Continuity and Discontinuity in the History of the Welfare State in Czechoslovakia (1918–56)
Jakub Rákosník
This article focuses on the long-term trends in the development of social policy between the First World War and the mid-1950s. The author begins by summarising the main ideas of his own previous articles and books. He emphasises the continuity and discontinuity in the general conception of Czechoslovak social policy in this period. He also considers conceptual questions, particularly those that would help to explain how the basic terms are employed in historical analysis. The article moves between the two poles of the construction of causality – structural explanation and voluntaristic explanation. The content of the article can be aptly summed up in a neat metaphor: from Bismarck by way of Beveridge to Stalin. In personifi ed form, this shortcut expresses the long-term development of Czechoslovak social policy: from an emphasis on principles of merit, characteristic of the traditional German and Austrian social insurance schemes, by way of a considerably more egalitarian national insurance from 1948 (strongly infl uenced by the British system), to the Soviet model of social security, which developed from 1951 to 1956. The article also considers important changes in social legislation in the Czechoslovak Republic in this period, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
“It Will Not Work without a Social Policy!”
Research on Social Practice on the Territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Radka Šustrová
Social policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, from mid-March 1939 to early May 1945, is a key topic in contemporary research on the history of this brief period. The article is concerned with the possible approaches to research with regard to the latest trends in research on National Socialism. It begins with an outline of the historiography of social policy in the Protectorate, which is marked chiefl y by a predominant uniformity of argumentation, a lack of systematic approach to interpretation, and Czech and Czechoslovak historians’ limiting themselves to the ethnically Czech population. Research conducted so far has completely failed to put social policy into the context of social history. The author thus fi rst provides an outline of the social framework, which represents the concept of a Volksgemeinschaft (national/ethnic/racial community), in which ideas about the purpose and function of social policy were formed and implemented. In the next part, she focuses on the defi nition of the term “social policy” as understood by Nazi theorists after 1933. In the last part of the article, she seeks to defi ne the new social relations in the Czech- German environment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and suggests possibilities of its analysis in the area of the implementation of social policy. She believes that it will be fruitful to study the implementation of the relevant criteria in the Reich and the Protectorate at the level of discussions among experts, and to research social policy in practice. The author sees the most important aspects of the implementation of social policy as residing in the various motivations of the regime when implementing social policy in relation to different parts of the population, ranging from social exclusion to forms of social protectionism.
Unwanted Silesia
Czech “Silesian Identity” in Postwar Czechoslovakia (1945–69) Jiří Knapík – Zdeněk Jirásek
The Czech “Silesian identity”, obvious throughout the twentieth century, was based on a mixture of strong regional, even local, patriotism, which was determined by historical developments. This patriotism developed on the ethnically mixed terri- tory of Czech Silesia (formerly Austrian Silesia). After the Second World War, this phenomenon was quickly revived, but unlike in the pre-war period, it took a clearly Czech national form. The territorial factor, by contrast, receded into the background. Behind this activity and new interpretation stood intellectual circles and institutions in Opava, some leading fi gures from Ostrava, and the Silesian Cultural Institute in Prague. In addition to cultural-educational activity, their efforts were concentrated
on claiming some border areas of Polish and German Silesia as being historically Czech, and also on ensuring the distinctive administrative status of the territory of Silesia in Czechoslovakia, the seed of which they saw in the Ostrava branch of the Moravian National Committee (Zemský národní výbor) in Brno. During the Communist regime, according to the authors, the top state authorities showed an intentional lack of interest in the problems of Silesia when solving related economic and other questions. A consequence of this was a “silencing of the offi cial sources” about Silesia. In the 1950s, the “Silesian-ness” was condemned as a form of “bour- geois nationalism” and was identifi ed with the period of Czech-Polish national fric- tion in the region. From the administrative point of view, Silesia was dissolved in the Ostrava area, later in the North Moravian Region, and was recalled practically only by artistic expressions of an “Old Silesian-ness”, such as folklore and museum exhibitions. Silesian organizations and societies were, with few exceptions, dis- solved or renamed and the newly established Silesian Research Institute in Opava had to orient its historical research chiefl y to the labour movement. The works of the poet Petr Bezruč (born Vladimír Vašek, 1867–1958) and his collection of verses,
Slezské písně (Silesian Songs), presented a problem because of their questionable
depiction of Silesian identity, and the publication of the complete collection led to disputes in cultural policy. The Ostrava-based arts and politics periodical Červený
květ (Red Flower), which repeatedly included debates about regionalism, began to
be published in the mid-1950s. At the end of the decade, however, the Communist Party launched a campaign against parochialism (lokálpatriotismus), which was refl ected also in the condemnation of publications seeking to exonerate the poems and ideas of Óndra Łysohorsky (born Ervín Goj, 1905–1989), who during the war promoted the theory of a “Lach nation.” In the 1960s, the local authorities and fi gures of Opava again began to emphasize the role of their town as a regional centre. During the Prague Spring of 1968, there were calls for the restoration of Silesian self-government, but that remained more or less limited to the Opava region, and consequently some “Silesian” cultural initiatives from this period were of greater importance.
Lessons from the Crisis Development
The Picture of the Prague Spring in “Normalisation Prose” Alena Fialová (Šporková)
The article considers the picture of the year 1968 and what is popularly known as the “Prague Spring” as it appears in establishment prose fi ction from the “Nor- malisation” period (that is, the return to hard-line Communism with the defeat of the reform wing of the Party and the years of the Soviet occupation, 1970-89). Normalisation fi ction – in accord with the government publication Poučení z kri-
zového vývoje ve straně a společnosti po XIII. sjezdu KSČ [Lessons from the Crisis