The article focuses on the problem of „štatl“ of Brno and its inhabitants, the so called „štatlaři“. The term „štatl“ can signify the city of Brno itself, or the city center, but also a certain type of subculture and, in connection with the term „štatlaři“, the specific group of the inhabitants of Brno. The core of the article consists in the analysis of images and meanings connected with štatl and štatlaři, their image and interpretation in memories and the exploitation of their image at present (commercial use in advertising). Besides štatl, the article also reflects the specific language, the so called “hantec” that is inseparably connected with štatl. The chronological frame of the article is from the 1960s to the present, but it mentions also the so called “Brno stove” (plotna) from the beginning of the twentieth century that is often mentioned in connection with štatl. The methodological basis of research consisted in especial in oral history and analysis of documents. The basic sources for the article were interviews, memoirs and published scientific articles. The results of the analysis should serve on the one hand as contemporary interpretation of life of certain group of people in urban setting during the period of socialism, on the other hand for better understanding of the processes that are connected to the contemporary creation of local identities, as well as commercial use of cultural artifacts.
a1_Východiskem článku je pojem ''národní cesty k socialismu'' ve svých dvou základních významech, tedy politickotaktickém i teoretickém. Jeho cílem je ukázat na českém příkladu komplikovaný a dynamický vývoj ústředních témat ''ideologických vichřic'' dvacátého století kondenzovaných v pojmech ''revoluce'' a ''národní emancipace''. Autor se zaměřuje na dva významné české komunistické politické myslitele a aktivisty - historika, muzikologa a ministra v československých poválečných vládách Zdeňka Nejedlého (1878-1962) a na filozofa a esejistu Karla Kosíka (1926-2003) - kteří reprezentují dvě odlišné existenční, generační a intelektuální reakce české radikální levice na výzvy své doby. Oba se pokusili svým vlastním, osobitým způsobem formulovat předpoklady a koncepční rámce české či československé "národní cesty" k socialismu, ale též varovat před jejími úskalími. Zatímco Zdeněk Nejedlý svou těsně poválečnou koncepcí československých komunistů jako dědiců pokrokových národních tradic aktualizoval především odkaz husitské revoluce a národního obrození 19. století v kontextu komunistické kulturní politiky, vcelku úspěšně jej propojil se snahami komunistické strany o historickou legitimizaci své vlády a vytvořil tak oficiální osnovu výkladu českých dějin autoritativně platnou po celá padesátá léta minulého století,, a2_Karel Kosík se nejprve pokusil z radikálně levicových pozic o vypracování alternativní, implicitně polemické koncepce národní revoluční kontinuity, která hledala inspiraci u českých radikálních demokratů a v jejich revolučním vystoupení z roku 1848, aby se od konce padesátých let stal jedním z představitelů marxistického revizionismu v Československu, filozofickým kritikem stalinismu a dehumanizace moderního člověka pod tlakem abstraktních ideologií a mocensko-byrokratických aparátů a nakonec si získal pověst filozofa pražského jara 1968. Autor neusiluje o vyčerpávající portrét obou těchto osobností, nýbrž o charakteristiku základních kontur jejich řešení dilematu mezi národně partikulárním a revolučně univerzálním, jemuž čelili a s nímž se museli tak či onak vyrovnávat všichni komunističtí a radikálněsocialističtí myslitelé jejich doby. Myšlenkový a tvůrčí vývoj obou osobností je přitom zasazen do širších politických souvislostí doby od konce druhé světové války do pražského jara 1968., a1_In this article the author starts from the notion of ''national road to Socialism'' in its two fundamental meanings - the political-tactical and the theoretical. He seeks to demonstrate, usig the Czech example, the complicated dynamic development of the central themes of the ''ideological whirlwinds'' of the twentieth century which are concentrated in the terms ''revolution'' and ''national emancipation''. To this end he focuses on two important Czech Communist political thinkers and activists - the historian, musicologist, and minister in post-war Czechoslovak governments, Zdeněk Nejedlý (1878-1962), and the philosopher and essayist KIarel Kosík (1926-2003) - each of whom, with regard to their generation and their lives in general, represents a different Czech radical left-wing intellectual approach to the challenges of his times. Each man, in his own distinctive way, sought to formulate the prerequisites and conceptual framework of the Czechoslovak, or Czech "national road" to Socialism, but also to warn about pirfalls. With his early post-Second World War conception of Czechoslovak Communists as the heirs of progressive national traditions, Nejedlý sought to show how the legacy of the Hussite revolution of the fifteenth century and the National Awakening of the nineteenth century was currently relevant to Communist policy. Indeed, on the whole he succeeded in linking it with Communist Party efforts to achieve the historical legitimation of their government and thus create the official framework of the interpretation of Czech history which remained authoritatively valid throughout the 1950s., a2_Kosík, by contrast, first attempted, from radically left-wing positions, to work out alternative, implicitly polemical conceptions of national revolutionary continuity, which sought inspiration amongst Czech radical democrats and their revolutionary expression in 1848, and he thus became, from the late 1950s, one of the chief representatives of Marxist revisionism in Czechoslovakia, a philosopher-critic of Stalinism and the dehumanization of modern man and woman under the pressure of abstract ideologies and the apparatus of power and the bureaucracy, eventually earning the reputation of the philosopher of the Prague Spring of 1968. The author does not seek to portray these two figures exhaustively, instead, his aim is to provide the basic contours of how each tried to solve the dilemma between tne nationally particular and the revolutionarily universal, which all Communist and radical Socialist thinkers of their time faced and somehow had to come to terms with. The author sets the intellectual and creative development of these two figures into the wider political context from the end of the Second World War to the Prague Spring., Michal Kopeček., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
The article considers the picture of the year 1968 and what is popularly known as the ''Prague Spring'' as it appears in establishment prose fi ction from the ''Normalisation'' period (that is, the return to hard-line Communism with the defeat of the reform wing of the Party and the years of the Soviet occupation, 1970-89). Normalisation fi ction - in accord with the government publication Poučení z krizového vývoje ve straně a společnosti po XIII. sjezdu KSČ [Lessons from the Crisis Development in the Party and Society after the 13th Congress of the CommunistParty of Czechoslovakia] - tried to legitimise the policy of Normalisation as a new stage in the development of Socialism. The author analyses the plans and model solutions, which helped to form an ideologised interpretation of social development in Czechoslovakia from January to the Soviet-led intervention of Warsaw Pact troops in late August 1968. The article also considers how the authors of this fi ction (a total of sixteen novels, the best known of which is Alexej Pludek’s antiSemitic Vabank [Gamble] portray the broader historical context, how they explain the motivation and aims of the leaders of the reform movement and describe the participation of various social strata in the political events. Some of these works are instructive models of the future life of the main characters and their orientation in the new circumstances in the phase called ''real, existing Socialism'' in the 1970s and ‘80s. Apart from that, the article considers how established literary critics accepted attempts in belles-lettres to depict the recent ''crisis years,'' from which the new regime hoped to distance itself as clearly as possible.
The article is devoted to the discussions concerning economic growth and the environmental crisis that took place in Poland in the 1970s. The author focuses on two scientific conferences and the publications that accompanied them in order to analyse the questions of economic growth, science, technology, and consumption with regard to raising awareness of the ecological crisis. The reception of the Polish translation of The Limits to Growth is one of the questions discussed more specifically in the article. The main purpose of the article is to amend the ecological dimension of socialist thought and to reconstruct the main tensions and contradictions between the ecological and productivist tendencies within socialist ideology. The author analyses these questions in the context of degrowth theory and with regard to the current climate and ecological crisis.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of the Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Since the publication of his book Marx’s Ecology in 2000 he has become one of the most significant voices in uncovering Marx’s ecological thinking and developing ecological Marxism. In this interview we discuss his most recent work, the legacy of Soviet environmentalism, the long-running debate over “the dialectics of nature”, and the idea of production according to need.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of the Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Since the publication of his book Marx’s Ecology in 2000 he has become one of the most significant voices in uncovering Marx’s ecological thinking and developing ecological Marxism. In this interview we discuss his most recent work, the legacy of Soviet environmentalism, the long-running debate over “the dialectics of nature”, and the idea of production according to need.