Abstract
Ego-documents rank among the most important alternative sources that enable understanding of events and the motivations for people's actions in the past. The study herein submitted draws attention to the existence of heretofore unknown diary of the distinguished Slavist Jules Legras.
Legras' fate and works are not well known to the Czech public, and therefore his career, professional publishing activities and also the place he occupied among his generational cohorts are also sketched out. Legras "entered" Czech history in several different ways.
First of all, he took part as a representative of the French military mission in the Russian Civil War in Siberia. Content analysis of his diary also yields undisclosed and considerably critical testimony on the Czechoslovak legions and M.
R. Štefánik. On the basis of study of this source we can begin to disclose the difficulties encountered in the development of a French Slavist who was positioned in this period between scholarship and politics.
Legras, however, also taught in Dijon, which was one of the cities with a significant Czech presence in France (secondary school, university), which is another reason his testimony is of interest. Finally, the last subject treated is one which stems from Legras'recurrent stays in Czechoslovakia is an analysis of his again frequently critical view of Czech-French relations during the "golden age" of Czech Francophilia.