By providing the genuinely new „networked“ understanding of exile, this study aims to rewrite significantly the story of Czechoslovak political emigration and re-assess its functioning mostly by means of a tool so far ignored in this field: The Social Network Analysis. According to the dominant historiographical narrative, the Czechoslovak exile followed mostly political goals and was structured as an hierarchy with the Council of Free Czechoslovakia being the supreme body initially respected by most (though not by all) fractions within the exile movement across the globe. That is why the historical research, rather one-sidedly, focused upon the institutional history, biographies of political leaders and ideological debate within political parties in exile. The study argues that the traditional approach needs a substantial revision. Though initially designed as a state-like hierarchy with pyramidal decision-making procedures (with coordinating power vested in the Council of Free Czechoslovakia) the exile soon transformed itself into a horizontal and rather informal network of loosely interconnected and mutually collaborating units and individuals across the globe. The „network thesis“ is demonstrated upon the model analysis of František Váňa’s and Přemysl Pitter’s communication webs being part of the long-term research of Czechoslovak exile networks, 1948–1989.
The study focuses on the Prague exile of the last crowned French king Charles X in 1832–1836. It notices the popularization reflection of the king’s stay, which originated in the Czech milieu from the end of the 19th century. It arises from the memoirs of Charles’s contemporaries (including members of his exile court and Josef Rudolph of Wartburg, son of the inspector of Prague Castle, etc.), from reports of the Prague Police Directorate, a collection of reports submitted to Chancellor Metternich, from materials on the accommodation and furnishings options of Prague Castle and from the related results of art-historical research of the New Palace of the castle, where the king stayed with his family and a small court. It deals with the king’s interaction with the milieu of the Czech lands. Last but not least, it then deals with the upbringing of Charles’s grandson Henry, in which František Palacký and Joachime Barrande, among others, participated.
A conference on Scholars in Exile and Dictqatorships of the 20th Century took place at National Technical Museum in Prague from May 24-26, 2011 exhibited the debilitating brain drain that a resulted from the 1918 Russian Revolution, the Nazi era and post-war communist oppression. The story is grim, though not entirely negative, since significant intellectual consequences of the upheaval also occurred during those periods. and Antonín Kostlán.
a1_Studie pojednává o formování a vývoji politického exilu ze zemí středovýchodní a jihovýchodní Evropy v době studené války na Západě, především ve Spojených státech amerických. Autor konstatuje, že česká historiografie se v posledních letech začíná sice intenzivněji věnovat protikomunistickému exilu z Československa po únoru 1948, jeho začlenění do širšího mezinárodního rámce a komparace s exilovým hnutím jiných národů východního bloku však dosud prakticky chybí. Hlavním cílem studie je proto poskytnout základní faktografický přehled, který by umožnil posoudit, nakolik se československý (respektive český a slovenský) poúnorový exil vymykal z obvyklého modelu fungování exilové komunity ve studené válce nebo do něj naopak zapadal. S využitím dokumentace uložené v severoamerických archivech nastiňuje autor nejprve obecné předpoklady fungování protikomunistického exilu v západních zemích a přibližuje působení nadnárodních politických reprezentací exulantů, z nichž nejvýznamnější bylo Shromáždění porobených evropských národů (Essembly of Captive European Nations – ACEN), založené roku 1954 v New Yorku. Poté postupně seznamuje s politickými organizacemi a představiteli jednotlivých národních exilů – Albánie, Bulharska, Maďarska, Polska, Rumunska, pobaltských zemí a zemí bývalé Jugoslávie. Autor ukazuje, že role a postavení politického exilu z Východu se podstatně odvozovaly od proměn mezinárodní situace a do značné míry závisely na podpoře institucí Spojených států. Tomu odpovídal jeho zrod ve druhé polovině čtyřicátých let, rozmach v letech padesátých a postupný úpadek v následujících třech desetiletích., a2_K charakteristickému obrazu protikomunistických exilů patřily interní krize a konflikty, často vznikající z malicherných důvodů, osobní animozity, problémy s legitimitou vedoucích orgánů, absence charizmatických osobností a převaha propagandistického rozměru činnosti., b1_This article discusses the formation and development of groupings of political exiles from the countries of east-central and southeast Europe in the West, particularly in the USA, during the Cold War. The author states that although Czech historians have in recent years begun to pay more attention to anti-Communist exiles from Czechoslovakia after the Communist takeover of February 1948, the inclusion of this topic in the wider international context and comparitive research on exile movements of other East Bloc nations is still fundamentally lacking. The chief aim of the article is therefore to provide a basic factual overview to enable scholars to assess the extent to which Czechoslovak (or Czech and Slovak) post- -February-1948 exiles cannot be discussed using the usual model of the operation of the exile community during the Cold War or, on the contrary, do fit nicely into it. Using records in North American archives, the author first outlines the general preconditions for the operation of the anti-Communist exile movement in Western countries and he describes the work of supranational political representatives of exiles, the most important of which was the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN), established in New York City in 1954. He then gradually introduces the political organizations and representatives of the individual national exiles of Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Baltic countries, and the countries of the former Yugoslavia. He demonstrates that the role and standing of the political exile associations from eastern Europe were essentially derived from changes in international politics and were to a considerable extent dependent on the support of US institutions. That was a consequence of their origin in the second half of the 1940s, their expansion in the 1950s, and their gradual decline over the next three decades., b2_The characteristic image of the anti-Communist exiles includes internal crises and conflicts, which were often rooted in petty causes, personal animosity, problems with the legitimacy of the leading bodies, an absence of charismatic figures, and the predominance of propaganda in their work., and Martin Nekola.
This study deals with the grey zone phenomenon in the context of literary life under late Communist rule during the 1970s and 1980s in Czechoslovakia. The aim of this text is to attempt to trace, using the method of historical reconstruction, how the concept of the grey zone was understood in Czech and Slovak society before 1989, especially in texts and discussions on dissent and exile that reflected the reality of normalization. These texts show that awarenesss of the grey zone played an essential role in the thinking of dissident and émigré authors, as it challenged bipolar schemes and blackand- white images of social reality in the Czechoslovakia of the time. However, this conception of the grey zone often contradicts today’s journalistic and specialist approaches, which tend to classify the grey zone as a silent or passive majority. This study shows that the definition of what we now call the grey zone was much broader.