Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1)
Studie a eseje
Czechs Give Asylum to US Family. A "Different" Jazz Ambassador Herbert Ward through the Lenses of FBI Reports
Petr Vidomus
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):5-41 
Czechoslovakia of the mid-1950s was a culturally isolated country where the Western gains were regarded suspiciously, to say the least. The regime's attitude toward jazz was softening very slowly, and many jazz activities bordered on illegality. In this situation, Herbert Ward came to Prague (1954), one of a few American Communists, who asked for political asylum in Czechoslovakia and became involved in the local music scene. Although an almost unknown jazz bassist to the general public (though he played with Sidney Bechet, Willie "Lion" Smith, Bud Freeman, etc.), in the late 1950s, however, he contributed significantly to the rehabilitation of jazz...
"It Was the Poles" or How Emanuel Ringelblum Was Instrumentalized by Expellees in West Germany. On the History of the Book Ghetto Warschau: Tagebücher aus dem Chaos
Stephan Stach
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):42-61
The article investigates how the Holocaust distorted and exploited in Cold War debates on the example of genesis and reception of the book Ghetto Warschau. Tagebücher aus dem Chaos [Warsaw Ghetto: Diaries from Chaos]. The book is a translation of the essay Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w czasie drugiej wojny światowej [Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War], written by the Jewish historian and creator of the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto Emanuel Ringelblum while hiding from the German Occupiers in Warsaw in 1944. Ringelblum addressed his essay to the Polish reader discussing the relation of Christian Poles and Polish Jews under...
With Chinese Communists against the Czechoslovak "Normalization" Regime. Exile Listy Group and Its Search for Political Allies against Soviet Power Domination in Central Europe
Petr Orság
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):62-99
Some reform Communists who went into exile after the Soviet-led military intervention in Czechoslovakia, in August 1968, began to work in the Listy group led by Jiří Pelikán (1923-1999), a former Director of Czechoslovak Television, the publisher of the Rome-based exile bimonthly Listy, and, later, a Member of the European Parliament. In the search for political allies against Husák's regime of 'normalization' (the return to hard-line Communist rule), they tried to establish contact mainly with influential representatives of the West European Left. This article, however, examines an area of their involvement in exile, which has previously not received...
The Crisis of Modern Urbanism under the Socialist Rule. Case Study of the Prague Urban Planning between the 1960s and 1980s
Petr Roubal
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):100-124
Using the planning in Prague between the 1960s and 1980s as an example, the article deals with the transformation of the concept of a socialist city among urbanists and architects. The author describes how the generation of the inter-war modernist avant-garde inspired by works of Karel Teige (1900-1951) started reasserting itself again after Khrushchevʼs speech on architecture in 1954. Its influential member, Jiří Voženílek (1909-1986), became the Chief Architect of Prague. It was under his leadership that the General Plan of the Capital City of Prague was drafted at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. The author analyzes the plan as an example...
"He Who Leads - Controls!" Corporate Management and Rigours of "Socialist Control" in Czechoslovak Enterprises in the 1980s
Tomáš Vilímek
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):125-157
The study deals with issues of corporate management and pitfalls of the "socialist supervision" in Czechoslovak enterprises in the period of late socialism. Using documents of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the State Security, period texts and specialized publications, it shows how party organs and state authorities were unsuccessfully trying to make supervisory mechanisms and audits a functional tool of the implementation of the ruling party´s economic policy. The author analyzes the supervisory and audit mechanisms that were used, and outlines basic reasons of the almost fatal failure of supervisory activities of the system which was,...
Prague Chronicle
Unreached 90th Birthday of Milan Otáhal
Oldřich Tůma
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):158-162
Milan Otáhal (1928-2017) was a leading historian studying the contemporary history of Czechoslovakia. In the 1960s, he was the head of the Department of Modern History of the Historical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences; in the early 1970s, he lost his job at the institute and was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He was one of the first signatories of Charter 77 and was active in the historical samizdat as an independent historian. Since the 1990s, his scientific activity was connected with the newly established Institute for Contemporary History. His main focus was the history of the anti-regime opposition and of...
Central European Historian Bedřich Loewenstein (1929-2017)
Tomáš Hermann
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):163-174
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...
Recenze
A Country on the Boundary
Pavol Jakubec
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):175-184
SMETANA, Vít: Ani vojna, ani mír: Velmoci, Československo a střední Evropa v sedmi dramatech na prahu druhé světové a studené války [Neither war, nor peace: The Great Powers, Czechoslovakia and Central Europe in seven dramatic stories on the eve of the Second World War and the Cold War]. Prague, Lidové noviny Publishing House 2016, 664 pages, 33 photographs, bibliography, index of names, ISBN 978-80-7422-358-7.Using selected topics, the monograph 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...
Swing Music and Its Fans in the Protectorate
Vít Hloušek
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):185-190
KOURA, Petr: Swingaři a potápky v protektorátní noci: Česká swingová mládež a její hořkej svět (Šťastné zítřky, vol. 23.) [Swing fans and "zoot suiters" in the Protectorate night: Czech swing kids and their bitter world (Happy tomorrows, Vol. 23)]. Praha, Academia 2016, 922 pages, ISBN 978-80-200-2634-7.The reviewer presents the monograph as the outcome of long-term, comprehensive, and almost exhaustive research of sources, impressive in both its content and its scope. The author concentrates on the Czech youth subculture associated with jazz (swing) music at the time of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1945), their lifestyle, habits,...
Czechoslovak Leviathan
Karol Szymański
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):191-202
ROUBAL, Petr: Československé spartakiády (Šťastné zítřky, Vol. 22) [Czechoslovak Spartakiads (Happy Tomorrows, Vol. 22)]. Praha, Academia 2016, 405 pages, ISBN 978-80-200-2537-1.In his four-part book, the author deals with the genealogy of Czechoslovak spartakiads in the German Turner and Czech Sokol (Falcon) movements, different visual symbolisms of the spartakiads in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, the organization of spartakiads, and the relation of the society to them. The extensive review presents the content and leading principles of the book, as well as its sources and theoretical foundations, and formulates some polemic arguments. The key...
A Family Colonized by the State? On a Book about Family Policy in the Czech Lands in the Previous Century
Květa Jechová
Czech Journal of Contemporary History 2018, 6(1):203-211
RÁKOSNÍK, Jakub - ŠUSTROVÁ, Radka: Rodina v zájmu státu: Populační růst a instituce manželství v českých zemích 1918-1989 [Family in the interest of the state: Population growth and marriage in the Czech Lands 1918-1989]. Praha, Lidové noviny Publishing House 2016, 283 pages, ISBN 978-80-7422-378-5.According to the reviewer, the two authors of the book under review convincingly demonstrate the massive growth in state intervention in the private sphere in Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia in the seventy years from the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic to the collapse of the Communist regime in late 1989. She does, however, have some doubts...