Politika jako absurdní drama: Václav Havel v letech 1975-1989 [Politics as an Absurd Drama: Václav Havel in the Years 1975-1989]. Praha - Litomyšl, Paseka, 2013, 447 pp.In the presented essay, the author first takes into consideration some of the sources of inspiration and interpretative frameworks of Suk's book, which have led the author, Znoj, to consider the theme of the absurdity of the socialist world as a component of Havel's work as a dramatist and a dissident. In a nutshell, the author argues that the anti-politics of the "normalisation" period of the 1970s and 1980s took the place of the theatre of the absurd of the 1960s. He...