Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Pynsent, Robert B.

Titel

Conclusory Essay: Activists, Jews, The Little Czech Man, and Germans

Ist Teil von

• Central Europe (Leeds, England), 2007-11, Vol.5 (2), p.211-333

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2007

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The lengthy concluding essay of a special issue on, "Bohemia 1945," mulls over various aspects of the subjects discussed in the earlier essays & examines the events & the writings that influenced actions & attitudes that were prevalent in 1945 & its aftermath. The new mythologization of the Munich Agreement that accompanied the Soviet liberation of most of Czechoslovakia & the powerful position of the Communist Party are addressed, along with Czech anti-German & pro-Nazi writing, the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism, the Prague Uprising, & the expulsion of the Germans. Distinctions are pointed out between popular myths & those perpetuated by politicians. Other matters discussed include the Czech Communists' view of nationalism as a negative bourgeois force; conceptions of the Germans as the Czechs' longtime enemies; Czech attitudes towards the West; & the Czech "martyr complex." Special attention is given to the politics of literary representations of the Uprising, the expulsion of the Germans, & Communist Party anti-Semitism that led to the show trials of the 1950s. J. Lindroth