Memento obětí totalitních režimů jako motor kariéry, nebo závazek kontinuity vědecké práce

Abstract

Although totalitarianism has already been widely discussed in academia, the war victims still generate a lot of attention today. This article examines the transformation of academia in Central Europe after 1945 and the reflections of war victims among scholars. To what extent did these losses to science and the loss of personal friendships create an awareness of commitment to continuity in academic work, the need to push through reforms, and the establishment of new institutions? The author focuses on the experience and career prospects of Czech natural scientists (mathematicians, astronomers, physicists) who re-established themselves in the 1940s and 50s and who firmly opposed the essential elements of totalitarianism in their professions (binding ideology, mass party, monopoly on information, central management, planned economy). Although this definition corresponds to the Stalinist period, many categorical decisions and reforms started immediately after the war (planned economy, mass university studies, centralization of research, binding ideology of revolutionary justice). The article shows how the general secretary of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, physicist Viktor Trkal, used the argument of victims when he accused his colleagues of collaboration. The students’ experience has diversified, as shown with two interviewees. The historiographical explanation of a too short post-war democracy replaced by “captive universities” and “chained academies”, and the belief that Stalinists put much worse ideological pressure on historiography than other sciences, are being disputed.