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EN
In the article, a postulate is put forward to train professional history teachers by taking into consideration their social service: to prepare them well for the role of guides in the world of knowledge and values while granting them more autonomy. The goal is to draw attention to the professionalism of teachers as described by Wanda Dróżka and Dorota Gołębniak: (1) “professional autonomy”; (2) “care for maintaining and developing high standards of specialist and ethical qualifications”; (3) “reflection and self-reflection”; (4) “adopting own practices in an appropriate, individual way” (5) “high prestige and a relatively good remuneration”. The defined professionalism of teachers is the basis for their autonomous, satisfying and responsible work at school and the local environment. It is a combination of a postulate of social service and competences. The article presents a discussion of historians on teachers’ education in the context of making their vocation more professional.
EN
Conference report: Initiatives of publishing houses in the 19th and 20th century for the benefi t schools and education’ (Łódź, 15–16 October 2012)
EN
This article relates the still unfinished story of the Monument to Freedom and Unity in Berlin. which is intended to commemorate the great changes of autumn 1989, and it looks at the related German debate about the culture of remembrance in their country. That debate is at present connected mainly with the crimes of Nazism, and people are now heard arguing that in addition to memory and ''negative'' monuments Germany also sorely needs to develop ''positive'' collective remembrance. One of the specific attempts to make this idea a reality is the Initiative for a Monument to German Unity (Initiative Denkmal Deutsche Einheit), which emerged in the Bundestag in 1998. From it comes the Berlin project discussed here, which, even seventeen years later (unlike the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), has yet to be built. The author discusses the changes in the conception of the monument and the competition for its design; although the second competition resulted in a winning design, that was not unanimously accepted, and disputes about the monument continue to this day.
CS
Článek představuje dosud neuzavřený příběh berlínského Památníku svobody a jednoty (Denkmal Freiheit und Einheit), který by měl připomínat převratné události z podzimu 1989, a souvisící německou debatu o tamní kultuře vzpomínání. Ta je v současnosti spojena především se zločiny nacismu a slyšitelně zaznívají hlasy, že vedle ,,negativní'' paměti a památníků je žádoucí pěstovat také ,,pozitivní'' kolektivní vzpomínání. Jako jeden konkrétní pokus o naplnění takové myšlenky vznikla v roce 1998 na půdě Spolkového sněmu Iniciativa památníku německé jednoty (Initiative Denkmal Deutsche Einheit), od níž se odvozuje sledovaný berlínský projekt, který však ani po sedmnácti letech (na rozdíl od Památníku holokaustu) ještě nebyl realizován. Autor přibližuje proměny koncepce památníku a vypsané soutěže na jeho provedení; z druhé soutěže sice vzešel vítězný návrh, nebyl však přijat jednoznačně a spory o památník přetrvávají.
EN
b2_She describes the commemorative activities of the Confederation of Political Prisoners as part of the strategy to bolster the social standing of the third, anti-Communist resistance, and she points to certain analogies between the unchallenged memories of political prisoners and the memories of the former border guards in contemporary historiography.
CS
a2_Popisuje komemorační aktivity Konfederace politických vězňů jako součást strategie společenského prosazení třetího, protikomunistického odboje a poukazuje na určité analogie nereflektované paměti politických vězňů a paměti bývalých pohraničníků v kontextu současného historiografického poznání.
EN
This study attempts to capture the origins of the differences in opinion on the fate ofthe Czech nation which arose in the period known as the Prague Spring in 1968 as espoused by two ofthe period’s historical actors, based on an analysis of media sources of the time. Though the controversy was unleashed at the turn of 1969 by Milan Kundera and Václav Havel, other important intellectual figures from Prague and Brno, such as Karel Kosík, Jaroslav Střítecký and Lubomír Nový, were eventually to join the fray as well. Within the controversy, two basic approaches may be observed, whose antagonistic tendencies arise out ofthe generational differences ofthe participants: the first, represented by Kundera, Kosík and Nový, sees the democratisation experienced in the Prague spring as an integral process within a continuum of Czech history and thus exalts it as a singular process bringing Bohemia once again into a world context; the second approach, however, represented by Havel and Střítecký, looks upon the reform with critical skepticism and refutes the so-called “fate ofthe Czech nation” (which purports to situate Bohemia in the context of world history) as a fictional construct which takes away the individual’s historical responsibility.
EN
Reprint: „Należę do polskiej szkoły historycznej”. Studia i szkice ofiarowane prof. Jakubowi Goldbergowi z okazji odnowienia doktoratu na Uniwersytecie Łódzkim, red. R. Stobiecki i J. Walicki, Łódź 2010, s. 23–34.
EN
The initial years of the Bible Investigators (Jehovah’s Witnesses) are the merit of their founder, Charles Taze Russell. Of a little research group he made the organization which covers many countries on all continents. He propagated his ideas by the editorialpropagandist corporation, named Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society, which he established and became its president. Many missionary travels of Russel and his followers, especially the four-month Evangelic travel around the World, led to a dynamic growth of the organization, what is proved with offices in several countries and hundred thousands followers and sympathizers of this religious movement. In the year 1914 the organization suffered form its first serious crisis caused by the undone prophecy of the end of world’s system and the presence of Christ in the world. However, in spite of the crisis and resignation of many members, the organization survived.
EN
The Book Council was established in Poland in 1937. Its aim was to bring about the cooperation of institutions that professionally deal with books: the authors, printers, editors, publishers, booksellers, librarians and educationists. After World War II the Book Council was reactivated by the ordinance of the Minister of Education dated September 20, 1945. The responsibilities of the Council were restricted to three tasks: general politics of publishing, the amendment of the copyright as well as the readership and book propaganda. Three Committees were appointed: the Committee for Publishing Plan and Book Production, the Copyright Committee and the Committee for Organizing the Book Week. The aim of this article is to present the activities of the abovementioned Book Council Committees and the evaluation of the legitimacy of the Council’s existence from the point of view of their members (the vice-director Jan Muszkowski and secretary Jan Rosner). The primary sources of information were the documents from the years 1945–1947 kept in the manuscript collection of the Library of the University of Łódź (the legacy from Professor Jan Muszkowski, documents referring to the Book Council) and the documents from the Book Science Documentation Institute of the National Library (Book Council Files).
EN
b2_Husák’s efforts to become President kept running up against the question of the accumulation of offices and also the Czech-Slovak national factor, even though, thanks to centrist Czechoslovak policy and support from Moscow, he succeeded in achieving a ‘peculiar unity’ over this question in the CPCz leadership, so that on 29 May 1975 he became the first, and also the last, Czechoslovak President who was a Slovak. In Czech eyes, however, he remained a Slovak who had, after August 1968, considerably participated in the unfortunate re-imposition of hard-line Communism known as ‘normalization’, whereas for the Slovak nation he increasingly became a turncoat, a ‘Prague Slovak’. The article is followed by a number of relevant documents and biographical sketches of the Party members who were decisive in Husák’s election to the presidency.
CS
a2_Snaha Gustáva Husáka obsadit prezidentský úřad průběžně narážela na otázku kumulace funkcí a nacionální faktor, přesto se mu díky centristické politice a podpoře Moskvy podařilo dosáhnout v této záležitosti „podivné jednoty“ ve vedení KSČ, takže se stal 29. května 1975 prvním a zároveň posledním československým prezidentem slovenské národnosti. V českých očích ovšem zůstával nadále Slovákem, jenž se výrazně podílel na neblahém procesu takzvané normalizace společnosti po srpnu 1968, zatímco pro slovenský národ se čím dál více stával odrodilcem, „pražským Slovákem“. Ke studii je připojena edice relevantních dokumentů a biogramy členů vedení KSČ, kteří o Husákově prezidentské volbě rozhodovali.
EN
b2_The author looks in detail at this exceptional clash in post-war US domestic politics, which was meant to be triumphantly used against MacArthur, but gradually changed into a debacle in consequence of, among other things, the compelling testimonies of Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893-1971) and Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall (1880-1959). In his conclusion, the author seeks to demonstrate how other US presidents returned to the ‘lessons of Munich’, and he argues that these lessons became Truman’s lasting political legacy and as such became firmly rooted in American political discourse.
CS
a2_Autor podrobně přibližuje tento mimořádný vnitropolitický střet v poválečných amerických dějinách, který se měl stát triumfem MacArthurovy obžaloby, ale postupně se změnil v její debakl, mimo jiné v důsledku přesvědčivých vystoupení ministrů zahraničí a obrany Deana Achesona (1893-1971) a George C. Marshalla (1880-1959). V závěru autor ukazuje, jak se k „poučení z Mnichova“ vraceli další američtí prezidenti, a konstatuje, že se stalo trvajícím politickým odkazem Harryho S. Trumana (1884-1972) a jako takové pevně zakořenilo v americkém politickém diskurzu.
