Most do budoucnosti  : příběh města na severu Čech jako studie proměn socialistické modernity

• Authors: Matěj Spurný

Title variants

EN

Old Most, new Most : the story of a town in North Bohemia as a case study of the transformations of socialist modernity

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

CS

a3_Autor uzavírá tvrzením, že poválečná historie Mostu je sice bezpochyby také projevem ideologie a direktivní praxe státního socialismu, v daleko větší míře je ale vypouklým zrcadlem evropské průmyslové moderny.

EN

The story of how and why the old north Bohemian town of Most was destroyed in the 1970s to enable lignite (brown-coal) mining serves the author as a case study with which to outline the transformations of the State-Socialist version of modernity in the twentieth century. In doing so, he raises a fundamental question: What were the intellectual and social contexts that made it possible to justify this gigantic experiment, a result of which was the destruction of one of the most valuable historic towns in the Bohemian Lands? The author outlines the history of Most as a centre of power and economics from the thirteenth century onwards, the growing economic importance of the coal-mining area in the foothills of the Giant Mountains (Podkrušnohorská pánev), and considerations about expanding mining to the area of the town itself. After the Second World War, these considerations were recast into plans for the demolition of the old town of Most and the building of a new town of the same name. The plans were given the blessing of the key political bodies of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1962. The author looks at the story from three different perspectives. The fi rst is local, emphasizing the special nature of the landscape and society in this region of the Bohemian borderlands (formerly called the Sudetenland). Typical of this perspective are the interrupted traditions and broken bonds between human beings and their environment, and the demise of local ethnic, cultural, and religious identity in consequence of the dramatic population exchange after 1945 (the expulsion of the Germans and the re-settlement of the borderlands); these bonds and traditions were eventually substituted for by identifying with the industrial vision, based on work, productivity, and modernity. Productivist thinking as the second perspective in the essay, by contrast, is of a global nature, occurring wherever civilization was spread. By this logic, the author argues, the Most region was reduced to a storehouse of raw materials necessary for the further development of the country and the lives of its inhabitants who were subordinated to depersonalized economic powers and the apparently unquestioned needs of progress. The author argues that the management of the North Bohemian Lignite Mines (Severočeské hnědouhelné doly) was the driving force behind the removal of Most and that the calculation of a positive fi nancial balance of local mining was the key argument for the legitimation of the project. The third perspective offered here is that of urban planners’ utopias, and it also puts the story into the context of European modernism. Here, the author explains, against the background of changes in avant-garde thinking in Czechoslovakia and the rest of Europe from the 1930s through the 1960s, the vision, and construction, of the new Most as a ''City of Roses'' to take the place of derelict old Most. According to the author, the whole project had its origins in a rationally organized utopia, a clean and socially just city of the future, and it was presented as such to the public. Among other things, the author discusses public responses to the plans for the removal of Most in the 1960s, in the context of nascent attention to the natural environment and the undeveloped interest in the preservation of historical monuments. In the second half of the decade, particularly during the Prague Spring, these plans then became the subject of public criticism, and the cultural elite began clearly to distinguish itself from productivist ideology itself. Even though critical voices were silenced with the coming of ‘normalization’ policy in 1969, Most can, according to the author, serve as a good example of the birth of a new paradigm, one founded on the synthesis of the technocratic mentality and the humanist discourse of respecting the cultural heritage. That was fully manifested in the campaign for moving the most valuable architectural monument in Most, the Gothic Church of the Assumption. Thanks to the solution, which was an internationally unique feat of engineering, the church was moved almost one kilometre outside the mining area. This event, intended to express the Socialist State’s concern for the natural environment and cultural heritage, became the icon of the Most story as a whole. The author concludes by claiming that although the post-war history of Most is doubtless an expression of the ideology and directive practice of State Socialism, it is to a far greater degree a convex mirror of industrial European modernism.

Keywords

CS

dějiny

EN

history

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 30-79
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Matěj Spurný

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic