As the basic statistical summaries prove, during the inter‑war period China did not belong among the main business partners of Czechoslovakia. On the other hand, the Chinese market played an important role in the sales strategy of certain Czechoslovak companies, including those which held a significant position in Czechoslovak industry. Škoda Works and Sellier & Bellot are included among the relatively narrow group of companies which were able to find success in the Chinese market. Their “Chinese trades” were in some respects similar, but in others fundamentally different. Both companies had to face problems which for instance arose from the very specific nature of the unstable and from the Czechoslovak point of view extremely exotic market. On the other hand, the reasons for their successes in the Chinese market were somewhat different.
The study deals with the legislative rules for the state-bound sugar industry in the Czechoslovak Republic in early 1920s. During 1918–1921, the sugar industry was stabilized under the direction of the Czechoslovak Sugar Commission that was gradually increasingly dominated and controlled by the government. The said Commission gradually started absolutely controlling all sugar production with the help of government decrees. Specific legislative measures are analyzed from the perspective of statistical indicators of that time. Although the given immediate period is related with regulated economy, the legal regulations were more liberal in some matters than those existing before the establishment of the independent Czechoslovak state. The efforts of that time resulted in a relatively fast stabilization of postwar sugar industry, bringing considerable profit to the state. In the short period, it was an efficient way of solution of the given issue both for the new territorial unit and, in a sense, for the consumers too.
This article deals with the political culture of the interwar Czechoslovak Communist Party. The issue is studied through the prism of the protagonistsʼ life experience and practice. Attention is focused on three subject areas (1. the significance of the Communist organization; 2. the use of Marxist-Leninist ideology; 3. the public/private division in personal life) and on how these were reflected in the behaviour of both prominent and less prominent party members.
The paper discusses issues of creation, organization and functioning of intelligence formations operating in Czechoslovakia in the period between the rise of an independent state until the end of World War II and presents the mechanisms of recruiting full-time officers and spies as well as civilian informers. In addition, the paper features methods used by intelligence agents as well as applied models of managing human and operational capital together with examples of undercover actions undertaken by specialized intelligence units.
The study gives a comparative analysis of Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC), which were chosen as unique examples of success and failure of national sections of Communist international among interwar Europe. The aim of the submitted research is to explain the paradoxical success of CPC sharply contrasted with the marginalization of CPGB. Historical fact that communists ideas were much less popular in Great Britain, a country with the highly developed capitalist system, than in a young Czechoslovak republic, completely turns over the expectations based on the classical texts of Marxist philosophers. The comparison of the organizational evolution of CPGB and CPC, their integration to the national political systems and possibilities of delegitimizations of symbolic pillars of British and Czechoslovak society can stress the causes of stability or instability of societies, in which these branches of communist movement worked. The inquiry that analyzes side by side the impact of two-party and multi-party political system, the role of social implication of open world of empire and small linguistic closed nation, a monarchy and president office as symbols of political and social stability can explore a new perspective on the research of the broad topic of interwar communist movement. Chosen type of individualizing comparison analysis put differences above consistent features in the attempt to highlight causes of openness of Czechoslovak society to the radical left ideology of Marxism-Leninism in the examined era.
This article deals with the multiple murders of Roma people committed by a number of local citizens in Pobedim, a village in West Slovakia, during the night of October 1 - 2, 1928, which could be understood as an anti-Roma pogrom. Attention is paid to the interactions between different Czechoslovak state authorities such as gendarmerie, the district office, provincial office, court and municipalities in the region shortly before the outbreak of the pogrom and in its aftermath. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben´s theory elaborated for the analysis of anti-Gypsy measures by various scholars, e.g. Jennifer Illuzzi, the author argues that the extreme violence resulted from the tensions and conflicts between those historical actors who enforced the contemporary anti-Gypsy measures on the regional level and which led to the creation of the state of exception for the population labeled as Gypsies. The analysis also reveals the variety of contemporary practices of exclusion towards the population labeled as Gypsies in interwar Czechoslovakia. Despite the fact that the Roma were victims of a brutal assault even the trials attest to the extreme asymmetry of power between the accused portrayed as "decent citizens" and the bare lives of the Roma. Because the executive state authorities circumvented the judiciary and forged their own solution allegedly more suited to the public interest, the Roma were caught in the state of exception. Furthermore, the article shows how ideas of Gypsies´ internment in various types of forced labor camps as a permanent and spatial embodiment of the state of exception stemmed from the dynamic of enforcing anti-Gypsy measures.