EN
b3_ A distinct feature of these places of memory is their spontaneous emergence, usually at a local initiative, and their unusualness in their efforts to achieve the political shaping of the memory of Communism ‘from above’. The author then considers in detail how the Prague Spring of 1968 has been reflected in places of memory.
CS
a2_Topografie soudobé paměti národa a její reflexe“ (textová část viz www.usd.cas.cz/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/mapa_Posuny_pameti_data.pdf, grafická příloha viz www.usd.cas.cz/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/mapa_Posuny_pameti.pdf). Tato webová databáze zahrnuje více než šest set pamětních míst, uspořádaných ze tří různých perspektiv - regionálně, tematicky a podle časové osy - které jsou v článku blíže osvětleny. Autor s jistou skepsí komentuje současnou konjunkturu konceptů a publikací o historické paměti v českých společenských vědách a konstatuje, že není ambicí uvedeného projektu vřazovat se do tohoto intenzivního diskurzu, nicméně pořízená dokumentace může být přirozeným zdrojem přemýšlení o kolektivní paměti vztahující se ke komunistickému období českých dějin. Z databáze plyne, že naprostá většina dochovaných pamětních míst vznikala po listopadu 1989 a že ve srovnání s jinými periodami jsou mezi nimi zdaleka nejvíce zastoupeny upomínky na padesátá léta jako období komunistických represí a obětí. V České republice však prakticky neexistují regiony paměti komunismu, způsob připomínání komunistické minulosti v jednotlivých krajích je velmi podobný, přestože konkrétní témata pamětních míst jsou v nich rozličná. Zřetelným rysem těchto pamětních míst je spontánní vznikání, podnícené většinou lokálními iniciativami, a jejich mimoběžnost se snahami o politické utváření paměti komunismu „shora“. Podrobněji pak autor sleduje reflexi paměti pražského jara 1968 v pamětních místech.
EN
Press panorama in Poland’s Western Territories after 1945’. The Cyprian Norwid Public Library in Zielona Góra, the Faculty of the Humanities of the University of Zielona Góra, Institute of National Remembrance — the Poznań Branch, the State Higher Vocational School in Sulechów (Zielona Góra, 24–25 October 2012)
EN
This contribution traces the international (Schorske, Magris, Johnston etc.) and Central European (Kosík, Wandycz, Konrad, Szůcs, Kiš, Kundera and others) debates on Central Europe that arose during the 1960s in particular. These were concerned not only with the Central European cultural and artistic heritage, but also with the cultural and political identity of the individual European Nations. The author offers a typology ofdifferent mental maps for Central Europe: Central Europe as Intermarium (Poland), Central Europe in the Carpathian Arch (Hungary), Central Europe between Germany and Russia (Czech Republic), nationalistic Central Europe (Slovenia) etc.
EN
In this article, the author raises the question of what now, more than twenty years later, the ‘stay’ (pobyt, as it was officially called), of the Soviet Army in Czechoslovakia means to the inhabitants of the country. How, she asks, is it recalled in the public space and the mass media, and what images are most frequently evoked in this connection? Whereas the Soviet-led intervention by troops of the Warsaw Pact countries in August 1968 holds a lasting place in Czech memory and historiography, the subsequent stay of Soviet troops in the country has far fuzzier contours. Though in this connection the term ‘occupation’ (okupace) is regularly used today, there is no simple agreement about its political meaning. In the article, the author seeks to indentify the changes in the communicated meanings of the occupation, when the original nation-wide consensus of its rejection was squeezed out by the reality of officially imposed friendship and the ‘twinning’ (družba) of Czechoslovak and Soviet towns. Under its façade, by contrast, people developed variously accented and motivated attitudes, such as keeping their distance or being accommodating, the plurality of which has largely survived in the collective memory unchallenged to this day. The author, however, points mainly to the fundamental shift in the perception of the stay of the Soviet Army, which took place after the Changes beginning in mid-November 1989, when, the degradation of the buildings occupied by the Soviets and the land that they stand on, and the gradual rectification of this, have become the main topics, rather than related aspects of political power.
CS
Autorka si klade otázku, čím byl více než dvacetiletý pobyt Sovětské armády v Československu (od srpna 1968 do června 1991) pro jeho obyvatele a jak na něj ve veřejném a mediálním prostoru vzpomínají, jaké obrazy se v této souvislosti nejčastěji evokují. Zatímco invaze vojsk Varšavské smlouvy v srpnu 1968 zaujímá své pevné místo v české paměti i historiografii, následný „pobyt“ sovětských vojáků v zemi má mnohem méně zřetelné kontury. I když i v této souvislosti se dnes běžně používá pojem „okupace“, o jeho politických významech zdaleka nepanuje jednoznačná shoda. Článek se snaží zachytit proměny sdílených významů okupace, kdy původní celonárodní konsenzus jejího odmítání byl vytlačován realitou oficiálně vynucovaného přátelství a „družby“, zatímco pod její fasádou si lidé vytvářeli rozmanitě akcentované a motivované postoje distance či vstřícnosti, jejichž pluralita v kolektivní paměti vcelku bezkonfliktně přetrvává dodnes. Především ale autorka poukazuje na zásadní posun ve vnímání pobytu Sovětské armády po listopadu 1989, kdy se spíše než politická moc s ním spjatá tematizuje kulturně-civilizační degradace okupovaných prostorů a objektů a její postupné překonávání.
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EN
This is a revised and expanded version of the essay ‘Communism in Eastern Europe’, which was published in S. A. Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, Oxford: OUP, 2014, pp. 203–21. Here, the author offers a comprehensive historical view of the phenomenon of ‘East European Communism’. The region of eastern Europe is characterized here on the basis of a few shared features and in essence corresponds geographically to the delimitation of the ‘outer Soviet Empire’ (including Albania and Yugoslavia). The author discusses the concept of Communism and its alternatives as a name for the regime and the society that existed in this region from the early post-war years until 1990. He pleads for a conception of Communism which would take into account its multilayered nature, comprising three main parts: an ideology with a claim to be a ‘scientifi c’ interpretation of the world, a political, social, and cultural mass movement, and lastly, a system of rule ensured by Soviet domination and often called ‘State Socialism’. Communist systems in eastern Europe, he argues, suffered from ‘fundamental contradictions’, stemming from special national and regional features, which eventually determined its demise, but, paradoxically, also helped to keep the system alive. Here was a confl ict between Marxist class ideology and political national identity, the social determination of power, the interaction between economic policy and the consumer behaviour of society, and the tension between the ideological norm and the critical function of art. The overall view of the transformations of these four fundamental contradictions of Communism from the beginning of the Communist movement and the Communist régimes to their collapse, with which the author seeks to cast doubt on the superfi cial contradiction between internal and external factors of their development, creates the main content of the essay. In his interpretation of the dynamics of the relationship between class and nation the author concludes that these principles were able to coexist in Communism for a long time, although it was a highly problematic coexistence and one that ultimately led to the defeat of ‘internationalism’ and of class consciousness. Concerning the relationship between power and society, the author advocates the most recent approaches of social history which, unlike the theory of totalitarianism, cast doubt on the sharp contrast between the two categories and see the Socialist dictatorship as a product of social interaction between rulers and ruled. The special socialist consumer culture was, the author argues, gradually formed in the mutual tension between production and consumption. It is hard to say whether this culture tended to support the Communist government or, rather, contributed to its gradual decay. At the level of the clash between ideology and culture, the author formulates an argument about a transition from ‘programmatic’ to ‘processual’ utopia, when the art of the post-Stalinist years abandoned the great ideals of building a perfect society and substituted for them an ideologically discreet depiction of everyday life with faith in a better world. In the conclusion of the essay, the author expresses his conviction about the need to historicize East European Communism, a prerequisite of which is that this phenomenon cease to be interpreted as a deviation or deformation of European modernism, and about the need for comparative research on State Socialism, capitalism, and post-colonialism as socio-political systems of this modernism.
CS
Tato esejisticky laděná stať je přepracovanou a rozšířenou verzí textu, který pod názvem „Communism in Eastern Europe“ vyšel v Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism (ed. S. A. Smith. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2014, s. 203-221). Autor zde nabízí syntetický historický pohled na fenomén východoevropského komunismu. Region východní Evropy je charakterizován na základě několika společných znaků a v podstatě geograficky odpovídá vymezení „vnějšího sovětského impéria“ (včetně Jugoslávie a Albánie). Nad pojmem komunismu a jeho alternativami se autor zamýšlí jako nad označením pro režimy a společnosti, které v této oblasti existovaly od brzkých poválečných let do roku 1990. Autor přitom pléduje pro takové pojetí komunismu, které by bralo v úvahu jeho vícevrstvou povahu, zahrnující tři jeho hlavní součásti: ideologii s nárokem na „vědecký“ výklad světa, dále politické, sociální a kulturní masové hnutí a konečně systém panství zajišťovaný sovětskou nadvládou a obecně označovaný jako „státní socialismus“. Komunistické systémy ve východní Evropě podle jeho přesvědčení trpěly určitými „základními rozpory“, vyvěrajícími z národních a regionálních specifik, které nakonec podmínily jeho zánik, avšak paradoxně zároveň pomáhaly udržovat tento systém při životě. Jedná se o konflikt mezi marxistickou třídní ideologií a politikou národní identity, o sociální podmíněnost moci, o interakci mezi hospodářskou politikou a spotřebním chováním společnosti a o napětí mezi ideologickou normou a kritickou funkcí umění. Celkový pohled na proměny těchto čtyř „základních rozporů“ komunismu od počátku komunistického hnutí či komunistických režimů do jejich zhroucení, jímž se autor pokouší zpochybnit povrchní protiklad mezi vnitřními a vnějšími faktory jejich vývoje, tvoří vlastní obsah této statě. V interpretaci dynamiky vztahu třídy a národa dospívá autor k závěru, že tyto principy dokázaly v komunismu dlouhodobě kohabitovat, jakkoli šlo o soužití velmi problematické, jež nakonec vyústilo v porážku „internacionalismu“ a třídního vědomí. Pokud jde o poměr moci a společnosti, hlásí se autor k novějším přístupům sociální historie, které oproti teorii totalitarismu zpochybnily příkrý protiklad mezi oběma kategoriemi a které socialistickou diktaturu chápou jako produkt sociální interakce mezi vládnoucími a ovládanými. Ve vzájemném napětí mezi výrobou a spotřebou se podle autora postupně zformovala specifická socialistická konzumní kultura, o níž je obtížné rozhodnout, zda komunistickou vládu spíše podpírala, anebo naopak přispívala k jejímu pozvolnému rozkladu. V rovině střetu mezi ideologií a kulturou formuluje autor tezi o přechodu od „programatické“ k „procesuální“ utopii, když umění poststalinské doby opustilo velké ideály budování dokonalé společnosti a nahradilo je ideologicky neokázalým zobrazováním každodenního života s vírou v lepší svět. V závěru statě autor vyjadřuje přesvědčení o nezbytnosti historizace východoevropského komunismu, jejímž předpokladem je, že se tento fenomén přestane vykládat jako odchylka nebo deformace na cestě evropské moderny, a o potřebě komparativního zkoumání státního socialismu, kapitalismu nebo postkolonialismu jako sociálně-politických systémů této moderny.
XX
About the autors: TADEUSZ CZEKALSKI - historian, adjunct at the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. JACEK DĘBICKI - historian, adjunct at the Historical Institute of the University of Wrocław. MICHAŁ JANUSZKIEWICZ - literary expert, associate professor at the Institute of Polish Philology of the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznan. WOJCIECH KUCHARSKI - historian, archaeologist; employee of the "Remembrance and Future" Center in Wrocław, lecturer at the Historical Institute of the University of Wrocław. MARTA KURKOWSKA-BUDZAN - historian, adjunct at the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. ANNA MULLER - historian, employee of the Center for European Studies at the University of Florida and the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. ANNA KURPIEL - anthropologist, PhD student at the Center for German and European Studies Willy Brandt of the University of Wroclaw. PAWEŁ SOWIŃSKI - historian, employee of the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. DANIEL WOJTUCKI - historian, adjunct at the Historical Institute of the University of Wrocław.
EN
In this extensive article, divided into two parts, the author traces how the lessons of the Munich Agreement of September 1938 (on the basis of which Czechoslovakia was forced to cede the predominantly ethnic-German Sudetenland to Nazi Germany) were projected into US foreign policy. In Part One of the essay, based on published sources and unpublished documents from American archives, the topic is covered from the late 1930s to the outbreak of the Korean War (which is discussed in Part Two, to be published in the next issue of Soudobé dějiny). The author looks at immediate American reaction to the North Korean attack on South Korea in June 1950, and then returns to autumn 1938 to test his hypothesis that behind the unusual unity of this reaction was the ingrained negative attitude of the United States to the policy of appeasement. He demonstrates that since the late 1930s the terms ‘Munich’ and ‘appeasement’ have remained forever linked in US policy and US public discourse, and he discusses the transformations of the perception of the two concepts during the Second World War, after the war, and at the beginning of the Cold War. The lessons of Munich, he argues, have drawn on the idealistic as well as the pragmatic sources of US policy, because they stem from the conviction that appeasement is immoral and does not pay. Whereas in Roosevelt’s policy the general lesson was not to allow Hitler’s expansion, Harry S. Truman, Roosevelt’s successor in the White House, had to use the lessons, despite his own self-restraint, to try to counter the steps of a wartime ally, Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Communist take-over in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 and the blockade of the western sectors of Berlin beginning in the summer of that year were important events on this path.
CS
V této obsáhlé studii, rozdělené do dvou částí, autor sleduje, jak se do zahraniční politiky Spojených států amerických promítalo poučení z následků Mnichovské dohody ze září 1938, na jejímž základě bylo Československo nuceno odstoupit nacistickému Německu pohraniční území s většinou německého obyvatelstva. V první části studie, založené na publikovaných i nepublikovaných dokumentech z amerických archivů, je téma zpracováno pro období od konce třicátých let do vypuknutí korejského konfliktu (ten je obsahem druhé části, která bude otištěna v příštím čísle časopisu). Autor zachycuje bezprostřední americké reakce na vpád severokorejských vojsk do Jižní Koreje v červnu 1950 a poté se vrací do podzimu 1938, aby verifikoval hypotézu, že za nezvyklou jednotou těchto reakcí byl zažitý odmítavý postoj Spojených států k politice appeasementu. Na americké politice i veřejném diskurzu ukazuje, že od konce třicátých let v nich zůstávaly pojmy Mnichov a appeasement natrvalo spjaty, a přibližuje proměny tohoto vnímání za druhé světové války, po jejím skončení a v počátcích války studené. „Poučení z Mnichova“ se podle autora napájelo z idealistického i pragmatického zdroje americké politiky, neboť vycházelo z přesvědčení, že appeasement je jednak nemravný, jednak se nevyplácí. Zatímco v Rooseveltově politice bylo toto obecné poučení namířeno proti Hitlerově expanzi, jeho nástupce v prezidentském úřadě Harry S. Truman je navzdory vlastní zdrženlivosti musel v konfrontaci se Stalinovými poválečnými kroky začít uplatňovat vůči dosavadnímu válečnému spojenci, Sovětskému svazu. Důležitými událostmi na této cestě byl komunistický převrat v Československu v únoru 1948 a blokáda západních sektorů Berlína od léta téhož roku.
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.
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.
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This paper should be understood as an attempt to express an extensive philosophical theme, suitable for a whole book, in a short article. But to complete such a work, at present, is rather too difficult for the author (85) who, when in his youth, was targeted by the communist regime and not allowed to study or work professionally. This paper attempts to interpret the evolution of the transcendental idea of post-mortem existence through history, i.e. how it looked in antiquity, in medieval times and in modern times. In the modern period it is perceived as an over-ruling idea, that is to say a paradigm for perceiving the world and how to think about it. If this paradigm in antiquity was accepted as the power of fate, and in the middle ages as the work of God, who alone had the idea and power for operating the world, then in modern times God has been replaced by a science that has discovered the natural laws operating in the world. Supposedly, then, man is also governed by this over-ruling principle of deterministic causality. But, as we know from the latest microphysical studies, this deterministic principle does not carry weight any more and it is necessary to replace it with a new principle. We must discern a new and more valid paradigm. For this purpose the author offers the hypothesis of an integrative systemic theory and an integrative systemic methodology that permits the world to be operated not only by the causal principle, but also by a holistically-finalistic principle which acts dialectically as an antithesis to the principle of causality. However, acknowledging an integrative systemic theory and an integrative systemic methodology as a new paradigm faces a serious obstacle in the form of a quasi-scientific taboo, which connects the influence of every final cause with an ostensible theological belief. Therefore it is necessary, first of all, to overcome this taboo that acts like the philosophical ‘idols’ in the time of Francis Bacon which restrained the progress of ideas at the turn of the middle ages and modern times. We are now, according to many world-renowned scientists and philosophers, at a similar crossroads between the modern and post-mo­dern periods of history.
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