Central European crossroads Duin, Pieter C. van
2009., 20090515, 2009, 2009-03-01, 20090101, Volume:
14
eBook
During the four decades of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia a vast literature on working-class movements has been produced but it has hardly any value for today’s scholarship. This remarkable ...study reopens the field. Based on Czech, Slovak, German and other sources, it focuses on the history of the multi-ethnic social democratic labor movement in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava during the period 1867-1921, and on the process of national revolution during the years 1918–19 in particular. The study places the historic change of the former Pressburg into the modern Bratislava in the broader context of the development of multinational pre-1918 Hungary, the evolution of social, ethnic, and political relations in multi-ethnic Pressburg (a ‘tri-national’ city of Germans, Magyars, and Slovaks), and the development of the multinational labor movement in Hungary and the Habsburg Empire as a whole.
The essays in the book compare the Czech Republic and Slovakia since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The papers deal with the causes of the divorce and discuss the political, economic and ...social developments in the new countries. This is the only English-language volume that presents the synoptic findings of leading Czech, Slovak, and North American scholars in the field.The authors include two former Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, eight leading scholars (four Czechs and four Slovaks), and eight knowledgeable commentators from North America. The most significant new insight is that in spite of predictions by various pundits in the Western World that Czechia would flourish after the breakup and Slovakia would languish, the opposite has happened. While the Czech Republic did well in its early years, it is now languishing while Slovakia, which had a rough start, is now doing very well. Anyone interested in the history of the Czech and Slovak Republics over the last twenty years will find gratification in reading this book.
The so-called Slovak question asked what place Slovaks held-or
should have held-in the former state of Czechoslovakia. Formed in
1918 at the end of World War I from the remains of the Hungarian
...Empire, and reformed after ceasing to exist during World War II,
the country would eventually split into the Czech Republic and
Slovakia after the "Velvet Divorce" in 1993. In the meantime, the
minority Slovaks often clashed with the majority Czechs over their
role in the nation. The Slovak Question examines this
debate from a transatlantic perspective. Explored through the
relationship between Slovaks, Americans of Slovak heritage, and
United States and Czechoslovakian policymakers, it shows how Slovak
national activism in America helped the Slovaks establish a sense
of independent identity and national political assertion after
World War I. It also shows how Slovak American leaders influenced
US policy by conceptualizing the United States and Slovakia as
natural allies due to their connections through immigration. This
process played a critical role in undermining attempts to establish
a united Czechoslovakian identity and instead caused a divide
between the two groups, which was exploited by Nazi Germany and
then by other actors during the Cold War, and proved ultimately to
be insurmountable.
How can democratization, coupled with transnational integration, resolve conflicts over cultural difference in places that are marked by legacies of nationalist competition? This book explores that ...question through a comparative study of contestations over language use in the heart of the post-Communist region. Zsuzsa Csergo notes that newly independent governments looked to rejoin the West, in particular the European Union, while at the same time asserting control over the institutions they considered key to the reproduction of national cultures. These national projects resulted in renewed salience for minority language rights and a complicated politics triggering EU concerns about the treatment of regional/cultural minorities. Csergo's field research in Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia leads her to make a bold claim about the primacy of domestic politics in the construction of democratic solutions to the conundrum of nation building and minority rights. Talk of the Nation breaks new ground by focusing on both majority and minority political elites and parties in interethnic relations. Csergo challenges arguments about the overwhelming importance of international influence. Her book demonstrates that the role of domestic political actors in interethnic reconciliation is not merely that of compliance with international requirements or effectiveness in responding to external pressure—they are largely guided by the internal democratic process.
In The Carpathians, Patrice M. Dabrowski narrates how three highland ranges of the mountain system found in present-day Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine were discovered for a broader regional public. ...This is a story of how the Tatras, Eastern Carpathians, and Bieszczady Mountains went from being terra incognita to becoming the popular tourist destinations they are today. It is a story of the encounter of Polish and Ukrainian lowlanders with the wild, sublime highlands and with the indigenous highlanders—Górale, Hutsuls, Boikos, and Lemkos—and how these peoples were incorporated into a national narrative as the territories were transformed into a native/national landscape. The set of microhistories in this book occur from about 1860 to 1980, a time in which nations and states concerned themselves with the "frontier at the edge." Discoverers not only became enthralled with what were perceived as their own highlands but also availed themselves of the mountains as places to work out answers to the burning questions of the day. Each discovery led to a surge in mountain tourism and interest in the mountains and their indigenous highlanders. Although these mountains, essentially a continuation of the Alps, are Central and Eastern Europe's most prominent physical feature, politically they are peripheral. The Carpathians is the first book to deal with the northern slopes in such a way, showing how these discoveries had a direct impact on the various nation-building, state-building, and modernization projects. Dabrowski's history incorporates a unique blend of environmental history, borderlands studies, and the history of tourism and leisure.
Translated from the German for the first time, In Her Father's Eyes is the diary of Béla Weichherz, in which he documents the life of his only daughter, Kitty, in prewar Czechoslovakia. Started as a ...baby book before her birth in 1929, the journal contains frequent entries about the ups and downs of Kitty's childhood, often written in vivid detail. Weichherz included photographs, developmental charts, and Kitty's own drawings to enhance the text. The journal entries stop in early spring 1942, just days before the family's deportation to a Nazi death camp. In its final pages, a recognizable tale of one anonymous life becomes a heartbreaking story about how anti-Semitism and nationalism in Slovakia shattered this normalcy.
In Her Father's Eyesis a moving tale about Jewish life and a father's profound love for his only child. By bridging prewar and wartime periods, the diary also provides a rich context for understanding the history from which the Holocaust emerged.
Eastern European prefabricated housing blocks are often vilified as the visible manifestations of everything that was wrong with state socialism. For many inside and outside the region, the ...uniformity of these buildings became symbols of the dullness and drudgery of everyday life.Manufacturing a Socialist Modernitycomplicates this common perception. Analyzing the cultural, intellectual, and professional debates surrounding the construction of mass housing in early postwar Czechoslovakia, Zarecor shows that these housing blocks served an essential function in the planned economy and reflected an interwar aesthetic, derived from constructivism and functionalism, that carried forward into the 1950s.With a focus on prefabricated and standardized housing built from 1945 to 1960, Zarecor offers broad and innovative insights into the country's transition from capitalism to state socialism. She demonstrates that during this shift, architects and engineers consistently strove to meet the needs of Czechs and Slovaks despite challenging economic conditions, a lack of material resources, and manufacturing and technological limitations. In the process, architects were asked to put aside their individual creative aspirations and transform themselves into technicians and industrial producers.Manufacturing a Socialist Modernityis the first comprehensive history of architectural practice and the emergence of prefabricated housing in the Eastern Bloc. Through discussions of individual architects and projects, as well as building typologies, professional associations, and institutional organization, it opens a rare window into the cultural and economic life of Eastern Europe during the early postwar period.
Vanished history Sniegon, Tomas
2014., 20140515, 2014, 2014-04-08, Volume:
18
eBook, Book
Bohemia and Moravia, today part of the Czech Republic, was the first territory with a majority of non-German speakers occupied by Hitler's Third Reich on the eve of the World War II. Tens of ...thousands of Jewish inhabitants in the so called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia soon felt the tragic consequences of Nazi racial politics. Not all Czechs, however,remained passive bystanders during the genocide. After the destruction of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, Slovakia became a formally independent but fully subordinate satellite of Germany. Despite the fact it was not occupied until 1944, Slovakia paid Germany to deport its own Jewish citizens to extermination camps.
About 270,000 out of the 360,000 Czech and Slovak casualties of World War II were victims of the Holocaust. Despite these statistics, the Holocaust vanished almost entirely from post-war Czechoslovak, and later Czech and Slovak, historical cultures. The communist dictatorship carried the main responsibility for this disappearance, yet the situation has not changed much since the fall of the communist regime. The main questions of this study are how and why the Holocaust was excluded from the Czech and Slovak history.
