Czechoslovakia's

Mark Cornwall, Robert John Weston Evans, eds.. Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918-1948. Proceedings of the British Academy 140. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. xv + 258 pp. $99.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-726391-4. Reviewed by Andrea Orzoff Published on HABSBURG (March, 2010) Commissioned by John C. Swanson (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) After the annus mirabilis of 1989, Czechoslo‐ volume represents some of the best new thought vak president and former dissident Václav Havel on Czechoslovakia and its neighbors, by younger spoke often of wanting to “return” Czechoslovakia and senior historians alike. “to Europe.” Other eastern European leaders used The book also highlights a relatively neglect‐ similar phrasing. What exactly it meant depended ed era, from the end of the Great War to the early on speaker and context, but the general implica‐ years of the Cold War. During this period, Czecho‐ tion was romantic, along the lines of Milan Kun‐ slovakia played an outsized role in European in‐ dera’s “kidnapped Occident”: the countries behind ternational affairs. Between the world wars, it the Iron Curtain would return to their rightful was generally understood--by its own citizens and places in a prosperous, diverse, tolerant, unified by foreign observers--to be the linchpin of the in‐ Europe.[1] The illusions have faded these last terwar peace, and thus was the foremost target twenty years. We understand Europe’s complexi‐ for those wishing to dismantle that peace. Its in‐ ties, both historical and contemporary, in ways we dustrial capacity and relatively docile population could not then. This edited volume reflects the helped Nazi Germany extend its power through‐ end of some Cold War mythologies; most of the es‐ out the continent. And between 1945 and 1948, says here view the frst thirty years of Czechoslo‐ Czechoslovakia was the test case for Soviet toler‐ vakia’s existence evenhandedly, balancing prom‐ ance. If the Soviets allowed plurality in Czechoslo‐ ise and problems. The book does not quite man‐ vakia, Western observers hypothesized, the rest of age to return the historical Czechoslovakia to Eu‐ the Eastern Bloc would get similar treatment; if rope, as its title seems to promise. Most of its the Soviets shut down Czechoslovak efforts to cre‐ chapters are rooted in a careful study of ate a national path to socialism, then the rest of Czechoslovak (as usual, meaning mainly Czech) the bloc had no chance.[2] themes, events, and peoples. Nevertheless, this H-Net Reviews The essays here present relatively new schol‐ individually. Debates over these laws revealed arship or summarize the state of the feld. Jan that Czech elites still believed that “[a]t home, the Rychlík notes the conflicts punctuating Czech-Slo‐ Czech nation was a family, not a collection of indi‐ vak relations between the two world wars. Slovak vidual citizens” (p. 56). Women’s issues were usu‐ insistence on a federalized, semi-autonomous ally resolved in traditionalist ways, reinforcing space for Slovak political and cultural develop‐ the paterfamilias’s power and reifying the role of ment led to decades of arguments with the the mother as caregiver. Family was the ultimate Czechs, who mouthed “Czechoslovakism” but sel‐ source of Czech national identity and therefore dom practiced it. In the 1930s, increasingly wide‐ occupied special territory outside the liberal spread acknowledgement of Czech and Slovak ideals which underlay Czech democracy, Feinberg separateness meant the First Republic had a grave concludes. The author does not address a further, problem: it had to address Slovak ideas about self- seemingly related inequality--Czech treatment of determination, and made the state’s continued ex‐ the non-“Czechoslovak” nationalities--but this per‐ istence contingent on Slovak goodwill and the ceptive piece, drawing on her 2006 book, still lev‐ electoral fortunes of the HSL or Lud’ak party. els an important critique. Eagle Glassheim’s deft essay, adapted from his In his essay on the interwar writings by Czech 2005 monograph on the same topic, asks why Bo‐ veterans of the First World War, Robert Pynsent hemian nobles were attracted to fascism, and notes that “Czech legionary literature suffers from finds the answer in the Bohemian nobility’s “am‐ an excess of fat.” His “attempt at a lipid count” (p. bivalent, selective embrace of modernism” (p. 88) is a lively treatment of the works of Rudolf 28)--an acceptance of capitalism paired with a dis‐ Medek and Josef Kopta, two central Legionnaire taste for modern cultural trends and political authors. (Pynsent grants Kopta grudging respect ideas, which left them uneasy with parliamentary by deeming him one of the “least trivial” Legion‐ democracy’s compromises and majority rule. In naire writers [p. 63]; Medek receives no such the 1930s, noble polemicists critiqued the modern praise.) Pynsent’s incisive, observant piece mainly state as all-encompassing, and contrasted it with a examines themes and myths within Legionnaire nostalgic image of the feudal order which had literature, particularly of the Legionnaires them‐ granted its estates autonomy. In order to remake selves as liberators and models for a constructive what they saw as the new era’s moral and politi‐ Czechoslovak morality, despite the violence of cal failings, Glassheim argues, they called for an their imagery. Unsurprisingly, this literature authoritarian, noble-dominated “democracy of es‐ echoes standard Czech nationalist tropes: Legion‐ tates” (pp. 36-38). naires were modern-day Taborites, redeeming the Melissa Feinberg’s chapter presents gender as defeat of White Mountain in 1620; their homeland a test of the First Republic’s dedication to the was an “island” of civilized rationality in contrast democratic values it claimed to embody. It was to the Bolshevik chaos. Yet antisemitism pervaded surprisingly easy, she reports, for Czech politi‐ the pages of Legionnaire literature, and, Pynsent cians to decide to grant women the vote. But argues, is integral to its violent representations of granting women equality in other realms of life-- Czechness. Medek depicts Jews as greedy, devious, in education, for example, or citizenship law with physically bizarre (grossly obese or extremely regard to marriage, or employment practices-- thin), nocturnal, and flthy. The Czech cultural proved much harder. The general constitutional elite did not read Medek; nonetheless he con‐ support for women’s rights did not translate di‐ firmed “a prejudice in a large proportion of his rectly into policy; each old law had to be changed semi-educated readership.... The fact that Medek’s writing had little influence on the Czechoslovak 2 H-Net Reviews elite does not make it salubrious. One must be Mark Cornwall’s “A Leap Into Ice-Cold Water” grateful that he was such an incompetent writer” tries to correct the previously Czech-centric histo‐ (p. 87). This reader is grateful that Pynsent is riography on Konrad Henlein and the Sude‐ more than competent himself. tendeutsche Partei (SdP) by emphasizing Catherine Albrecht argues that economic is‐ Czechoslovak-German fears and frustrations, the sues in the interwar Sudetenland did not break First Republic’s shortcomings in its nationalities’ predictably along national lines. She describes en‐ eyes, and the importance of 1918 as a radical shift ergetically diverse opinions within Czech and Ger‐ in the central European ethnic hierarchy. Corn‐ man “defense associations” in the borderland, wall describes German-nationalist organizations noting their varied reactions to Czechoslovak gov‐ and social groups, ranging from cultural organiza‐ ernmental policy and concerns about nationalist tions to Henlein’s Kameradschaftsbund, as being influence on that policy. The associations’ com‐ isolated from or opposed to the Czechoslovak Re‐ plaints tended to be exaggerated: “shrill” reports public, but not inevitably Nazi. Cornwall argues on borderland minority relations (p. 94). The gov‐ that “Czech tactics did much to push the SdP [and ernment distrusted them, dismissing their com‐ Czech-German society generally] in a fully pan- mentary as frivolous, based on personal antago‐ German and Nazi direction” (p. 136), and discuss‐ nisms and internal squabbling. Yet German citi‐ es the various moments when the Czechoslovak zens viewed the Czech defense associations as government might have achieved an understand‐ representing and influencing official policy. That ing with Henlein. While this essay tries too hard supposed influence was interpreted as a deliber‐ to exonerate the SdP movement and condemn the ate effort to harm German interests, particularly Czechoslovak government--Cornwall himself con‐ with regard to land reform and responses to the cludes that for both the government and the SdP Depression. “compromise was almost impossible” (p. 141)--the approach outlined here is intriguing for its explo‐ R. J. W. Evans explores the triangular problem ration of opportunities abandoned and roads not of mutual perception among the Czechs, Hungari‐ taken. ans, and Slovaks, focusing mainly on high politics, Publicistik, and to a lesser extent belles-lettres Vít Smetana’s essay on British policy toward and the mass media. The relationship he de‐ Czechoslovakia during the fateful years just be‐ scribes is one of mutual use, opposition, and sus‐ fore and after the Second World War provides a picion. The Czechs mythologized the Hungarians detailed chronological narrative of this important as feudal and retrograde, and themselves

Load more