The authors consider the changes in the conception, organization, ways of spending, and forms of leisure in the Czech Lands from the establishment of the Communist monopoly on power in early 1948 to the second half of the 1950s. (After this point leisure time here began strikingly to change under the infl uence of consumerist trends.) They consider the topic in the context of the dominant ideology and changes in economic, social, and arts policies. The authors take into account gender differences, contrasts between town and country, and special features of social groups. They pay particular attention to leisure amongst young people and children. The authors do not, however, see the Communist takeover of February 1948 as a watershed in the sphere of leisure. Instead, they demonstrate both the continuity and differences between the period of limited democracy, from May 1945 to February 1948, and the years that followed. In some cases, they highlight features that were identical in Nazi German and Communist approaches to leisure activities (the rejection of jazz, ''trash'' (brak) in the arts, and Western infl uences in general). The authors discuss how the Communist regime intervened intensively in the way people chose to spend their free time, in its endeavour to shape a new type of man and woman in the new social conditions. At the same time, particularly in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the State so emphasized the importance of the work of building socialism, that leisure was seen as a ''necessary evil'', since it used up valuable physical and mental energy that would have been better spent on increasing productivity. For the same aims, but also with regard to the idea of somewhatdemocratising the arts, the regime gave preference to activities such as political and vocational self-education as well as the study of selected arts and cultural values. In keeping with the subordination of the individual to the interests of society, collective forms of recreation and the leisure (holidays spent with groups of co-workers, mass group visits to plays, fi lms, concerts, museums, galleries, and, later, Pioneer camps) were given priority. Traditional club activity and individual leisure were seen as ''bourgeois survivals''. Some young people’s non-conformist leisure activities met with suspicion from the authorities or with outright repression. Amongst the models of leisure that the regime held worthy of emulation were the Socialist youth construction projects (stavby mládeže), ''volunteer'' work, and additional instruction or training. The new organizations, such as the Revolutionary Trades Union Movement (Revoluční odborové hnutí - ROH), the Czechoslovak Union of Youth (Československý svaz mládeže - ČSM), and the Union for Co-operation with the Army (Svaz pro spolupráci s armádou - Svazarm), which took the place of the earlier clubs and associations, comported with the new ideology and provided the required forms of leisure. The authorities endeavoured also to support considerably developed and differentiated hobbies, such as making art, playing board games, and collecting. Special facilities were established to run these activities, including the enterprise-based clubs of the ROH, houses of culture (kulturní domy), and people’s educational societies (osvětové besedy). Forms of universally accessible activity, like chess and phillumeny (collecting matchbox labels), were supported, whereas fi nancially more demanding hobbies or those linked to private gain, such as philately or numismatics, were marginalized. A slight retreat from the ideologised conception of leisure came with the so-called ''new course'' of 1953. But more striking changes were made in the second half of the 1950s. These years, which saw shorter working weeks, a higher standard of living than before, and the emergence of consumerist trends, are described by the authors as a period of the planned expansion of leisure and its gradual individualisation.
