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The Paradoxical Czech Memory of the Habsburg Monarchy: Satisfied Helots or Crippled Citizens?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2020

Ondřej Slačálek
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Abstract

The article reconstructs the ambivalence of the relationship of Czech society to the Habsburg monarchy and its legacy. While this period can be retrospectively contrasted with the twentieth century as a time of relative stability, it is also recognized in Czech collective memory as a time of national subalternity and inequality. Sometimes the imperial legacy is also blamed for the absence of civic virtues in Czech political culture. The study traces the roots of these Czech approaches in the thought of Czech historian and national leader František Palacký (who proposed federalist reform of the empire) and the ideas of the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš G. Masaryk (who declared “de-Austrianization” to be a doctrine of the new state as well as a basis for new civic virtues). The essay also touches on popular culture images in Hašek΄s Schweik and the phenomenon of Jára da Cimrman, which contribute to an ambivalent and infantilizing image of the times of empire.

Type
Critical Discussion Forum: Collapse of Empire/New States, 1918–2018
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , Winter 2019 , pp. 912 - 920
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2020

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