Czech Crisis Research Articles

Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on the Regulation to Tourism in the Czech Republic

The article deals with issues concerning the regulation of tourism during the Covid-19 crisis in the Czech Republic. Tourism is among the most affected economic sectors by the current pandemic. During the pandemic, the State compensated the financial losses of tourist guides, but such compensations were – according to the guides themselves – insufficient. The aim of the research was to find out how tourist guides see the Czech crisis legislation with regard to tourism and the legislative measures taken by the Czech Government and Ministry of Regional Development to support tourism. For such purpose, questionnaires were distributed to employees in tourism – guides, particularly. We examined their attitudes to the tourism legislation in the Czech Republic in connection with the pandemic situation as well as public administration.
 Next, in-depth interviews were conducted. On the one hand, the research revealed great interest of tourist guides in the legislation and the current situation in the Czech Republic. On the other hand, it showed a negative evaluation of the adopted legislative measures and crisis legislation. On the basis of the research, the most important aid factors were identified: financial aid, greater support from the State and municipalities, exemption of social security and health insurance payments, promotion of tourism and guide services, support in the form of upgrading skills and retraining. The empirical part of the research, which used the Chi-Square Test of Independence, pointed to a dependence between gender and the attitude related to the legislation knowledge, between gender and monitoring of the current situation in European legislation concerning tourism and tourist guides, and between gender and attitudes when evaluating the legislative measures adopted by the Czech Government and Ministry of Regional Development in relation to tourism support. At the end of the study, some recommendations are provided on how to improve the present situation.

Чехословакия и сентябрьский кризис 1938 г. «Только СССР имеет… чистые руки»

Чехословакия и сентябрьский кризис 1938 г. «Только СССР имеет… чистые руки»

Canada's International Security Strategy

Beyond reason hut not hope?The failure of Canadians to define a satisfactory strategic policy or to produce a native school of strategic thinking may to some extent be attributed to the difficulty of producing a rational strategy for an irrationally conceived country.John W Holmes, 1983'These observations, made over a quarter century ago, were debatable at the time and remain so today. They were made mere weeks after US president Ronald Reagan's star wars speech advocating the construction of a global antiballistic missile (ABM) defence system. They also came just three months before the shooting down of Korean Air Lines flight 007, an event that would help trigger the second most tense confrontation of the Cold War - the Soviet nuclear alert that coincided with NATO's Able Archer 83 command post exercise later that November. The rising nuclear tensions of the period, in the context of what Holmes later termed the brutal unilateralism of Reagan's declaration, probably generated his speculative observations.2Several objections may be made to Holmes's comments. First, what country has ever been conceived rationally? Second, how many countries, great or less-than-great, can actually be said to have developed rational security strategies and then attempted to implement them? And of those states, how many have done so successfully? Since 1945, with the exception of the last years of the government of John Diefenbaker when CanadianAmerican relations were in severe disarray, have Canadian international security policies ever been seriously out of step with Canada's national interests or those of its allies? Rational or not, Canadian international security policy may have been more or less appropriate given the limitations inherent in the country's middle-power status.Holmes's remarks probably reflected a continuing frustration with Canada's limited ability to influence its ally's strategic behaviour. Occasional bouts of excessive American nuclear aggressiveness had been a problem, and not just during the lead-up to the Cuban missile crisis. Korea 1953, Dien Bien Phu 1954, the Chinese offshore islands crises of 1955 and 1958, Berlin 19 61, and the American nuclear alert during the Middle Eastern crisis of 1973 had all been cause for concern regarding nuclear risk-taking or possible nuclear use. The Soviet nuclear alert during the Czech crisis of 1968 also had been an occasion of significant nuclear risk but was not understood to have been so until years later. Having Ottawa press for a stronger, more dynamic commitment to stable nuclear deterrence and cooperative nuclear arms control agreements during the 1980s may have been what Holmes had in mind - and the related idea that a robust school of Canadian strategic thought someday might better help to restrain both American fits of nuclear imprudence and conventionally armed interventionary zeal - even though the diplomacy of constraint had yielded no visible record of success in either Korea or Vietnam.3Those rare instances of successful strategy may actually be manifestations of retrospective evaluation and imaginative reconstruction by historians, political scientists, and national security officials with a theoretical or literary bent. Strategizing may be more a matter of aspiration and afterthe-fact myth-making rather than the deliberate, thoughtful creation of national security goals linked to efficient instrumental means for their attainment. Such imagined reconstructions may most typically mask the real historical processes of non-rational state adaptation (for example, the accretion of territory in the British empire), idiosyncratic politico-military experimentation and bureaucratic infighting (American decision-making over the Vietnam intervention or Soviet policymaking on Afghanistan), or outright non-rational gambling with respect to issues and choices of war and peace (Winston Churchill's irrationally defiant refusal to make a political settlement with Germany in 1940-41, noted by David Eaves in his essay for this issue). …