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 investigates how the Holocaust distorted and exploited in Cold War debates on the example of genesis and reception of the book Ghetto Warschau. Tagebücher aus dem Chaos [Warsaw Ghetto: Diaries from Chaos]. The book is a translation of the essay Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w czasie drugiej wojny światowej [Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War], written by the Jewish historian and creator of the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto Emanuel Ringelblum while hiding from the German Occupiers in Warsaw in 1944. Ringelblum addressed his essay to the Polish reader discussing the relation of Christian Poles and Polish Jews under German occupation based on his own experience and the material he had collected. It was originally published in several portions in the Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute, an early Holocaust Research Center based in Warsaw. The German translation was based on this publication and published in summer 1967 in a Stuttgart-based publishing house. However, the new title, introduced by its German editors, suggested it was Ringelblum’s diary. Above that the blurb and many footnotes highlighted the role of Poles as perpetrators in the Holocaust, while minimizing that of Germans. As the article shows, the book was prepared by the Göttinger Arbeitskreis ostdeutscher Wissenschaftler [Göttingen Working Group of Eastern German Scholars], a Think Tank with close ties to the German expellee community, campaigning for a revision of the Polish western border. Göttinger Arbeitskries used the book and earlier on excerpts of Ringelblum’s text for a smear-campaign in the West-German expellee press. Through the biased presentation and distorted context of the work these former Ostforschers sought to portrait Poles as eternal anti-Semites and the factual perpetrators of the mass murder of Polish and European Jews following their anti-Polish agenda. Polish nationalist within the ruling Polish United Workers Party in turn exploited the book and the campaign based on it, which coincided with the anti-Semitic campaign in Poland. Though the Institute was not involved in the publication of the German book, the Polish national communists accused it of supporting German revisionism and ''Zionists'' abroad in their slander of Poland. and Přeložil: David Dichelle
Social policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, from mid-March 1939 to early May 1945, is a key topic in contemporary research on the history of this brief period. The article is concerned with the possible approaches to research with regard to the latest trends in research on National Socialism. It begins with an outline of the historiography of social policy in the Protectorate, which is marked chiefl y by a predominant uniformity of argumentation, a lack of systematic approach to interpretation, and Czech and Czechoslovak historians’ limiting themselves to the ethnically Czech population. Research conducted so far has completely failed to put social policy into the context of social history. The author thus fi rst provides an outline of the social framework, which represents the concept of a Volksgemeinschaft (national/ethnic/racial community), in which ideas about the purpose and function of social policy were formed and implemented. In the next part, she focuses on the defi nition of the term ''social policy'' as understood by Nazi theorists after 1933. In the last part of the article, she seeks to defi ne the new social relations in the CzechGerman environment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and suggests possibilities of its analysis in the area of the implementation of social policy. She believes that it will be fruitful to study the implementation of the relevant criteria in the Reich and the Protectorate at the level of discussions among experts, and to research social policy in practice. The author sees the most important aspects of the implementation of social policy as residing in the various motivations of the regime when implementing social policy in relation to different parts of the population, ranging from social exclusion to forms of social protectionism.
The study deals with political activities of the Soviet Army in Czechoslovakia after the intervention on August 21, 1968, and its sympathizers from the ranks of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The authoress examines the topic in the early stage of the so-called normalization (until the spring of 1970), focusing on the local level; however, she sets her research into a broader period context and derives general conclusions from its results. Although the offi cial agreement on the temporary stay of Soviet troops in the territory of Czechoslovakia declared that the Soviet Army should not interfere with domestic affairs of the Czechoslovak state, the Soviet leadership kept devising plans how to make use of the presence of Soviet troops for political purposes. Soviet offi cers participated in the dissemination of Soviet propaganda, established contacts with local anti-reform party offi cials, spoke at their forums, complained about hostile attitudes of Czechoslovak political bodies, and thus kept pressing for a legitimization of the political arrangements. The authoress shows that local pro-Soviet activists, who had maintained contacts with the Soviet Army from the very beginning and been taking over its political agenda, were playing a crucial role in the success of these efforts. In line with Soviet intentions, they were implementing the normalization process ''from below'',initiating purges in various organs, demanding the dismissal of offi cials protesting against presence of the Soviet Army, participating in the subsequent political vetting. They were actively pushing through a change of the offi cial approach to the Soviet Army and helped break its boycott by the Czechoslovak society, which had initially been almost unanimous. In doing so, they were making use of their personal contacts to organize manifestation ''friendship'' meetings and visits of Soviet soldiers to Czechoslovak schools and factories. The authoress analyzes the reasons of the attitude of these activists, most of whom came from the ranks of ''old'' (pre-war) and ''distinguished'' members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and illustrates the development outlined above by specifi c examples. By way of conclusion, she notes that, although different forms of the CzechoslovakSoviet ''friendship'' since 1968 are often viewed as mere formalistic acts without any deeper meaning at the level of ''lived'' experience, they were, from the viewpoint of the Soviet policy, well thought-out and centrally planned propagandistic activities which contributed to the promotion of the Soviet interpretation of the Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion and discredited its opponents. and Přeložila Blanka Medková
Homeownership has been in decline in a number of developed societies since the early 2000s driven, primarily, by declining entry among younger households who have been increasingly pushed into the rental sector. This trend has been associated with a growing intergenerational divide, or even conflict, and the emergence of ‘Generation Rent’. This paper explores the conditions surrounding diminishing access to owner-occupation among new households with a focus on the historic maturation of homeownership sectors, the restructuring of the political economy (financialization) around housing wealth and the inter-cohort dynamics surrounding the accumulation and transfer of housing wealth. The paper takes an international perspective drawing on evidence from two parallel, but contrasting cases: Japan and the UK. The analysis illustrates the interrelatedness of interand intra-generational inequalities, with the former reinforcing the latter. It also focuses on the role of families as both a moderator of generational inequity at the micro level as well as an enhancer of socioeconomic inequalities overall.
