The overall aim of the journal is to publish articles, essays and other contributions written by leading scholars in the field of contemporary history from both the Czech Republic and abroad. Particular focus is placed on Czechoslovak and Czech topics in a broader international or transnational setting.
Our primary intention is to publish texts that have been previously published in Czech in the journal Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History), the leading Czech-language academic journal in the field of contemporary history that has a twenty-year tradition. Through their translation into English, we want to make such articles accessible to a wider audience of readers and, thus, to strengthen and promote international academic discussion.
At the same time, however, we will be more than happy to do it the other way round – i.e. occasionally publish excellent, previously unpublished texts in English, which can be afterwards translated into Czech and only then appear in Soudobé dějiny.
The CJCH is primarily intended to be an online platform, with just a limited number of copies of each issue being actually printed. Indeed, it is our goal that the CJCH gradually becomes a valid part of the international discourse on contemporary history and that readers interested in these issues will find it of benefit.
CONTENTS
Essays and Articles
Jakub Rákosník Continuity and Discontinuity in the History of the Welfare State in Czechoslovakia (1918–1956)
Radka Šustrová “It Will Not Work without a Social Policy!” Research on Social Practice on the Territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Jiří Knapík Unwanted Silesia Zdeněk Jirásek Czech “Silesian Identity” in Postwar Czechoslovakia (1945–1969)
Alena Fialová (Šporková) Lessons from the Crisis Development The Picture of the Prague Spring in “Normalisation Prose”
Jiří Suk Political Games with the “Unfi nished Revolution” Settling Accounts with Communism in the Times of the Civic Forum and after Its Disintegration (1989–1992)
Prague Chronicle
Vítězslav Sommer Chronicler of Communist Czechoslovakia Karel Kaplan and the Study of Contemporary History
Jiří Hoppe “The Past Is the Battlefi eld of Contemporaries” A Conference Organised on the Occasion of Vilém Prečan’s 80th Birthday
Book Reviews
Doubravka Olšáková Subjective Biography and the Limits of “Objective” Sources
David Kovařík Unreliable Elements, or the Object of Social Engineering in the Czech Borderlands?
Radka Šustrová About an End or a Beginning? Czech Historiography and Research into the Final Phase of the Second World War
Miloslav Petrusek The “Golden Era” or Only a “Sweet Intermezzo” of Czech Sociology?
Jan Mervart Scientific Revolutions and Political Attitudes
Adéla Gjuričová Gentle History A Cultural Historian in the Archives
Summaries