In this article the author examines the coexistence of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and the Communist regime in the fi rst several years after the Communist takeover, 1948–56. The first part of his analysis, inspired by French and German research on the social history of power by Sandrine Kott and Thomas Lindenberger, outlines the points of contact as well as ideological and political affinities between Protestants and Communists before the February 1948 takeover. These were particularly clear in the Protestant weekly Kostnické jiskry (Sparksfrom Constance) after the Second World War. Owing to this rapprochement andalso to their refl exes developed for survival in the unfavourable circumstances the Protestant minority adapted with relative success to conditions in the Communist dictatorship. To consolidate themselves, they skilfully used instruments offered by the regime, such as “voluntary” work groups (brigády), while the regime relied on Protestants (particularly ministers) in some of its important political strategies such as collectivization and elections. The author pays particular attention to the theologian and philosopher Josef Lukl Hromádka (1889–1969), who was, in his day, a central figure amongst Czechoslovak Protestants. His “instrumentalization” also operated in two directions: in the West, as a representative of Christian peace activities, he helped to create the illusion of religious freedom in Communist Czechoslovakia, but he also served Protestants as a “shield” and mediator enabling them to establish and maintain contacts with Western theologians. In the article the author also seeks to demonstrate that assiduous analysis of archive records of State, Party, and Church provenance reveals the inner contradictions in the Communist apparat regarding relations with the churches and its own powers as well as links of alliance amongst some of its organs and the churches.
Th e article presents the Marxist feminist perspective on primitive accumulation and early capitalist history put forward by Silvia Federici in her work, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. According to Federici and other Marxist feminists, Marx’s description of the origins of capitalism lacks an important diff erentiation. Whereas in Capital the main focus is placed on the male, waged proletariat, Federici focuses more on the changes in gender relations and status of women that accompany the process of primitive accumulation. Th e article fi rstly situates the origins of feminist perspectives on primitive accumulation into their historical context and links them with their preceding debates. Th e following sections then present a comparison of Marx’s and Federici’s account of primitive accumulation and the early history of capitalism. Th e article mainly focuses on the forms of primitive accumulation that are absent in Capital. Th ese forms include, above all, a new division of labour, subjugation of reproduction to the needs of capital, and an economical, legal, cultural, and symbolical degradation of women.
‘Carantanian / Köttlach’ jewellery from southwest Slovakia and from the other parts of the Carpathian Basin. In the Slovak and Hungarian archaeological literature, a small group of early medieval jewellery from southwest Slovakia was labelled as being of ‘Carantanian / Köttlach’ provenance, meaning that it originated from Eastern Alps region (today’s Austria and Slovenia). The goal of the article is a revision of the issue of provenance in the context of analogous finds from Moravia and the Carpathian Basin (i.e. today’s Hungary, western Romania and northeastern Croatia). The provenenace from the Eastern Alps region can be confirmed in the case of several Slovak finds only, the others are of local origin. Also, from the point of view of chronology, we are dealing with a relatively heterogenous group of jewellery, with a date-range from the turn of the 8th-9th centuries to the 11th century. The author tries to demonstrate that the argument in the middle of the 20th century and later about the ‘influences from the Eastern Alps region’ was dependent on the state of archaeological research at that time. It was a viewpoint that over-emphasised the importance of early medieval ‘Köttlach culture’ in Eastern Alps region, especially for the spreading of some jewellery types to other regions of middle and southeastern Europe., Šimon Ungerman., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
Studie se věnuje problematice podnikového managementu a úskalím „socialistické kontroly“ v československých podnicích v období pozdního socialismu. S využitím pramenů Komunistické strany Československa a Státní bezpečnosti, dobových textů a odborných publikací ukazuje, jak se stranické a státní orgány neúspěšně snažily učinit z kontroly funkční nástroj realizace hospodářské politiky státostrany. Autor analyzuje používané kontrolní mechanismy a nastiňuje základní příčiny až fatálního selhání kontrolní činnosti systému, jenž byl svým způsobem kontrolou doslova posedlý. Vysvětluje systémovou podmíněnost kontroly, kterou socialističtí manažeři dokázali v mnoha ohledech přizpůsobit potřebám svěřených hospodářských jednotek, což přirozeně nekorespondovalo s celospolečenskými zájmy. Na příkladech řady konkrétních kauz studie názorně ukazuje, že si československý podnikový management v osmdesátých letech dvacátého století plně uvědomoval systémové, politické i společenské limity kontrolní činnosti, kterou vcelku úspěšně dokázal přizpůsobit vnitropodnikovým podmínkám. Výsledkem byl stav, kdy stranické vedení reagovalo na stále očividnější symptomy „agonie centrálně plánované ekonomiky“ přijímáním rozmanitých směrnic a direktiv pro zefektivnění kontroly a důsledné prosazování zásady „kdo řídí - kontroluje“. Očekávaný efekt ovšem nenastal a nefunkčnost kontroly přispěla nakonec nemalou měrou ke zhroucení komunistického režimu v Československu., 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 specalized 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 supervison 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 specific 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., Tomáš Vilímek., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy