The essay deals with the global historical development of the human rights doctrine and its role in modern politics from a Czech, Czechoslovak and East-Central European point of view. It draws on recent revisionist historiography of human rights the main characteristic of which, described at the beginning of the essay, is the reconstruction of the human rights doctrine as an epiphenomenon of major historical political conflicts. Then, the author turns to the comeback of human rights as a universalistic concept during the Second World War and the Allied struggle against Nazism. He continues with tracing down the general development during the Cold War leading to the promotion of human rights as a part of binding international law since the mid-1970s. Further, the Czechoslovak postwar situation is analysed starting with the Stalinist Constitution of 1948 up to the dissident struggle for human and civil rights during the last two decades of the communist dictatorship. The last part of the essay examines the rise of liberal internationalism and humanitarian interventionism in the post-1989 period and strives to specify the Czechoslovak and Czech development within a broader context, fi nishing with a plea for understanding human rights as a space for political deliberation, dialogue and contest.
It is two hundred years since the first biographers of Ignaz Cornova – ex-Jesuit scholar, Prague university professor and member of the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences – mentioned his articles written for periodicals, but to date these remain unstudied. They have been neither collected nor analysed; we do not even know how many periodicals he contributed to. In his research on the subject, the author has identified six periodicals in which Cornova published between 1793 and 1814 and found thirteen separate texts – a figure that is almost certain to rise. His analysis of these articles supplements and refines the conclusions reached by historians on the basis of Cornova’s writings in book form. He is presented as a historian of Bohemia (and beyond), a Czech patriot, a Catholic, and a loyal subject of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine who was committed to educating society as a whole, especially in the field of history, and maintaining social peace.
Původní verze tohoto článku vyšla pod názvem ''Dissidentes Gedenken: Unabhängiges Holocaustgedenken in der DDR und der Volksrepublik Polen'' ve sborníku pod redakcí Petera Hallamy a Stephana Stacha Gegengeschichte: Zweiter Weltkrieg und Holocaust im ostmitteleuropäischen Dissens (Leipzig, Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2015, s. 207-236). Autor pojednává o vzpomínkových akcích konaných u příležitosti dnů památky obětí holokaustu - takzvané křišťálové noci z 9. listopadu 1938 v Německé demokratické republice a povstání ve varšavském ghettu z 19. dubna 1943 v Polské lidové republice - pořádaných příslušníky disentu v obou zemích v osmdesátých letech minulého století. Tyto vzpomínkové akce měly dvojí význam - na jedné straně byly pokusem vznikající občanské společnosti protestovat formou vlastní interpretace dějin proti metanarativům produkovaným režimem státního socialismu, zároveň pak byly součástí politického boje opozičních hnutí proti vládnoucí moci. Autor ze vzájemné komparace těchto událostí v obou zemích vyvozuje, že přes všechny odlišnosti tvořily často přehlížený, nicméně důležitý přínos k historické paměti v Polsku a NDR, a navíc podněcovaly tamní společnosti k přemítání o významu holokaustu., This is a Czech translation of ''Dissidentes Gedenken: Unabhängiges Holocaustgedenken in der DDR und der Volksrepublik Polen'', in Peter Hallama and Stephan Stach (eds.), Gegengeschichte: Zweiter Weltkrieg und Holocaust im ostmitteleuropäischen Dissens (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2015, pp. 207-36). The article is concerned with commemoration ceremonies on Holocaust Memorial Days - the ''Kristallnacht'' of 9 November 1938 in the German Democratic Republic and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 19 April 1943 in the Polish People´s Republic - organized by dissidents in both countries in the 1980s. These commemorations were both an attempt by emerging civil society to reclaim interpretations of history which were different from the master narratives produced by the State-Socialist regimes and were also part of the oppostion movements´ political struggle with their governments. In a comparison of these events, the author concludes that despite all their differences they constituted an often overlooked but important contribution to public memory in Poland and Easter Germany and also motivated the two societies to reflect on the meaning of the Shoah., Stephan Stach ; Z němčiny přeložil Petr Dvořáček., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
Monografie podle recenzenta přináší ucelený pohled na způsoby, byla tradice spjatá s osobností kazatele a církevního reformátora Jana Husa (1370-1415) a s následným husitským hnutím využívána v komunistickém Československu v letech 1948 až 1956, jimiž autor vymezuje období československého stalinismu. Své téma autor zasazuje do kontextu politiky dějin, která se v českých zemích intenzivně uplatňovala od 19. století. Od roku 1948, kdy se komunisté v Československu chopili moci, jim instrumentalizace husitské tradice sloužila k vlastní historické legitimizaci, když husity prezentovali jako předchůdce vítězného boje lidu za sociální spravedlnost a národní svobodu, úspěšně završeného teprve v únoru 1948. Recenzent soudí, že se v knize podařilo dobře ukázat, jak se husitský kult v padesátých letech naplňoval v oficiální ideologii, školní výuce, kulturní politice nebo filmové tvorbě, jaké byly nástroje jeho šíření a podoby jeho ritualizace., In the reviewer´s opinion, the monograph In the glare of the red chalice: The politics of history and the Hussite tradition in Czechoslovakia 1948-1956 provides a consistent insight into how the tradition associate with preacher and church reformist Jan Hus (1370-1415) and the subsequent Hussite movement was made use of in Czechoslovakia under the Communist rule between 1948 and 1956, i.e. during the period which the author defines as the era of Czechoslovak Stalinism. The author sets the topic in the context of the politics of history which had been intensively applied in the Czech Lands since the 19th century. Since seizing power in 1948, the Communists were using the instrumentalized Hussite tradition for their own historical legitimization, presenting the Hussites as predecessors of the victorious struggle for social justice and national freedom, which was successfully concluded only in February 1948. In the reviewer´s opinion, the book has succeeded in showing how the Hussite cult was reflected in the official ideology, school education, or cultural policy, the tools that were used to spread it, and the forms of its ritualization., [autor recenze] Pavel Helan., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy