The study deals with issues of corporate management and pitfalls of the ''socialist supervision'' in Czechoslovak enterprises in the period of late socialism. Using documents of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the State Security, period texts and specialized publications, it shows how party organs and state authorities were unsuccessfully trying to make supervisory mechanisms and audits a functional tool of the implementation of the ruling party´s economic policy. The author analyzes the supervisory and audit mechanisms that were used, and outlines basic reasons of the almost fatal failure of supervisory activities of the system which was, in a way, obsessed with supervision and control. He explains the systemic conditionality of the supervisory system which socialist managers often and in many respects bent to suit the needs of the enterprises they were in charge of; such situation naturally did not match the needs of the society as a whole. Using many specifi c cases as an example, the study graphically shows that members of the Czechoslovak corporate management community in the 1980s were fully aware of systemic, political and social limitations of the supervisory system which they managed to modify, fairly successfully, to suit intra-corporate conditions. The result was a situation in which the party leadership was reacting to increasingly obvious symptoms of the “agony of the centrally planned economy” by adopting various directives and guidelines to make the supervisory process more effective and to consistently promote the ''whoever manages - supervises'' principle. However, the anticipated effect did not materialize and, at the end of the day, the non-functional supervisory mechanisms made a substantial contribution to the collapse of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. and Překlad: Jiří Mareš
The article deals with the topic of socialist social policy as a special feature and an extremely important instrument of legitimating power and of guardianship. Drawing on his extensive archival research, the author compares the starting points of the social-policy measures of the Czechoslovak and the East German CP leaderships from 1970 to 1989. He discusses the fundamental systemic prerequisites and ambitions of social policy, points out the limits of economic policy, and outlines the individual stages in the development of social policy in the two countries in the period under scrutiny. The focal point of the article is a systematic comparison of the development of pension plans, to which the political establishment in each country paid considerable attention. Providing social security to their senior citizenswas a serious problem for both regimes right up to late 1989, and the implemented measures were only partly successful in dealing with it. The article identifi es the pitfalls of retirement insurance, and takes into account the standard of living of pensioners in both countries. From his research, he concludes that old-age pensions were the Achilles’ heel of East German Socialism. The unanticipated circumstances of senior citizens, the tangible decline in their standard of living, the considerable employment of people of a post-productive age, and the continuous violation of the publicly declared principle of merit are, however, among the problems the Czechoslovak regime also struggled with throughout the years of reinstating hardline Communism in the post-1969 policy of ''normalisation''.
Recenzent podrobně hodnotí kompletní edici 598 dokumentů občanské iniciativy Charta 77 z let 1977–1989 a snaží se charakterizovat jejich tematickou a obsahovou variabilitu. Mimořádný význam spatřuje již v identifikaci co nejautentičtější textové verze všech dokumentů Charty 77, v jejich důkladném uspořádání a edičním zpracování, jež zahrnuje mimo jiné příslušné rejstříky a rozsáhlý poznámkový a bibliografický aparát. Recenzent však postrádá úvodní historickou studii, která by vřadila alespoň nejdůležitější dokumenty Charty 77 do obecnějších souvislostí, a výběru dobových textů ve třetím svazku příloh vytýká chronologickou nevyváženost. V každém případě však podle něj recenzovaná edice tvoří dobrý odrazový můstek k souhrnnému zpracování dějin Charty 77 a vůbec disentu v Československu a v ní publikované dokumenty jsou jedním z klíčových pramenů pro pochopení československé společnosti v době takzvané normalizace. and The book under review is the complete edition of all 598 documents issued by the Charter 77 human rights movement between 1977 and 1989. The reviewer seeks to characterize the variety of themes and kinds of documents. He believes that the mere fact of identifying the most authentic versions of all the Charter 77 documents, organizing them, and editing them thoroughly, including relevant indexes, extensive notes, and bibliographical information, is extraordinarily important. He wishes, however, that there had been an historical essay that would have put at least the most important Charter documents into the general context. He also finds the selection of the documents in the three volumes to be chronologically imbalanced. In any case, he considers the publication under review a good starting point to a comprehensive history of Charter 77 and to the Czechoslovak dissident movement in general, and he praises the edition as a key source for understanding Czechoslovak society in the period of “Normalization” policy.