The article considers the relationship between film and tourism in the initial period of the Polish People's Republic (PPR). It puts forward the question about the possibility of applying the concept of film tourism (film-induced tourism) to research into the relationship of the cinematographic industry and tourism in Poland in the 1950s. The presented argument assumes that considerations in this field should rely on textual analyses, extended by reception of supplementary materials. Research into the phenomenon of the relationship between film and tourism requires understanding the realities of how the tourism industry functions, hence the article also discusses the key problems associated with the growth of tourism in Poland and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. The proposed research approach is illustrated by a discussion of the film-tourism relationship on the example of the first post-war Polish-Czechoslovakian co-production entitled What Will My Wife Say to This? (Co řekne žena/Zadzwońcie do mojej żony, 1958, by Jaroslav Mach). The text considers the role the film was given in the process of building positive meanings associated with Poland as a tourist destination, and how these associations were constructed.
Czechoslovakia was planning (and it also managed to carry out during the First Republic) many big public constructions. There were also transport infrastructures, such as railroads, airport, waterways and road infrastructure. The functioning transport infrastructure was naturally deemed as the basic element for building of the new Czechoslovak state, being it not only from the political, but also economic point of view. This entry is focused on the road network the importance of which was not appreciated in between the wars as much when compared to the railways. In spite of that important changes were being made, being it both in planning and construction processes. The entry presents five major projects that reflect new tendencies both from a technical and political point of view. Their objective was to design for the state a new road infrastructure that would contribute to a political unity of the country, establish new economic relationships among particular districts and first and foremost connect the republic to the European road network. These five examples at the same time illustrate a particular atmosphere of that time, the visions of engineers, technologists and road specialists who were, in a way, philosophers or traffic networks.
The introductory part of this study gives an insight into the pay rates and accommodation available for Czechoslovak Gendarmerie. Attention is also devoted to the attitudes of the main political parties to the issues of the gendarmerie and to the question of a proposed reform and the “democratisation” of the force. This is followed by an outline of attitudes held by the public and the media towards the gendarmerie and an attempt to answer the question of how the members of the force viewed their own role in society.
The interwar Czechoslovakia experienced two periods of deflation. The first one (1922–1925) was caused by the monetary policy of the Banking Office of the Ministry of Finance inspired by the ideas of Alois Rašín, Minister of Finance. On the beginning of the interventions of the Banking Office the crown was undervalued but then it rose above its natural level. The rise in the exchange rate of the Czechoslovak crown was followed by the crisis in industry and then banking crisis. After 1923 the exchange rate was stable and in 1929 Czechoslovakia adopted a gold currency (gold exchange standard). The appropriate exchange rate stipulated during the 1920s was later the object of discussions during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The second deflationary period was caused by the falling prices, at first of agricultural and then industrial production. This appreciation of the monetary unit pegged to gold caused a grave internal crisis, for a drop in prices was in conflict with a whole complex of economic elements, especially taxes, wages and debts. Furthermore since the 1920s there was the disparity between the external and internal purchasing power of the crown. This caused the problems for the Czechoslovak export and made Czechoslovakia attractive for the import. Finding the solution how to increase the competitiveness of Czechoslovak wares on the international market was therefore essential. During the years 1929–1934 was National Bank of Czechoslovakia, and its decisive body – the bank board –, confronted with the problems caused by the decline of prices. The bank board had to tackle this problem. The attempts to bring the prices on the appropriate level happened to be the main target of the monetary policy. The paper follows therefore the attitude of the bank board to the question of prices, their conservative policy and attempts to supplement it with the idea to help the economic subjects of Czechoslovakia in the time of world crisis. It tries even to explain their criticism of different types of so called monetary experiments especially promoted by the Anglo-Saxon economists. The period ends by February 1934 with the decision to devaluate the Czechoslovak crone by one sixth. This profound change in monetary policy of Czechoslovakia was then one of the first steps on the way to the recovery of its economy
The article describes the relationship between the interwar Czechoslovakia and the Holy See in the light of the materials of the Congregation for extraordinary ecclesiastical affairs (Segreteria di Stato, Sezione per i Rapporti con gli Stati, Archivio Storico, Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari, fondo Rapporti-Sessioni). These materials are compared with the sources from the Czech Archives, above all from the Ministry of Foreign Affaires. They show that the diplomatic conflict that broke out in 1925 was on the brink of exploding since 1921. The Holy See perceived the legalisation of Jan Hus Day in 1925 as a key issue, whilst the Czechoslovak political leadership, especially Edvard Beneš, underestimated the situation. The Czechoslovak leadership had to find a compromise not only with Vatican diplomacy, but also with the left-leaning public opinion in Czechoslovakia. Disinformation, or shifting information was also part of the difficult negotiation on mutual compromise.
The study uses unpublished sources from the National Archives in London and scientific literature to analyse the British Legation in Prague’s perception of Czech-German relations in Czechoslovakia up to 1933. After some initial fumbling caused by a lack of knowledge of the Central European region following the collapse of Austria-Hungary, responsible officials in London decided to wait for the outcome of the peace conference in Paris. At the same time, British diplomats acknowledged that they would have to rely on co-operation with France in the region, and as a result indirectly supported French claims and demands; once the peace conference had ended, however, Great Britain focused on its own issues and the affairs of its empire. At the start of the 1920s, the British diplomatic mission in Prague also settled in its position and the first Minister, George Clerk, provided unbiased information on Czech-German coexistence within Czechoslovakia, and partially acknowledged that both sides were right (he understood some of the Germans’ objections), but on the other hand he clearly recognised the new state and perceived its minorities policy as very accommodating, and respect ing international obligations. Following the calm period of the 1920s when even the British Legation in Prague remarked on the qualitative shift in relations between both ethnicities, the beginning of the 1930s arrived alongside the economic crisis, which transformed the domestic political situation within the First Czechoslovak Republic. According to British Minister, Joseph Addison, the position of the largest minority in the country had deteriorated, something he thought was due to the fact that Czechoslovak officials were breaching the Minority Treaty and were not doing enough for the wellbeing of its German population, and that this did not bode well for the future.
The article deals with the scientific achievements of Ukrainian historians concerning the study of the Prague Spring in 1968, as well as the reflection of these historical events in memoir literature (memoirs of P. Shelest). The theme of the Prague Spring, its political defeat has always been given considerable attention in the Ukrainian historical Slavic studies. The influence on the Ukrainian historical science of a new stage in the study of the political history of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which began after the “velvet” revolution of 1989, was made by Czech and Slovak historians. Significant scientific interest in the history of the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the second half of the XX century show modern Ukrainian slavists of academic and university centers of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Uzhgorod, Rivne, Chernivtsi, there were separate works, scientific articles, manuals and collective works. Among the studies of domestic historians, the authors singled out the monographic works of I. Korol, I. Vovkanych, R. Pilyavets, articles by S. Vidnyansky, S. Motruk, R. Postolovsky, publications about the echo of events in 1968 in Ukraine V. Dmytruk. The analysis of the national historiography of the Prague Spring shows that the understanding and interpretation of the events of fifty years ago by Ukrainian historians have undergone evolution. Departing from the Communist Party paradigm of anti-socialist rebellion and justifying the intervention of the states of the Warsaw treaty organization of the Soviet period, domestic scientists consider the phenomenon of the Prague Spring as an attempt of democratic transformation of the socialist system by the Czech and Slovak societies.
Major argument of the article draws on the perspective of institutional economics according to which post-communist privatizations were not symmetrical to communist nationalizations and for this reason it was not possible to conceptualize economic reforms in terms of the big bang claimed by liberals. More concretely, adherents of institutional economics have claimed that post-communist transformations should be seen through the perspective of formal rules and informal constraints; while formal rules could be changed relatively quickly by political mechanisms, informal rules have been rooted in social habits and routines and they cannot be changed very quickly due to their ʻpath dependency tendenciesʼ. The article highlights the notion of political capitalism elaborated by Polish researcher Jadwiga Staniszkis as a theoretical framework that could elucidate dissolution of nomenklatura system as well as explain transformation of economic domain in last decades of posttotalitarian regimes. Later on argumentation proceeds to explanation of institutional conceptualization of early post-communist property changes by differentiating among notions of ‘institutional privatizationsʼ, ‘spontaneous privatizationsʼ and ‘political capitalismʼ in order to provide a framework for the adoption of the more elaborated model that could contribute to insight in recent privatization processes.
After the November 1989 come to attention the question of human and civil rights and liberties in the post-totalitarian system which in the previous regime – despite the social challenges – had been neglected. For the new democratic CSFR the results of the Helsinki process in the field of human rights and liberties were connected with the interest to become the part of the Trans-European integrative structures. These two phenomena expressed oneself during the setting up the Czechoslovak federal as well as Slovak and Czech national constitutions, the integral part of which should be the constitutional safeguard of the basic human and civil rights. During the creating the constitutional system of the post-communist Czechoslovakia combined with the Czech-Slovak negotiations about the composition of the new federal relations between the Slovak and Czech republics, these rights reflected themselves in the principles of democracy and humanism, of legally consistent state, as well as of the right of nations of self-determination. The first climax in establishing the democratic character of the new regime was the elections in June 1990. In that time also the Charter of elementary human rights and liberties has been approved.
This article deals with the issue of the economic and trade relations between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the period between 1918 and 1938. This article is a shortened version of the doctoral thesis defended in June 2016 at Department of History of the Masaryk University in Brno, and it focuses on the issue of trade relations and the overall development of the economic relations between the two countries. In this analysed period, the two countries were close allies and had developed intensive economic relations, and our goal is to thoroughly research the economic relations between Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia as well as the interdependence of political and economic relations between the two countries.
The study deals with staged folk dances in the Czech cultural context. The main goal is to observe the development of the national and state-wide contest/show of folklore ensembles as an important phenomenon associated with the development of artistic values of the specific Czechoslovak staged genre in the second half of the 20th century. The author explains the history of this phenomenon, which is unique in many respects, with all its positions of thinking, internal discrepancies and transformations in deliberations. Especially in the 1950s and in connection with the staged presentation of folk dances, matters relating to the period cultural-political tendencies were brought to the forefront; these, however, weakened in the 1960s, and it was folk ensembles´ own production that became the major preoccupation at that time. This broad platform appears to have been the basis for a significant stream of thinking within folklore movement, which over time has brought the staged folk dance to the form that essentially differs from how the staged folk dance is understood in other countries.
Foreign trade was one of the first areas of the Chinese economy which passed completely under the state control after the establishment of the Communist regime in China. The Beijing government started to build a new institutional model inspired by the Soviet experience. Like in other Communist states, the PRC’s foreign economic relations were strongly influenced by political and ideological factors determining not only territorial structure of foreign trade. In general, foreign trade had a positive impact on both the development of the industrial sector and the whole economy in the 1950s, while in the 1960s the PRC’s foreign economic relations were naturally limited by political tensions in relations with the Soviet bloc and also heavily impacted by the problems of the domestic economy.
Jakub Rakosnik introduces the central topic of the current double issue of Soudobé dějiny, social policy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–89. The introduction is followed by four articles, three based on a research project funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, ‘The Formation and Development of the Welfare State in Czechoslovakia, 1918–92’, and one based on a project of the Grant Agency of Charles University, ‘Changes in Family Policy from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to the People’s Democracy of Czechoslovakia’ (the article by Radka Šustrova).
Nazi Germany consciously and consistently sought to absorb Czechoslovakia. The instrument of breaking the Czechoslovak state became the German national minority headed by the dominating Sudeten-German party, working in the intentions of Hitler. Nazi diplomacy in 1938 set up the problem of the German national minority as an international one and launched a policy of direct coercion thanks to the appeasement of the Western powers. Following Berlin’s direction, it culminated in the adoption of the Munich Agreement of the Four Great Powers, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France, and the truncation of the Czechoslovak state as the first step towards its destruction. The other was the definitive liquidation of the Czecho-Slovakia in March 1939.
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