The study focuses on Marxist critique of Soviet systems in Czech oppositional thought during the period of so-called normalization (1970s–1980s). This analytical discourse was characterized by efforts to re-establish the critical debates that started as a part of Czechoslovak social-scientific critique in the 1960s and intended to provide a detailed analysis of the nature of the so-called Soviet-type systems (STS, i.e. the political systems of the Warsaw Pact countries). Thus, the STS theory was geopolitically defined and did not deal with analyzes of other communist regimes (for example, Yugoslavia or China). On the example of selected Czechoslovak thinkers (e.g. Pelikán, Mlynář, Strmiska, Hájek) the first part of the study addresses attempts to evaluate Czechoslovak development in the 1960s as a specific case of democratization of the Soviet-type system; in the second part I focus on interpretations of these discussions from the perspective of East-European totalitarian paradigm. Finally, the third part describes how these analyzes contributed to the formulation of possible political changes in the Eastern Bloc.
The study stems from the author’s long-time interest in the history of the Czechoslovak foreign resistance during the Great War, particularly in Russia. As to its sources, it draws from a collection of published recollections of Czechoslovak legionnaires and their autobiographic novels and other texts of prose. The author attempts to reconstruct the picture of the return of Czechoslovak legions from Russia to their home country; due to the nature of his sources, however, his intention is not to convey an authentic experience of the return in the fi rst days and weeks, but rather to examine the construct created by the legionnaires’ memories and novels. In this respect, he makes use of, in particular, Anglo-Saxon historical literature dealing with similar topics. The key issues include how individuals or whole social groups were coping with the reality of the newborn republic, which was rather different from the visions of the home country they had been dreaming about while away. An important factor affecting their refl ections was also the required political nonaffi liation of organizations of legionnaires, as well as the criticism of the situation not just among the veterans, but in the entire society. The extent of the idealization of Russia, which was a fairly frequent phenomenon among them, was directly proportional to the disillusionment after their return, and was a mirror image of their previous idealization of home while they had been in Russia. In the author’s opinion, the topic of the return of Czechoslovak legions home and their life in their home country is far from exhausted; this is why the present study should be just a springboard to further broadly conceived research. and Přeložil Jiří Mareš