ANÁLISIS DE LA ESTABILIDAD PRIMARIA EN DIFERENTES PROTOCOLOS

Expressions of Czech Silesian patriotism – a sense of “Silesian identity” – can be identifi ed and traced throughout the 20th _{century. The phenomenon was based on}

strong, historically conditioned “land” patriotism on the ethnically mixed territory of Czech Silesia,2 _{part of historic Silesia (divided between Poland, the Bohemian}

Lands and Germany). Czech Silesian patriotism displayed different specifi c features in different phases of its development. It found expression in one way before 1918, in the era of Czech national emancipation, when forming a political leadership in Czech Silesia and promoting solidarity with national Czech politics, and in a different way in the interwar period, when it had to seek compromises between

1 This text was produced in the framework of the research plan MSM4781305905 “Silesia in the history of the Czech State and Central Europe.”

2 See DOKOUPIL, Lumír – MYŠKA, Milan – SVOBODA, Jiří et al.: Kulturněhistorická encyklo-

pedie Slezska a severovýchodní Moravy [Cultral–Historical Encyclopaedia of Silesia and

North–Eastern Moravia], Vol. 2. Ostrava, Institute for Regional Studies at Ostrava Univer- sity 2005, p. 362; JANÁK, Dušan: Slezská identita jako politický fenomén po roce 1945 [Silesian Identity as a Political Phenomenon after 1945]. In: KOZERA, Bartłomiej – LIS, Michał (ed.): Śląsk Opolski i Opawski v Unii Europejskiej: Postsocjalistyczny bagaż i unijne

reali/Opolské a Opavské Slezsko v Evropské unii: Postsocialistická zátěž a unijní reálie [Opole

and Opava Silesia in the European Union: The Post–Socialist Burden a the Union’s Realias]. Opole, Uniwersytet Opolski – Wydawnictwo Instytutu Śląski 2006, pp. 17–19.

the national ideal and the reality of a multi–ethnic state. After 1945, Czech Silesian patriotism changed fundamentally as a result of the radical social and political transformation of the territory; Silesian sentiment had to absorb the effects of the expulsion of Czechoslovakia’s German population, and could now be publicly associated only with centrist and left–wing political programmes (especially the National Socialist Party). The continuing life of certain ideational stereotypes of “Silesian identity” was then overlaid and obscured by the political revolution fol- lowing the communist takeover of February 1948. Indeed, the uninterrupted and natural crystallisation of the Czech “Silesian ideal” was cut short, and free cultural and political efforts to embody the idea were more or less blocked.

First and foremost, the presented article seeks to identify the ways in which “Silesian–ness” found expression after 1948, and to reconstruct the contours of the very restricted space permitted by the communist regime for its manifestations. Research is complicated by the fact that the subject of “Silesia” and “Silesian–ness” was essentially never discussed as a separate subject in any of the state or party organs for most of the communist era; these organs addressed subsidiary problems connected to the specifi c position and character of Silesia but without actually speaking of Silesia as such. For this reason, tracing the idea of Silesia includes mapping the deliberate and in–principle passivity of the regime with regard to the subject, i.e. a silence about the question of Silesia when tackling matters closely connected with it. In a very limited way, we can also identify the support of some political groups for ideas that had been among expressions of Silesian patriotism prior to 1948, but were no longer associated with it thereafter.

In this text, we rely on the established periodisation, which we consider generally adequate. The starting point is the fact that after 1945 (1948) Silesia no longer existed as an administrative entity and the complex of social and cultural activi- ties associated with the historic territory became what was essentially a marginal “background noise,” in the wake of overall political developments in Czechoslova- kia. The pulse rate of the life of the “idea of Silesia,” and the potential for realising particular manifestations of that idea, was thus constrained by factors external to the area under scrutiny. In the postwar era, we can essentially distinguish three periods. First were the years 1945–1947 – a period of “limited democracy,” during which the idea of Silesia in its Czech form developed and fl ourished quite vigor- ously. This was followed by the stage of communist rule from 1948 to 1989. Finally, there is the most recent period starting in November 1989, in which it has been possible to make some aspects of the Silesian idea a partial reality even though that idea has not played anything like the same role in society as it did after the Second World War.3 _{Two particular episodes stood out sharply in the forty long}

3 See GAWRECKI, Dan et al.: Dějiny Českého Slezska 1740–2000 [The History of Czech Sile- sia 1740–2000], Vol. 2. Opava, Ústav historie a muzeologie Filozofi cko–přírodovědecké fakul- ty Slezské univerzity v Opavě 2003, p. 471; JIRÁSEK, Zdeněk: Slezská idea v poválečném Československu [The Silesian Idea in Postwar Czechoslovakia]. In: Časopis Slezského zem-

years of communist rule: fi rst, the years of “building communism” 1948–1953, when the idea of Silesia was pushed very much into the background, and then the years 1968–1969 as the brief period of its partial renaissance. Otherwise the existing literature presents the communist era as undifferentiated with regard to Silesia. Keeping this in mind, our ambition is to offer a rather more structured periodisation in this article.