Liberation between War and Communism: Revising the History of the Czechoslovak Third Republic, 1945-1948

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel seeks to rethink and revise our understanding of the immediate postwar period in Czechoslovakia and explore its wider significance for understanding postwar Europe. The Third Republic is often treated as an intermediate period, glossed over as a bookend to histories of World War II, or the brief prelude to histories of communism, but rarely studied as a topic and period by itself. However, the Third Republic was an important laboratory for postwar reconstruction in Europe where bold new ideas about democracy, governance and economic management were generated, and policies implemented, that impacted Czechoslovakia’s politics for decades during the Cold War. The papers of this panel reassert the importance and dynamism of the Third Republic to Czechoslovakia’s broader history and the history of postwar Europe. They investigate the period through its innovative economic planning program, its novel state-sponsored public opinion polling, and the fertile exchange of leading political intellectuals around the concept of ‘people’s democracy’.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Eagle Glassheim, U of British Columbia (Canada)

Papers

• Liberating the Nation from ‘Fear Psychosis’: Trust, Citizenship, and the Politics of Emotion in Postwar Czechoslovakia, 1945-1948 - Alexander Langstaff, New York U

• Failed Plan, or Wrong Place?: The Czechoslovak Two Year Plan in a European Context, 1945-1950 - Mathias Fuelling, Temple U

• The Intellectual Origins of People’s Democracy in Postwar Czechoslovakia - Pavel Krejci, U of Hong Kong (China)