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EN
For the majority of Leftists in the 1960s, the Soviet Union ceased to be intellectually and ideologically inspiring. Both Soviet Communism and Western capitalism at that time represented “the System” which offered universal manipulability and universal marketability as its only alternative modes. Thus, the Left searched for authentic socialism, whether in the Marxist-humanist philosophy, in the Third World revolutions, or in the local socialist traditions. However, even though the global Left faced several general problems common to all Cold War worlds, there were also important contextual differences which prevented the common base from further development.     Following this general context, this article will focus on the Left in Czechoslovakia and in the USA, particularly on the question whether the Czechoslovak reform movement of the late 1960s was inspiring for various groups on the US Left. With regard to the U.S. left-wing reactions to the Prague Spring or to the resistance of Czechoslovak people against the Warsaw Pact invasion, the article will pay attention especially to the discursive dichotomy of authentic socialism vs. counter-revolution.
EN
The meaning of the Warsaw Pact intervention in August 1968 soon became a matter of political manipulation. The spontaneously shared notion of the “occupation” quickly turned into its very antithesis. The postulate of the “friendly assistance” of the Soviet Army gradually promoted on the official level played a key role in the policy of the so-called consolidation. As a consequence, the Prague Spring was denigrated as an attempted counterrevolution. The memory of the August “occupation” disappeared from the public sphere: It went underground or was pushed into the private sphere. The idea of the heroic and victorious fight against the counterrevolution, so much cherished by leftist radicals, reached its peak by the end of 1970 when it was confirmed by an official document. After that, it started losing its momentum as if the Prague Spring and the August events were rather due to fall into oblivion. But in 1989, the relevance of the 21st August suddenly reemerged in public protests against the Communist régime, which were taking place on that date. The article explores the coexistence/parallel lives of the three conflicting memories of the August 68 during the post-August history of normalization mentioned below: the privatized memory of occupation, the radical memory of fraternal assistance, and the policy of oblivion.
EN
Several scientific teams were formed in Czechoslovakia in the second half of the 1960s one of which, focused upon politological analysis of the Czechoslovak socialistic system, was lead by Zdeněk Mlynář. The article strives mainly to reconstruct proceedings of this scientific team by virtue of preserved archive sources from library collections of the Academy of Science that have not been made use of essentially so far as for the historiography dedicated to Mlynář’s work. At the same time Mlynář’s career strategy is being analysed whose scientific activity was by and by suppressed by his employment of the politician-professional. That is the reason why no monumental collective treatise has been left behind by this team contrary to other domestic scientific teams. There is also only a small number of published journal studies; that is why this article has focused primarily upon a reconstruction of the theme range of colloquia that were held within the research project.
EN
The events in Czechoslovakia referred to as the Prague Spring were not about overthrowing the system but were agenuine attempt to introduce a“socialism with ahuman face”. The aim of the article is to examine the history and ideas (especially the idea of freedom) that constituted the foundations of the Prague Spring. The authors do this, taking into account several research perspectives relating to doctrine, political-legal solutions and civic engagement. In addition, they analyse the ideological documents behind these events, i.e. the programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the Two Thousand Words manifesto and documents of the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
EN
The paper presents the relations of Jaroslav Valenta (1930–2004), a prominent Czech researcher of the most recent Polish history, with a number of Polish historians. The picture of these complex relations in the years 1965–1996 has been built up the basis on archival sources.
EN
The Prague Spring is a significant part of the history of Opolian Silesia – a region in Poland bordering Czechoslovakia. The course of the military invasion of Czechoslovakia and events in this country and within Polish-Czechoslovak borderland are reflected in documents and other material created by the authorities of the Opole voivodeship (province), which are presented in this paper.
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Ivan Sviták a pražské jaro 1968

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EN
The author considers the political thinking of the Czech Marxist philosopher Ivan Sviták (1925–1994), and his reflexion on the events of the Prague Spring of 1968. Sviták criticises the communist reform policy of the time (democratisation) as an immanently contradictory process – an attempt, doomed from the start, to reconcile the inreconcilable. In the course of his reflection, Sviták understands revisionism as a modification of Stalinist ideology which, in its critique, does not grasp the fundamentals of communist government (“bureaucratic dictatorship”). Sviták’s critical view of communist reformism is conducted from a socially revolutionary standpoint. Philosophical reflections on the avant-garde and on philosophical anthropology illuminate his conception of socialist revolution as the path to the establishment of socialist democracy.
DE
Der Autor der vorliegenden Studie befasst sich mit dem politischen Denken des tschechischen marxistischen Philosphen Ivan Sviták (1925–1994) und mit dessen Reflexion der Ereignisse des Prager Frühlings 1968. Sviták kritisiert die damalige kommunistische Reformpolitik (Demokratisierung) als immanent widersprüchlichen Prozess, als einen im Voraus zum Scheitern verurteilten Versuch, Unvereinbares miteinander zu vereinen. Sviták begreift dabei den Revisionismus als Modifikation der stalinistischen Ideologie, die mit ihrer Kritik das Wesen der kommunistischen Herrschaft („bürokratische Diktatur“) nicht erfasst. Svitáks Kritik des kommunistischen Reformismus geht von einem sozialrevolutionären Standpunkt aus. Die Gedanken dieses Philosophen zur Avantgarde und zur philosophischen Anthropologie werfen Licht auf seine Auffassung der sozialistischen Revolution als Weg zur Errichtung einer sozialistischen Demokratie.
EN
Circus as parody of communism. Gargling with Tar by Jáchym TopolThis article deals with humanism in Jáchym Topol’s novel Gargling with Tar (Kloktat dehet, Prague, 2005). The Czech writer’s perspective is close to the concepts of German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who claims that the Romans were not only the authors of the idea of humanitas but also the inventors of bloody games such as circuses. In Topol’s novel, the circus is a holistic political project. The novel refers to the ideas developed in Russia in the 1920s, when a large number of circus theories and artistic manifestos were formulated. The circus was then officially recognised as the most important form of social entertainment (together with cinema) and it gained religious, aesthetic and political functions. By using the grotesque, fantasy and parody (Czechoslovakia as a giant circus), Topol’s novel creates an alternative narrative about the Prague Spring and “normalisation”. New meanings for notions such as progress, revolution and community are also revealed. Cyrk jako parodia komunizmu. Powieść Kloktat dehet Jáchyma TopolaArtykuł analizuje pojęcie humanizmu w powieści Kloktat dehet Jáchyma Topola (Praga 2005). Czeski pisarz jest bliski koncepcji Petera Sloterdijka, który pisał, że Rzymianie oprócz idei humanitas stworzyli także krwawe igrzyska – cyrki. W powieści Topola cyrk to projekt polityczny, w którym widać wyraźne nawiązania autora do koncepcji formułowanych od lat dwudziestych XX wieku w Związku Radzieckim, kiedy cyrk (obok kina) propagowano jako najważniejszą gałąź sztuki łączącą wszystkie grupy społeczne. Wykorzystując groteskę, fan­tastykę, ale przede wszystkim parodię (figura wielkiego cyrku socjalistycznego) autor Kloktat dehet buduje alternatywną historię Praskiej Wiosny i czechosłowackiej „normalizacji”, w której nowych sensów nabierają pojęcia postępu, rewolucji i wspólnoty.
EN
This study analyses changes in the journalists’ union triggered by a change in the head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in January 1968. The journalist organisation management responded to the power shake-up at the highest levels of Czechoslovak politics with restraint. They ended their tactical passivity at the turn of February and March 1968 when influenced by a renewing society-wide process, they formulated proposals for reforming the organisation’s internal structure and rehabilitating journalists in society.
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Mapping the development of the research of contemporary history in the Czech Republic is not possible without analyses of the opinion and research development of key personalities. Jan Křen (1930–2020), a prolific historian who established a new field, an active political intellectual and influential academic teacher, was one of the most important Czech historians from the 1960s to the second decade of the 21st century. Křen’s development of his ideas, transformations of the thematization of the levels and aspects of the modern history of the Czech lands and every more distinctly also Central or all of Europe demonstrates the gradual general expansion of his research optics. The history of the Communist Party stood at the beginning, and from the 1960s they were replaced by Křen’s books on the Czechoslovak western exile representation of 1938–1940 and his fundamental role in large syntheses about the resistance against the Nazis. In the 1970s and 1980s, when Křen was forced to work as a field worker for his political involvement in the Prague Spring, he wrote a fundamental work on the problems of Czech-German coexistence. After the 1989 revolution, in addition to a number of cultural and political activities, Křen founded and led the interdisciplinary Institute of International Studies. At the same time, he devoted his research and literary capacity to the synthesis of Central European history from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 21st centuries.
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EN
In August 1968, the urban public space became the focal point of social change and the resistance of the Czechoslovak population to the occupation of the country by Warsaw Pact armies. With the example of several Czechoslovak cities, this article aims to contribute to the analysis of social resistance expressed through posters and slogans on the walls of buildings and through the disfiguring of Soviet war monuments situated in the urban public space.
PL
The article concerns Soviet political jokes that arose as a reaction to the aggression of the USSR in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. It is emphasized that political folklore is an important source material that gives a fuller picture of the contemporary moods of the Soviet society as well as its evaluation of the Kremlin’s policy towards Czechoslovakia. In this article proposed a thematic classification of Soviet political jokes on the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia and the so-called normalization.
EN
The documents published in the present study offer new views of the activities of two Czechoslovak embassies after 21 August 1968, namely those in Paris and Rome, and describe also some details of the attitude of the French and Italian governments to the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies. The first couple of documents are related to the positions of Vilém Pithart, the Czechoslovak Ambassador to Paris. This important diplomat of the 1950s and 1960s (prior to his arrival in Paris he had been Foreign Office General Secretary and a Deputy Foreign Minister) initiated a dynamical rise of contacts between Prague and Paris. After the Soviet invasion in August 1968 (which he personally witnessed while being in Czechoslovakia at that time) he immediately returned to his office, strongly condemned the invasion and tried to make both the French official circles and the French Communist Party officials support the legal Czechoslovak government. Two other documents illustrate the situation at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Rome. Ambassador Vladimír Ludvík, also an experienced diplomat, who had worked in the Foreign Office West European Department and served also as Czechoslovak Ambassador to Belgium, transmitted the protests of the legal government in Prague after 21 August, 1968. Soon, however, he tried to restore contacts with diplomats of the aggressor countries and 206 actually he fully supported what is referred to as a policy of “normalization”. The documents published in the study also illustrate the rather hesitant reaction of French and Italian government circles to the invasion and also the differentiated positions of the large Communist parties in the two countries.
EN
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Alexander Dubček and Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Oldřich Černik, who held office during the Prague Spring of 1968, in an open letter to the Central Committee of the United Workers’ Party and the government of the Polish People’s Republic, advocate for a reform process in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and criticize the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the five Warsaw Pact states in August 1968, along with the subsequent normalization, which severely endangered the domestic and international authority of socialism.
EN
Prague’s Spring was one of the most significant event of 1968, able of leaving large signs in the history of the 20th century in Europe. This essay intends to provide an interpretation of the most interesting reading lines, analysis and journalistic reports of that event through the main Italian newspapers and magazines of that period. A particular attention is given to three important moments that were the turning point of that event: the falling of Novotný and the rising of Dubček; solidification of the reformist’s group; the armed intervention of the soviets and the reaction of the Italian press.
IT
La Primavera di Praga è stato uno degli eventi più significativi del 1968, capace di lasciare larghe tracce nella storia del ‘900 europeo. Analizzando i principali quotidiani e riviste italiane del periodo, questo saggio intende fornire un’interpretazione delle linee di lettura, delle analisi e delle cronache giornalistiche più interessanti di quell’evento. Particolare attenzione è stata dedicata a tre momenti che hanno avuto una particolare importanza nello svolgimento dell’intera vicenda: la caduta di Novotný e l’ascesa di Dubček; il consolidamento del gruppo riformista; l’intervento armato sovietico e la reazione della stampa italiana.
EN
The Czech history of the second half of the 20th century is marked by a number of historical twists which suppressed the public discussion of past history; however, the discussion was sometimes possible in the form of allusions. This essay focuses on one of those discussions; i.e. the one organized by Plamen magazine in 1969. The participants knew that they could not openly express their opinions on the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. Thus, they used the 500th anniversary of Niccolo Machiavelli´s birth (1469–1527) to both recollect his personality and his work and to discuss the question of whether small countries were allowed to defend themselves against big ones. The message and topicality of the discussion constituted an unambiguous criticism of the Soviet Union, which claimed supremacy over its neighbors: its bloc.
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The Times They Are A-Changin’

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EN
The article, whose central premise is to address the ellusive issue of the Zeitgeist of the "long 1968," revolves around the appeal of the singer-songwriter activism and the international, cross-cultural popularity of protest songs that defy political borders and linguistic divides. The argument opens with reference to Bob Dylan's famous song "The Times They Are A-Changing," whose evergreen topicality resulted not only in the emergence of its numerous official and unofficial covers and reinterpretations, but also generated translations into all major languages of the world, and which has provided inspiration to engaged artists, whose present-day remakes serve as a medium of criticism of the unjust mechanisms of power affecting contemporary societies. The "spirit of the 1968," which evades clear-cut definitions attempted by cultural historians and sociologists, seems to lend itself to capturing in terms of what Beate Kutschke dubs "mental" criteria, perhaps best comprehended in the analysis of the emotional reactions to simple messages of exhortative poetry or simple protest songs, which appeal to the shared frustrations of self-organized, grassroot movements and offer them both the sense of purpose and a glimpse of hope. In this sense, the Zeitgeist of '68 is similar to that of revolutionary Romanticism that united the young engaged intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic, and whose messages reverberate in the activist songwriters' work until today. As such, the essay provides the keynote to the whole issue, which explores some of the transnational legacies of "1969."
EN
The present study reconstructs the fortunes and viewpoints of literary critic, ideologist and politician Ladislav Štoll between 1968 and 1973. My main source was the collection of private papers of the same name housed at the Academy of Sciences Archive. Ladislav Štoll's position and public role were undermined by the reformist meeting of the Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Committee at the turn of 1967/68 and meetings between a party committee and the Czech Literature Institute Council. In the Prague Spring period leading up to August 1968, Štoll withdrew from the public arena and stepped down from his executive positions at the Academy of Sciences. He faced criticisms and media attacks for his Stalinist past and his role as the one who announced the repressive measures against pro-reform authors at writers' conventions, including e.g. the (unproven) accusation that he took part in the political trials. He kept his Soviet friends and literary historian colleagues informed about the unsatisfactory situation in Czechoslovakia, and welcomed the occupation on 21st August as the moment the historical trajectory of Czechoslovakia veered away from counter-revolution, while prioritizing solutions that would not jeopardize state and national sovereignty. From autumn 1968 until mid-1969 he remained in seclusion, focused on research activity and travelled abroad. From autumn 1969 until summer 1970 he championed the consolidation of the humanities and social sciences as an employee of the revived Czechoslovak-Soviet Institute, consulting Soviet academics regarding the consolidation of Czechoslovak Russian studies, requesting their advisory intervention and arranging for the publication of key normative documents. He worked in the Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Committee and its Ideological Commission on party analyses of the post-1956 cultural and political developments that led to the Prague Spring. He reassessed his views on these developments and began to see them as disastrous from the outset, and his previous dialogue with the reformists to have been too generous. He welcomed the results of the consolidation process and its codification in Lessons from the Crisis. In July 1970 he became Chairman of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Arts and Sciences Committee and indirectly managed the reorganization of the Institute of Czech Literature. In February 1972 he returned to the consolidated Institute of Czech and World Literature as its Director, while becoming Editor-in-Chief of the Česká literatura journal. He also took on a number of other positions and tasks in various supervisory and academic bodies and committees. It was both because of these duties and for health reasons that he again drifted away from work at the Institute.
