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.
Bouček, Jaroslav: Jan Slavík: Příběh zakázaného historika. Praha, Nakladatelství H&H 2002, 190 stran. Jde o první biografii výjimečné osobnosti české historiografie Jana Slavíka (1885–1978), který si získal renomé jednak svými kritickými reflexemi ruské revoluce a sovětského Ruska, jednak přemýšlením nad českými dějinami a svou účastí v polemikách o jejich „smyslu“. Autor poskytuje solidní přehled o Slavíkově životě a díle, a již tím je dle recenzenta jeho kniha záslužná. Nevyužil však příležitost ozřejmit jeho metodologický přínos pro sociální vědy v Československu, zvláště v navázání na Maxe Webera. Za největší problém recenzent pokládá přílišnou závislost autora na Slavíkových interpretacích a snahu o jejich obhajobu namísto kritického rozboru. and Bouček, Jaroslav. Jan Slavík: Příběh zakázaného historika. Prague: H&H, 2002, 190 pp. The work under review is the fi rst biography of the outstanding Czech historian Jan Slavík (1885–1978). Slavík acquired a reputation as a writer of critical articles on the Russian revolution and Soviet Russia and of refl ections on Czech history, and for his involvement in the debates about the ‘meaning’ of Czech history. The biography provides a reliable overview of Slavík’s life and works, and for that reason alone is noteworthy. It fails, however, to use the opportunity to elucidate Slavík’s contribution to methodology in the social sciences in Czechoslovakia, particularly in connection with Max Weber. The reviewer sees the greatest problem in the author’s excessive dependence on Slavík’s interpretations and his attempt to defend them rather than subject them to critical analysis.