On the fiery march: Mussolini prepares for war

Introduction Mussolini's Mentalite Towards the Axis The Spanish Imbroglio and the Strengthening of the Axis The Easter Accord and the Flourishing of the Axis The Czech Crisis and the March to the Sea The Pact of Steel War or Peace Denouement and Conclusion Bibliography Appendix

Sir Alexander Cadogan and Lord Halifax's ‘Damascus road’ conversion over the Godesberg terms 1938

The article challenges the recent perception that Lord Halifax was the hero of the Czech crisis in 1938, when in fact the real credit for his revolt against the Godesberg terms belonged to Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Under‐Secretary at the Foreign Office. It does on to argue that Halifax was ill suited by nature to be Foreign Secretary and that his subsequent record shows him to have been a natural appeaser, still loyal to Chamberlain, who argued for an accommodation with Hitler in the summer of 1940.

Nevile Henderson and Basil Newton two British envoys in the Czech crisis 1938

Nevile Henderson and Basil Newton two British envoys in the Czech crisis 1938

European Conflict and Hollywood's Reconstruction of English Fiction

In this essay I will discuss Hollywood versions of two 'classic' novels, Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice. I want to suggest that the films recast the novels as images of a modernizing England which is learning to reject class and inherited wealth in favour of democracy and love. The films, I suggest, were engaged political texts which proposed, firstly, that 'OLD ENGLAND', the words immediately following the title sequence of Pride and Prejudice, was worth supporting; and, secondly, that such English novels were still relevant to the concerns of a contemporary American audience, even if that audience only knew them as ghostly presences adumbrated by the films' title sequences. The films were, in other words, strategies for reading nineteenth-century texts in the light of a contemporary political and military conflict.' I would like, first of all, to place the films in as precise as possible a historical context. In September 1938 the Czech crisis brought Britain to the brink of war. Newsreels showed gas-masks being distributed and air-raid trenches dug in London's parks. War was averted, albeit temporarily, by the Munich agreement between Chamberlain and Hitler. Wuthering Heights was released in the United States on 7 April I939, the day that Italy invaded Albania. Pride and Prejudice was released in the United States on 26July 1940.2 Between those two dates, the worst fears of many had been realized. Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 over the invasion of Poland. The German Army began the invasion of the Low Countries and France on i o May 1940, and Dunkirk was evacuated between 27 May and 4June. Armistice between Germany and France was declared on 22June 1940, and on IoJuly the Battle of Britain began.3 It had been named in advance, by Winston Churchill. In a speech to the House of

The Meaning of "The Czech Question" Today

The following study concentrates on two issues: first, on Masaryk's own reflections on and interpretation of the political and cultural crisis of the Czechs at the end of the 19th century and, secondly, on the question as to what extent The Czech Question still says something to generations nearing the end of the 20th century. Masaryk's reflections on the Czech crisis are closely linked to his essays on Modern Man and Religion. In his interpretations of the modernity crisis and the Czech question, one discovers a social dualism which, at first sight, may seem contradictory. In Masaryk's view, however, this dualism of rationality and religiously anchored humanism forms the very core of the modern European spirit. The author of the article explores Masaryk's ideas as an effort to combine moral rationality in Durkheimian terms with Weberian rationality, i.e., with Zweckrationalitat. The most compelling moment in Masaryk's thought is his insistence upon the inseparability and complementarity of both types of rationality. Czech Sociological Review, 1995, Vol. 3 (No. 1: 33-44) Ceska otazka (The Czech Question) is the result of two processes: firstly, of the deepening political crisis in the Czech lands in the 1880s and 1890s and secondly, of Masaryk's growing awareness of the precarious Czech situation in this period. The crisis was of an intellectual and political nature. Old political programmes, as formulated mainly by Palacký, had lost their attractiveness. The new political force, i.e. the Young Czechs' Party, was, however, neither able nor willing to formulate a clear strategy for the land, while other newlyformed parties were concerned mainly with their particularistic goals. The situation can be described as an ideological vacuum which was accompanied by a lack of reputable leaders. The fact that Thomas Garrigue Masaryk saw the crisis from two angles is also relevant both in the light of his interpretation of the intellectual history of modern Europe, and in the spirit of his basic philosophical ideas. These ideas had already been formulated in his study on suicide, in his essays on Plato, Hume and Buckle, as well as in his lectures on Comte and John Stuart Mill at the Viennese university.1 Already, in that early period which includes twelve years of his life in Vienna and the first years in Prague his sociological approaches to the history of modern Europe were being shaped, as was his fundamental thesis concerning the necessity of religion in human life, and his conviction that the crisis of modern humanity is a religious one. Even by that time, he had constructed an unusual link between Comtean positivism and a deep, personally experienced and felt religion. Without understanding this polarity in Masaryk's thought, an authentic and correct interpretation of The Czech Question is not possible. The following study is not aimed at analysing the political crisis in the Czech lands during the first years of Masaryk's stay in Prague, this crisis having already been *) Direct all correspondence to Prof. Jiři Musil, CSc, Central European University College in Prague, Taboritska 23, 130 87 Praha 3. 1) On Masaryk's activities in Vienna see [Kral 1947].

Vltava Diverted: the Czech Crisis in Antonín Sova's “the River”

Vltava Diverted: the Czech Crisis in Antonín Sova's “the River”

The Czech Crisis

The Czech Crisis

The Soviet attitude to the Christian‐Marxist dialogue

The nature and perspectives of the dialogue between Christians and Marxists have developed considerably since the time of the first meetings of the Paulusgesellschaft in the mid-60s. The cynics remarked then that at these meetings the Marxists were all from Western Europe, the Christians from the East. It is indeed true that as far as the authorities in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were concerned, the dialogue was permitted to exist but not officially encouraged. However, since tl~en important changes have occurred in the tactics of the Party and recently a relatively consistent Party line has been visible. The pages of this journal have provided considerable evidence of the complexity of Soviet religious policy. An underlying ideological hostility to religion has not prevented the Soviet authorities from using religion for its own purposes, and forming alliances-in theory temporary, but in practice often of an enduring nature-with believers and with churches. One of the most recent developments in this field has been the renewal of the Party's interest in Christianity outside the Soviet Union as a possible source of support for the international communist movement and ultimately for the propagation of Marxism-Leninism. This should not surprise us because Lenin himself was in favour of admitting believers, and even priests, to the Bolshevik party if they were suitable candidates in other respects. What follows is a brief attempt to portray the general features of this policy of co-operation with believers abroad. The most important official pronouncement on the dialogue was made at the International Communist Conference held in Moscow in 1969. It is perhaps ironic that this meeting, the chief task of which was to help nonnalize inter-party relations after the Czech crisis, should take a major step towards promoting dialogue with Christians. The Party announced: ~'In various countries co-operation and . joint action between communists and the broad democratic masses of Catholics and believers of other religions is developing. It has acquired great urgency. The dialogue between them on such problems as war and peace, capitalism and socialism, neo-colonialism and the developing countries, joint action against imperialism and for democracy and socialism, is very pressing. Communists are of the opinion that on this path-the path of broad contacts and joint activities-the mass of believers is becoming an active force in

Notes on the French Press and the Czech Crisis

Notes on the French Press and the Czech Crisis