The everyday life in the Czechoslovak Republic at the beginning of 1920s in the letters of Red Cross mission’s official I. I. Levin

Abstract

The Archive of International Politics of the Russian Federation keeps the letters of the Soviet Red Cross official in Prague I. I. Levin to the people’s commissar of foreign affairs of the RSFSR G.V. Chicherin. The letters contain the description of the cross-cultural relations and the social attitudes in the CSR in the beginning of the 1920s. Levin writes in detail how Czech-German contradictions were manifested in the everyday life in the CSR. He also points out the problems in the relations between the Czechs and Slovaks and Rusyns. While noting the widespread antibolshevik views in the Czech society and providing a series of examples for that, at the same time the author of the letters underlines the pragmatism of the Czech businessmen, their interest in developing the trade relations with the Soviet Russia. In the letters a significant attention is dedicated to the literary, theatrical, and musical life of Czechoslovakia. It is evaluated very critically. I. I. Levin said that nothing new was being created, and even it were, it was soaked with a chauvinist feeling. At the same time, new phenomena and achievements of the Czech literature and art of the time are outside of the author’s focus. Levin is treating the everyday life of the inhabitants of Prague from the maximalist position, accusing them of philistinism and provincialism, of the lack of aspirations to lofty ideals. Levin’s letters are a peculiar source for the study of the everyday life in the Czechoslovakia during the first years after the independence and of its perception by the representatives of Soviet Russia.