Aktuality

Přednáška prof. Jamese Krapfla “Local Histories of the Prague Spring and Its Aftermath”

Pracoviště Historické sociologie FHS UK Vás srdečně zve na přednášku Local Histories of the Prague Spring and Its Aftermath, kterou přednese prof. James Krapfl z McGill University, Canada.

Přednáška se uskuteční v rámci pravidelného kurzu Historicko-sociologické konfrontace HISO FHS UK v úterý 19. března 2018 v 17.00 v místnosti 2080 (Blok A, areál UK v Jinonicích).

Anotace a informace o přednášejícím:

Annotation:

The Prague Spring was an important turning point in the development of political culture in Czechoslovakia, both recalling the revolution of 1945-48 and anticipating the revolution of 1989-92. Prof. Krapfl will illuminate the microprocesses of this turning point by comparing evidence from a selection of Czech and Slovak districts (okresy) from the beginning of 1968 to the end of 1969. Sources from the districts show how citizens overcame initial trepidation about the “renewal process,” increasingly making it their own as spring turned to summer. They document the innovative ways in which citizens sought to give new meaning to such concepts as “democracy,” “humanity,” and “socialism” in their localities, and how the August invasion shifted the terms of popular discourse without dampening it. The sources also reveal the discrete compromises that individuals gradually began making in 1969, and how they rationalized these compromises in a process that can best be described as “auto-normalization.”

fotografem je Ľuboš Pilc, Pravda.

prof. James Krapfl is a historian of modern European politics and culture, specializing geographically on east central Europe. Thematically he is interested in the cultural history of revolutionary phenomena, the experience of Communist rule in central and eastern Europe, and the transformation of Europe since 1989. These interests come together in his book Revolution with a Human Face: Politics, Culture, and Community in Czechoslovakia, 1989-1992 (Cornell University Press, 2013), which analyzes grassroots efforts to establish a democratic political culture in Czechoslovakia following the outbreak of revolution in 1989. Based on research in forty Czech and Slovak archives, mostly at the district level, the book explains how popular attempts to reconstitute political, social, and economic institutions “from below” met with the opposition of new elites, setting in motion the chain of events which led to the break-up of the federal state in 1992. Prof. Krapfl is using his sabbatical in 2014-15 to begin research for a second book, on the popular experience of “1968” in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland.