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The communist regime that came to power in 1948 sought to create an entirely new society with a value system derived from Marxist–Leninist ideology. Despite external adoption of some national–ethnic traditions, the new order was supposed to have completely different foundations. Such ideologically driven tendencies to discon- tinuity were most intense in the regime’s “founding” period, which lasted roughly to the mid–1950s. In line with the centralised direction of the state, Czechoslovak society was to cohere on the basis of the “unifying” ideals of “social progress,” “class interests,” efforts to “build socialism,” and “socialist patriotism.” Conversely, all the particularist interests (often imagined) expressed by all the various groups of citizens in clubs and societies were to be eliminated.14 _{After February 1948, then,}

there could be no prospect of cultivating a “Silesian identity” or Silesian traditions in the longer term, even though the idea enjoyed some support in the pro–commu- nist intelligentsia, even in the highest places, for up to roughly the middle of 1949, the “Silesian cause” had a prominent supporter at the very centre of communist power – Minister Zdeněk Nejedlý. As late as in the spring of 1948, on the occasion of the founding of the Silesian Study Institute in Opava, Nejedlý was still promot- ing the theory that Silesia was our weakest place (he meant primarily in regard to Germany) and for that reason deserved special and distinctive attention. Soon, however, he abandoned these views or at least ceased to express them publicly; they were at odds with the ideological dogmas that were the new order of the day.

As far as the communist regime was concerned, Silesia was a problematic, sensi- tive region, and interest in its specifi c heritage threatened to divert attention from “socialist industrialisation.” The regime therefore tried to downplay and reduce its specifi c character, and took a separate, atomising approach to the Polish ethnic minority (policy to the latter was affected in the years 1950 and 1951 by the so– called Cieślar Platform affair),15 _{the problem of Hlučínsko and the newly settled}

14 Milan Myška talked with Lumír Dokoupil about the “rationally incomprehensible efforts of the communist regime to suppress reminiscenes of Silesia and a sense of belonging to it in the minds of citizens” (DOKOUPIL, Lumír – MYŠKA, Milan – SVOBODA, Jiří et al.:

Kulturněhistorická encyklopedie Slezska a severovýchodní Moravy [The Cultural and Histori-

cal Encyclopedia of Silesia and North East Moravia], Vol. 1. Ostrava, Ústav pro regionální studia Ostravské univerzity 2005, p. 61).

15 The Cieślar Platform was the term given to the set of proposals drawn up in 1950 by the Chairman of the District Committee of the KSČ [the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia] in Český Těšín. Paweł Cieślar wanted to tackle the national/ethnic problems in Těšínsko by strengthening the national rights of the Polish population. The KSČ leadership reacted by branding these proposals (in the words of the party ideologist Gustav Bareš) an expres- sion of “bourgeois nationalism,” and Cieślar was then politically ostracised (see GAW- RECKI, D. et al.: Dějiny Českého Slezska 1740–2000 [History of Czech Silesia 1740–2000], Vol. 2, p. 497; see also PLAČKOVÁ, Magda: Pavel Cieślar a jeho platforma: K polské otázce na Těšínsku na počátku 50. let [Pavel Cieślar and his Platform: On the Polish Question in Těšínsko at the Beginning of the 1950s]. In: Vlastivědné listy Slezska a severní Moravy, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1995), pp. 5–8; IDEM: Zneužití tzv. cieślarovštiny na cestě k “začleňování”

border areas. Concerns about national–ethnic tensions were a determining factor for refraining from foregrounding any “Silesian” issues in public, and any con- sciousness of Silesian patriotism was a way for the regime to avoid stirring up the national–ethnic question in the Ostravsko (later North Moravian) region. From the regime’s point of view, a predominantly negative attitude to awareness of “Silesian identity” (regarded in the idiom of the time as a form of bourgeois nationalism) was a stabilising policy, as in the case of the Czech–Slovak relationship, if naturally on a much smaller scale. At the end of the 1950s/beginning of the 1960s, another increasingly important perceived factor in connection with Silesia was the problem of so–called “revanchism.”16