CS
V přítomné studii rekonstruuji osudy a názorovou perspektivu literárního kritika, ideologa a politika Ladislava Štolla mezi lety 1968 až 1973. Hlavním pramenem mi byl stejnojmenný osobní fond uložený v AAV. Pozice a veřejná role Ladislava Štolla byly otřeseny po reformním zasedání ústředního výboru KSČ na přelomu let 1967 a 1968 a po schůzích stranické skupiny a rady Ústavu pro českou literaturu. V období Pražského jara do srpna 1968 se Štoll stahuje z veřejného prostoru a ustupuje z řídících funkcí v ČSAV. Čelí kritice a mediálním útokům pro svou stalinistickou minulost, roli hlasatele represivních opatření proti proreformním spisovatelům na spisovatelských sjezdech, včetně například (neprokázaného) obvinění z účasti na politických procesech. O neuspokojivé situaci v Československu zpravuje své sovětské přátele a kolegy, literární historiky. Okupaci 21. srpna 1968 vítá jako moment, jímž se dějinné směřování Československa odklání od kontrarevoluce, zároveň však upřednostňuje řešení, která by neohrožovala státní a národní suverenitu. Od podzimu 1968 do poloviny roku 1969 se zdržuje v ústraní, věnuje se badatelské činnosti, cestuje do zahraničí. Od podzimu 1969 do léta 1970 se zasazuje o konsolidaci humanitních a společenských věd jako zaměstnanec obnoveného Československo-sovětského institutu. Konzultuje konsolidaci československé rusistiky se sovětskými akademiky, žádá jejich poradní zásah, stojí za vydáním stěžejních normotvorných dokumentů. V ústředním výboru KSČ a jeho ideologické komisi pracuje na stranických analýzách kulturně-politického vývoje po roce 1956, který vedl k Pražskému jaru. Přehodnocuje své názory na tento vývoj, začíná ho vnímat jako od počátku fatální, svůj někdejší dialog s reformisty jako příliš velkorysý. Vítá výsledky konsolidačního procesu a vznik jeho kodifikace, Poučení z krizového vývoje. V červenci 1970 se stává předsedou kolegia věd o umění ČSAV a nepřímo řídí reorganizaci Ústavu pro českou literaturu. V únoru 1972 se jako ředitel vrací do konsolidovaného Ústavu pro českou a světovou literaturu, zároveň se stává šéfredaktorem České literatury. Ujímá se i množství dalších funkcí a úloh v nejrůznějších kontrolních a akademických orgánech a komisích. Kvůli těmto povinnostem a ze zdravotních důvodů se opět odcizuje práci v ústavu.
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2023
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vol. 84
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issue 3
201-223
EN
The article is a contribution to the concept of media dialogical network (DN), which is applied here to historical data. The paper is based on previous research on DNs in the Czechoslovak media in the years 1948–1989, here I focus on the period immediately preceding the Prague Spring. The aim is to describe how DNs are constructed in the relevant period and the subject of the analysis are two DNs that developed in the Czechoslovak media in 1966–1967. Both of them resemble the DNs of the 1990s in some respects and contrast with, for example, the DNs of 1952, which developed during the period of centralisation of state power and in media that were subject to censorship. The socio-political situation can therefore be considered, alongside the state of development of the technologies used in journalism, as one of the factors that influence the shape of DNs.
EN
The aim of the following article is to analyse the consequences of the Prague Spring on the Czechoslovak People’s Army on the strength of biographical accounts by direct participants of the events, and to compare them with surviving documents from that period. The research project has been carried out using the oral history method and refers to accounts of soldiers laid off from the army as a result of the so-called normalisation purges that took place from the late 1960s until the mid-1970s. The article presents the chronology of the normalisation methods used in the army and the way they were applied both at official and party level. It also discusses the consequences of these actions on the ordinary lives of the witnesses and thus how reflections of those events were later portrayed for the purpose of the study.
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