4. Czech history as a key to understanding contemporary behaviour: ideas, trends, cornerstones
(12. 10.)



   Lecturer: Pavel Pšeja


Objective: To explain the importance of history for contemporary social and political behaviour.


Lecture: In this session, key points in the older Czech (and Czechoslovak) history will be
discussed and presented as fundamentals of present political culture and public policy in the Czech
Republic. The historical relations of Czechs and Germans, psychological dimensions of the Czech
identity, fears of assimilation as a reason for political views, language as a myth legitimizing
self-perceptions of the Czech nation, the creation of Czechoslovakia – all these issues and many
others will be elaborated in as much detail as possible.


Assigned reading:

Fawn, Rick: The Czech Republic: A Nation of Velvet, Amsterdam: Harwood Publishers, 2000. pp. 1-13.

Innes, Abby: Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye, New Haveh: Yale University Press, 2001. pp. 1-16.


Additional reading:

Hájek, Jan; Kolář, František; Matoušek, Václav; Vágner, Petr: The Heart of Europe, Pardubice: Theo
Publishing, 2000.


Issues for discussion:

Explain the relation of Czechs and Slovaks.

Describe the circumstances of the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938.