Syllabus
Czech history in the course of the “short” 20th century (1914-1989) 1. The Great War and the changing phenomenon of the “Czech question”. 2.
Creation of the Versailles system, its adversaries and Czechoslovakia in the 1920s. 3. Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, and the appeasement in the 1930s. 4.
The events of 1938-1939 (the Munich agreement, the takover of Czech Lands and the outbreak of Word War Two). 5. World War Two and the struggle for the restoration of the Czechoslovak Republic. 6.
The Third Czechoslovak Republic and the postwar world. 7. Establishment of Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the first phase of the Cold War. 8.
The first “thaw” period in West-East relationship and gradual dismantling of the Stalinist regime. 9. The 1960s.
The Prague Spring of 1968 and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. 10. The Détente between the West and the East, the “Ostpolitik” of the Bundesrepublik and the Helsinki conference. 11.
The development of the “Normalization” regime in Czechoslovakia and opposition to it. 12. The fall of Communism, forging a new democracy and the dissolution of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic.
Annotation
An elementary three-hour lecture course focused on general and czech history from 1914 to 1989. The students are required to read at least 10 published scholarly works on 20th century czech and world history and submit the reading list at the oral exam, which will take at least 30 minutes.