The residualisation of social housing sectors requires housing managers to intensify social management activities aimed at promoting tenants’ wellbeing and social cohesion. This paper discusses the implementation of such activities in the Italian public housing sector. It juxtaposes the vision conceptualised at the policy level with the daily activities of housing managers in practice on the ground and highlights the gaps between policy goals and realities of tenants’ involvement. While social management activities are expected to contribute to breaking the vicious circle of financial, technical, and social decline that has long affected public housing estates, the short timeframe of the planned interventions raises the question of the potential for structural change.
This article explores the trajectory of so-called guaranteed social housing in the Czech Republic as an example of penetrating financial instruments into the public policy realm. The project, promoted by the government’s Agency for Social Inclusion, was intended to encourage private landlords to rent their properties to people in need through commercial insurance against the risk of rent defaults. Using policy documents, media and interviews with governmental officers, the article describes the performative strength of financial instruments in the sphere traditionally occupied by the welfare state. In financialisation literature, the proliferation of financial instruments is often described as a one-way process in which these instruments colonise public domains. However, the empirical case discussed in the article shows that this process is much more complex and contingent, and financial instruments are not used as the best option but rather as a last resort in a situation marked by weak policies.
The question of the reasons for the extreme variation in morbidity among the gene carriers of acute porphyria and the great diversity of the precipitating factors are approached by the aid of a model of interacting genomic circuits. It is based on the current paradigm of the acute porphyric attack as a result of a toxic proximal overload of the enzyme-
deficient heme-biosynthetic patway. Porphyrogenic influx of precursors is seen as a consequence of uncontrolled induction of its gate-keeping enzyme, ubiquitous 5-aminolevulinate synthase (ALAS1), due to attenuated post-translational control of the enzyme combined with activated gene transcription. Focus is directed on the genomic
control of the master-regulator of ALAS1-transcription, the nuclear receptor pair constitutively active receptor (CAR) and pregnane xenobiotic receptor (PXR). On activation by their ligands, i.e. lipophilic drugs, solvents, alcohols, hormonal steroids and biocides, these DNA-binding proteins transform xenobiotic or steroid stimuli to coordinated
activations of gene transcription-programs for ALAS1 and apo-cytochromes P450 (apo-CYPs), thus effecting the formation of xenobiotic-metabolizing cytochrome P450 enzymes. The potency of the CAR/PXR-transduction axis is enhanced by co-activators generated in
at least four other genomic circuits, each triggered by different external and internal stimuli clinically experienced to be porphyroge
nic, and each controlled by co-activating and co-repressing modulators. The expressions of the genes for CAR and PXR are thus augmented by binding glucocorticoid receptor (GR) activated by a steroid hormone, e.g, cortisol generated in fasting, infection or different forms of stress. The promotor regions of ALAS1 and apoCYPs contain binding sites for at least three co-activating transcription factors enhancing CAR/PXR transduction: i.e. the ligand-independent growth hormone (GH)-pulse controlled hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 (HNF4), the insulin-responsive forkhead box class O-(FOXO) protein pathway activated in stress and infection, and the proliferator-activated receptor gamma co-activator 1 al
pha (PGC-1alpha) circuit responding to glucagon liberated in fasting. Many interactions and cross-talk take place within the tangle of genomic circuits that control ALAS1-transcription, which may explain the extreme inter- and intra-individual variability in morbidity in acute porphyria. Reasons for gender-differences are found in sex-dependent control of HPA- and GH-activity as well as in direct, or GR-mediated effects on CAR/PCR activation. Constitutional differences in individual porphyric morbidity may be discussed along lines of mutations or duplications of genes for co-activating or co-repressing nuclear proteins active at different levels within the circuits.