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National Communism as intellectual tradition and political program in Czechoslovakia

Project description

Exploring the relationship between communist ideology and nationalism

What’s the relationship between communist ideology and nationalism? How did national communism shape the political, intellectual and cultural development in Czechoslovakia from 1918 until the second half of 1990? The EU-funded NATCOM project will answer these questions. Specifically, it will study how the complicated relations between communism and nationalism formed the development of the Czechoslovak socialist dictatorship and how the remodelled national communist agenda after 1989 influenced the post communist transition. NATCOM will analyse the nature of communist appeals to national legitimacy and the continuities between national communism and ‘national populism’. The project will focus on the Slovak part of the Czechoslovak Republic and its interactions with the Czech and Hungarian environment.

Objective

The project National Communism (NATCOM) addresses the ambivalent and dynamic relations between communist ideology and nationalism. The project goal is to investigate how national communism, in its various stages, shaped the political, intellectual, and cultural development in Czechoslovakia during the “short 20th century”, from 1918 until the second half of the 1990s. National communism, as understood in this project, is a specific variety of communist thinking deeply rooted in the Eastern Central European (ECE) intellectual tradition. It is a crucial phenomenon that both predates and outlives the existence of the socialist dictatorships in the region. The investigation addresses the central question of how the complicated, ever-changing relations between communism and nationalism formed the development of the Czechoslovak socialist dictatorship and how the remodeled national communist agenda after 1989 influenced the post-communist transition. The main objects of the analysis are the nature of communist appeals to national legitimacy and the continuities between national communism and the “national populism” in the 1990s Eastern Central Europe. The research of national communism will look for continuities that survived the implementation of the new rules, the cases of adaptation, and evolution according to specific traditions. The main question is how the intellectual substance of national communism adapted to and also formed the changing reality. National communism will be analyzed with a specific focus on the Slovak part of the Czechoslovak Republic, in its interactions with the Czech and Hungarian environment. However, Slovak development is not understood as unique. NATCOM uses it as a case study identifying and providing distinct developmental traits typical for other former socialist dictatorships in ECE.

Call for proposal

H2020-WF-2018-2020

See other projects for this call

Sub call

H2020-WF-03-2020

Coordinator

USTAV PRO SOUDOBE DEJINY AV CR V.V.I
Net EU contribution
€ 144 980,64
Address
VLASSKA 9 MALA STRANA
118 40 Praha
Czechia

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Region
Česko Praha Hlavní město Praha
Activity type
Other
Links
Total cost
€ 144 980,64