Early Intellectual Institutions of the Scientific and Academic Phase of the Czech National Revival

Abstract

The article deals with the process of formation of the Czech national identity, a distinctive phenomenon that has combined ethnic originality and the common flow of formation of European nations. As a large-scale European phenomenon of the period of formation of nations, this process was a multifaceted and multilayered social movement. The latter defined not only the cultural, social and political conditions of the modern nations and states, but also their national ideas, which have continued shaping the real content of the modern European history. As a matter of fact, the formation of the modern quality of the Czech society largely depended on educational intellectual societies, scientific and educational institutions and public organisations that generated the elements of intellectualisation of the public, formed an independent personality, promoted the cultivation of a civic duty. In general, the activities of early academic institutions were not just a changing subject in the political complex of the imperial cultural architecture. Early Czech patriotic institutions served as catalysts for the process of modernisation of national consciousness. At the same time, they remained Zemsky institutions with a small readership, and, of course, in some way, this reduced the intensity of the national process. Taking into account the linguistic basis of the formation of the scientific and patriotic Czech institutions, the fact, that all of them have gained experience of public education, should be emphasized; the process of spiritual institutionalisation of the "third state" was initiated, the linguistic ideologeme of the Czech National Revival grew stronger and later became part of political programmes of future national Czech parties.