It is in this context that we can see the emergence of a new, dichotomous presen– tation of Silesia. The patriotism once identifi ed with the region was denounced as unhealthy “Old Silesian–ness,” which was associated with the era of “class op- pression,” Germanisation, and Czech–Polish ethnic disputes. The new era was, by contrast, associated with the idea of “socialist Ostravsko,” an entity that dissolved the Silesian region from the administrative point of view. The regional boundaries of 1949 and 1960 in no way respected historic Silesian boundaries and if there had to be some reference in the context of the administrative regions to their Silesian parts, the usual practice was to talk of the “Silesian areas” and their characteristics,17

or about “broader Ostravsko,” or even “former Silesia.”18

With a certain hyperbole, we can say that the communist regime was willing to partially accept an “antiquarian Silesian identity.” The space for its realisation was defi ned by museum exhibitions (above all in Opava, Jeseník, Bruntál, Český Těšín and Frýdek–Místek), ethnographical and historical studies, the older generation of Silesian artists,19 _{retrospectively orientated literary works, Silesian folklore and}

a few institutions or local names with the attribute “slezský” [“Silesian”]. This

polských spolků do komunistického systému na počátku 50. let [The Abuse of the So– Called Cieslarese on the Path to “Incorporation” of the Polish Associations into the Com- munist System at the Beginning of the 1950s]. In: Ibid., Vol. 22, No. 1 (1996), pp. 10–12; KNAPÍK, Jiří: Kdo spoutal naši kulturu: Portrét stalinisty Gustava Bareše [Who Fettered Our Culture: Portrait of the Stalinist Gustav Bareš]. Přerov, Šárka 2000, pp. 133–135). 16 See MARIÁNEK, Vladimír: Do nové práce [To New Work]. In: Radostná země, Vol. 9, No. 1

(1959), p. 4; Zemský archiv Opava [hereafter ZA Opava], Fund (f.) Krajský výbor [Regional Committee (KV)], KSČ Ostrava – Bureau Meeting, box 213, inventory number (inv. no.) 63, Minutes from Meeting, 12 May 1964; P–824, the Development of Ideological Diversion and Its Manifestations in the North Moravian Region.

17 See for example SVOBODA, Jaroslav: K šedesátinám Heleny Salichové [For the Sixtieth Birthday of Helena Salichová]. In: Radostná země, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1955), p. 54.

18 ZA Opava, f. KV KSČ Ostrava – Bureau Meeting, box 174, inv. no. 59, Minutes from Meet- ing, 8 April 1958; P–634. Here, the Silesian Museum in Opava is characterised as a regional musem “with the collection area of the former Silesia.”

19 At the end of the 1960s, the writer Helena Salichová was still speaking of her “Silesian homeland” (SALICHOVÁ, Helena: Akce “Budujeme Slezsko” v letech 1945–1949 [The “Let Us Build Silesia” Campaign in the Years 1945–1949]. In: Nové Opavsko, Vol. 6, No. 11 (1964), pp. 13–16).

restrictive ideological frame was tighter because post–February Ostravsko was so manifestly a source of strong political support for the regime.20 _{In this situation, the}

concept of Silesia, stripped of any political, economic or administrative dimension, was reduced to a cultural matter, condined by the model of “old Silesia” versus “new Ostravsko.” One vivid example of this device, already thoroughly enforced and policed by state and party organs (everything that might deviate from it was nipped in the bud), is a statement by Josef Závěta, a Czechoslovak People’s Party deputy in the National Assembly. In March 1959, in a debate on a law on the position of the works committees of the basic organisations of the Revolutionary Trade Unions Movement, he declared, “[…] a quarter of a century ago, Ostravsko was very different from today […] today’s way of life and advantages were still undreamt of by the workers of Ostravsko. It is enough just to look through the pages of Silesian Songs by Petr Bezruč.”21

The relationship of the communist regime to Petr Bezruč, and his famous Slezské

písně [Silesian Songs], presented quite a delicate problem in this context.The work

of this poet, honoured with the title of “National Artist” in 1945, symbolically represented the idea of Silesia in its divided and heterogeneous ethno–national profi le. This is why some people in the communist leadership argued on ideologi- cal grounds that publishing houses should be permitted to bring out only a selec- tion of the Slezské písně at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s. After the General Secretary of the KSČ Rudolf Slánský was tried and the subsequent changes in cultural policy took place in 1952, these tendencies were suppressed as typical manifestations of “cosmopolitanism” and Bezruč’s work was published in full in massive print runs.22 _{The communist regime stressed its social and “class”}

aspects, and within a few years, the offi cial sanctifi cation of the poet, who became very much a prisoner of the “cult of Bezruč,” led to a kind of rinsing out of the specifi cally “Silesian” character of his literary image. The process was particularly obvious by the mid–1960s during preparations for nation–wide celebrations of the centenary of the poet’s birth; the state organs emphasised that their purpose was to “highlight the contemporary meaning” of the fi rst publication of his work at the beginning of the 20th _{century and so accentuate the importance of politi-}

cally engaged art in general and its “inevitable contribution to the progressive

20 See JIRÁSEK, Zdeněk: K průběhu roku 1956 v Ostravském kraji [On the Course of the Year 1956 in the Ostrava Region]. In: Časopis Slezského zemského muzea (Series B), Vol. 46, No. 1 (1997), p. 91.

21 Joint Czecho–Slovak Digital Parliamentary Library, National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic 1954–1960, steno–protocols, 31st _{meeting on 26 March 1959, available at www.}

psp.cz/eknih/1954ns/stenprot/031schuz/s031005.htm.

22 For more detail, see KNAPÍK, Jiří: V zajetí moci: Kulturní politika, její systém a aktéři 1948–1956 [In the Captivity of Power: Cultural Politics, its System and Actors 1948–1956]. Praha, Libri 2006, pp. 187–194. The anti–Semitic and anti–Polish character of some of the poems, and evidently also the fact that these themes were abused by Nazi propaganda during WWII, had some weight in arguments for a selective approach to Bezruč’s work. By 1952, however, in the context of the trial of Rudolf Slánský, the anti–Semitic sentiments were welcomed.

social–political revolutionary striving of the people.”23 _{It is not surprising that on}

the basis of this interpretation, the Bezruč centenary was hailed as an important background for the main anniversary of 1967 – the fi ftieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

From the outset, the attitude of the communist regime to Silesian patriotism was largely conditioned by the manifestations of Silesian–ness in the years 1945–1947, which have already been adequately described in academic literature. The regime’s immediate concern in the area after the takeover was to try to neutralise political opponents, especially the structures of the National Socialist Party in the parts of the territory under the Ostrava Branch of the Land National Committee in Brno that had a Silesian identifi cation. The communist organs had already attacked these structures for what they called “Silesian separatism.”24 _{The Opava Cultural}

Organisation,25 _{the Silesian Cultural Organisation for Popular Education, and the}

Silesian National Coucil were then dissolved in the fi rst wave of liquidation of so- cieties and organisations affecting the whole of Czech society. The measures were justifi ed in general terms by the need to unify public life and prevent the doubling of cultural, educational or ethnographic activities.26 _{As part of the standardisation}

of offi cial names in July 1949, the theatre network known as the Silesian National Theatre in Opava was renamed the Zdeněk Nejedlý Municipal Regional Theatre in Opava (in 1957, it was renamed the Zdeněk Nejedlý Silesian Theatre and so it remained right up to February 1990).

The Silesian Museum, the Silesian Study Institute and (for the fi rst few years of communist rule) the Silesian Cultural Institute in Prague were left as the only insti- tutions visibly representing the idea of Czech Silesia, albeit on a very limited scale. Admittedly, the establishment of the Opava Silesian Study Institute was regarded by the leadership of the Ostrava Branch of the Land National Committee as a signifi - cant and quite a prestigious affairmatter, for the institute under scrutiny, brought under state management in 1949, became the only regionally profi led centre with a comprehensive research programme in the fi elds of social and natural sciences for a whole decade. Nonetheless, the targetting of the research programme on Silesia, as presented in the autumn of 1948 in the study series “The Current State and Tasks of Scientifi c Research on Silesia,” had to be visibly revised in the fi eld

23 Státní okresní archiv Opava [Opava State District Archives] (hereafter SOkA Opava), f. ONV Opava 1960–1976, box 1691, inv. no. 1457, Report of the Ostrava KNV – Regional National Committee on Preparations for the Centenary of the Birth of P. Bezruč.

24 See MARTINEK, Branislav: Okresní výbor KSČ v Opavě v letech 1945–1948 [The District Committee of the KSČ in Opava 1945–1948]. In: Vlastivědné listy Slezska a severní Moravy, Vol. 33, No. 2 (2007), p. 28.

25 See KNAPÍKOVÁ, Jaromíra: Matice opavská, pp. 181–185.

26 Marginal in importance, the Opava Sdružení umělců slezských [Association of Silesian Art- ists] was fi nally dissolved in January 1953, after which its members transfereed to the rele– vant branches of the Artists’ Unions (for more detail, see: SKOČÍKOVÁ, Vendula: Sdružení

umělců slezských [The Association of Silesian Artists]. Opava, Manuscript 2005, available in

the Central Library of the Philosophical and Natural Scientifi c Facuty of the Silesian Univer- sity in Opava. I am relying on factual information from this otherwise not very cogent work).

of history at the beginning of 1950, when the Ministry of Education, Sciences and Arts instructed the Institute to give priority to modern history with a preference for research into economic history and the history of the workers’ movement in Silesia and in Ostravsko. This was the beginning of a process of progressive redefi nition of the Institute’s research profi le that culminated in the mid–1950s.27 _{The timing}

of this restrictive step in 1950 was not accidental from the point of view of the needs of the communist regime. It was at this point that the regime was completing the process of creating basic mechanisms and tools for control of society and was starting a propaganda offensive to push through the new ideological stereotypes.28

In relation to the dismantling of the Silesian idea, we should also mention that it was in 1950 when the Silesian Study Institute shelved its prestigious project “Silesian ethnography” (Ethnography of the Silesian Districts), and the same year marked the beginning of the end for the Silesian Institute in Prague. The latter’s few remaining years were marked by lingering decline,29 _{and a vain struggle with the authorities}

to be allowed to become an association affi liated with the Opava Silesian Study Institute. After the winding up of the Silesian Institute in January 1957, however, a regional ethnographic circle was formed with the name Bezručův kraj [Bezruč’s Country], and this quite faithfully copied the former institute in membership and functionary base (Ladislav Vašek, Otakar Dymer, Zdeněk Jerman, Nina Bonhardová, Ferdiš Duša, Jan Šafář, Jaroslav Volenec, Oldřich Zíka, Jarmila Glazarová, A. C. Nor, Zdeněk Vavřík, Vilém Závada and others) reinforced with university students from the abolished Domov slezských studentů [Hostel for Silesian Students].30 _{The new}

ethnographic circle nonetheless had to abandon the idea of calling itself “The Sile- sian Circle” or “The Silesian” on the grounds that the Constitution of 9 May did not recognise the historic territories of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. In this situation,

27 For more detail, see KNAPÍK, Jiří: Slezský studijní ústav v Opavě 1945–1958: Proměny

vědeckého pracoviště v regionu [The Silesian Study Institute in Opava 1945–1958: The

Transformations of a Scientifi c Centre in the Region]. Praha, Výzkumné centrum pro dějiny vědy 2004, pp. 94–100.

28 For more on this topic, see KNAPÍK, Jiří: Únor a kultura: Sovětizace české kultury 1948–1950 [February and Culture: The Sovietisation of Czech Culture 1948–1950]. Praha, Libri 2004, pp. 271 and 331.

29 On this subject, see IDEM: Slezský ústav v Praze a vědecký výzkum Slezska v letech 1945–1950 [The Silesian Institute in Prague and Scientifi c Research on Silesia in the Years 1945–1950]. In:

Práce z dějin vědy, Vol. 6: Semináře a studie Výzkumného centra pro dějiny vědy z let 2002–2003.

Praha, Výzkumné centrum pro dějiny vědy 2003, pp. 475–550. The fate of the leading function- aries of the Silesian Institute is interesting; while some of them had to withdraw from publicly visible activities (Ladislav Vašek, Otakar Dymer), others contined to be active in national govern– mental bodies. For example, Josef Budník, for many years a functionary of the Silesian Institute, contined to work in the Ministry of Justice in the mid–1950s. (Národní archiv [The National Ar- chive of the Czech Republic] (hereafter NA), f. Ministerstvo kultury [Ministry of Culture], box. 166, inv. no. 225, Minutes of Meeting on Copyright/Authorial Law, 2 September 1954). 30 Archiv hlavního města Prahy [The Archive of the City of Prague], f. Spolkový katastr [Aso-

ciations Register], sign. IX/159; ŽIŽKA, Josef: O čem psali kronikáři před 10 lety [What the Chroniclers Were Writing about 10 Years Ago]. In: Zpravodaj Rady Města Frýdku–Místku, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2006), p. 11.

Petr Bezruč agreed to lend his name to the circle in concern. Continuity of person- nel meant that it, to some extent, preserved the Silesian idea of the original society at least up to the 1970s. From its founding in 1958 to the end of the 1980s, the Prague Bezručův kraj maintained contacts with cultural functionaries in Silesia (for example through a branch set up in Frýdek–Místek in 1978 and still existing to this day). Under the leadership of its president of many years, the composer and Charles University professor Jaroslav Slavický, the Prague Bezručův kraj organised the festival Lach Cultural Spring and other events.31

In line with the acceptance of “antiquarian Silesian–ness,” a permanent exhi- bition could be ceremonially opened in the Exhibition Building of the Silesian Museum in Opava in the Spring of 1955 (7 May), as part of celebrations for the tenth 10th anniversary of the country’s liberation. It showed “the development of nature and society in the historic region of Silesia,” and was soon attracting praise from district and regional organs as one of the best exhibitions in Czechoslovakia, and recommendations from cultural educational organisations as “an aid to the formation of a scientifi c world view.”32 _{The revival of the activity of the Silesian}

Museum paradoxically reminded the state organs of the earlier idea of merging the Silesian Study Institute with the Museum, but the plan was dropped in the face of resistence from the Institute’s leadership. It should be added that the Sile- sian Museum ceased to come directly under the Ministry of Culture and became a regional museum in 1956.