Marek Fapšo - Jan Randák: Work as a Form of Emancipation: the Emergence of Czechoslovak Defectology, in: Kateřina Kolářová, Martina Winkler (eds.): Re/imaginations of Disability in State Socialism: Visions, Promises, Frustrations, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt - New York 2021, s. 63-90., 2021
In our text, we describe the formation of (new socialist) defectology (1953), a
discipline which ... more In our text, we describe the formation of (new socialist) defectology (1953), a
discipline which in the first years of the Czechoslovak communist regime
proposed a vision of better lives for people with disabilities, a vision
associated with the redefinition of their normality. Our aim is to show how
the turn towards socialist utopia underpinned by expertise stimulated the
formation of new expert knowledge within the new political order. The
idealistic planning and the inclusiveness of the then prevailing
(Czechoslovak) Stalinist discourse helped to change fields of expert
knowledge that had long been on the fringes of social interest into
established disciplines.
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papers by Jan Randák
1953–1964
In 1953, Miloš Sovák, a physician and university teacher, published the theoretical foundations of defectology, a science focused on individuals with physical, mental and sensory disabilities. Some contemporaries consider Sovák’s presentation to be the beginning of modern Czech special education. Sovák treated social relations as the most
important component of an actor’s environment in which they find themselves through upbringing and education and in which they sustain themselves. In simple terms: through the work performance in the context of the
building of socialism in 1950s Czechoslovakia. After the advent of the communist dictatorship, defectology was to replace interwar remedial pedagogy and paedopathology, although Sovák developed earlier views published during the 1930s and 1940s, including the period of Nazi occupation. Although defectology was firmly rooted in current socio-political contexts and represented a time-contingent social practice, the reproduction of its expert knowledge was limited by a number of external circumstances, including the closure of an independent university department, the absence of a departmental journal, or the reduction of its curriculum in undergraduate studies.
Childhood is receiving increasing attention in historical research. So far, the Bohemian lands and Slovakia have not been a major focus in this field. While childhoods there were certainly not fundamentally different from those in Western Europe, it can be assumed that the many historic transformations and the diverse social, political, and cultural tensions within these countries produced experiences and ideas of childhood specific to these regions. The contributions to this volume examine aspects of childhood in different periods of Bohemian and Slovak history, starting from diverse perspectives and taking different approaches, and thus aim to stimulate further research.
discipline which in the first years of the Czechoslovak communist regime
proposed a vision of better lives for people with disabilities, a vision
associated with the redefinition of their normality. Our aim is to show how
the turn towards socialist utopia underpinned by expertise stimulated the
formation of new expert knowledge within the new political order. The
idealistic planning and the inclusiveness of the then prevailing
(Czechoslovak) Stalinist discourse helped to change fields of expert
knowledge that had long been on the fringes of social interest into
established disciplines.
after the onset of the communist dictatorship (1950s), it oscillated between two poles. While the first
half of the decade is characterized by efforts to emancipate the Roma population, including the support of Roma culture, in the second half of the decade the state government took restrictive measures,
including a ban on nomadism. However, the state-encouraged and welcome emancipation of Roma fellow citizens was an ambivalent enterprise. On the one hand, the dictatorship took care over the Roma
for fundamental ideological reasons and offered them a chance to become members of the majority of
the society. On the other hand, it expressed its intention with a discriminatory language confirming
the power asymmetry between the majority of the population and the Roma. At the end, the state did
not only fail to overcome racist stereotypes of Czech public, but rather confirmed them.
The study shows that the quality of hygiene was an important aspect of the design and evaluation of public space, particularly in the second half of the 19th century and the broader turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the long 19th century, hygiene was knowledge that described and reflected the human relationship to the external material conditions of its physical existence. Practically everything that a person had to deal with
throughout his life became an object of its interest: nutrition, clothing, work and
rest, exercise and physical education, quality of housing, water supply, circula
tion of fresh air, and sex life.
Hygiene did not only target the individual, though, in that the health bene-
fit to the individual was merely a piece in the jigsaw of national or state benefit.
It led the individual, and though him the entire collective, to a life that was longer,
of better quality and, from the perspective of the state or national whole, more
productive. It is an aspect of modern Foucault’s biopower.
The appearance and quality of public space also came to be of interest to
hygiene. Attention was therefore given to the appearance, width, cleanliness, du-
stiness, or natural ventilation of streets, and the size of public space. The aim of
hygiene was prevention. This is not only about protecting existing conditions,
since it entails active behaviour within the current situation for the future benefit
of the individual and of the national or state population. It was about establishing
new and desirable conditions and forms of human life. Sanitary care for public
space therefore consciously works on a future that is better, because it is healthier.
Evidence for this is provided by sanitation projects in European cities and the
reconstruction of parts of the Prague Old Town and New Town at the turn of the
19th and 20th centuries.
When new collective identities and movements, namely national, political,
or class-related, entered the public space and shaped the phenomenon of street
politics, they often entered an already value-connoted environment burdened by
a somewhat less obvious “ideology”, meaning a view of hygiene. The nationali-
sation of the street, expressed for example by the nationally-relevant naming or
installation of statues, monuments, or commemorative plaques or the construc
tion of ideologically-contaminated buildings, may ultimately be very close to its
sanitation. The politicisation and sanitation of the street stem from the same
discursive space and pursue the same objective.
Schools for youth requiring special care reflected children’s abilities. They attempted to educate youths, get them out of social isolation, prepare them for practical life and enable them to gain socially beneficial work. In the system of schools for youth requiring special care, special schools were for children of defective mental development. These children became the object of attention of modern defectology based on the teaching of the Soviet physiologist and psychologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. Contemporary defectology and pedagogy aimed to rehabilitate special schools — their attempts were based on promoting the ethos of work, which was considered to be an important part of the new socialist morals. From that point of view, one’s beneficiality benefit and appreciation were based
on his/her engagement in the process of building socialism. It was not about the dehonestating act of moving children to special schools but about the fact that through engaging in the work process, defective children could become full members of the society building socialism. The important factor of (self-)identification and appreciation of an individual was now his or her work performance, not lowered intellect. The defectology theses and the idea of a pupil’s future engagement in the work process are an expression of the optimistic belief of fatality rejecting the sciences about overcoming handicaps, correlating with rejection of social uselessness and wasting of labour. Together with the specific viewpoint of work, the expert theses of communist defectology expressed the values of new socialist morals, which attempted to change mutual interpersonal and social relations and, in general, to create a new man of the Stalinist era. It offered defective individuals the possibility to live a full life in socialist society, not on its fringes. Finally, the new normality was promoted in relation to defective people — it was a normality defined by the ideal of work performance. It was defectology as a specific aspect of the truth of socialism, which negotiated or even constructed a new definition of the boundary separating our “inner” space of the normal (or politically formed and in this case mainly work-engaged) from the outside space of the ostracised and excluded individuals outside of the promoted values and identities.
Modern lab, lab of modern, or an enlightenment project?
After the beginning of Communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, school became an openly political institution. Its material structure and also the spacial organization of the school environment were assigned an educational and also a political function.
As a modern state, Czechoslovak Communist dictatorship took care of its citizens. The health of the young generation was considered to be a significant state issue. Science, relying on the teachings of Russian physiologist, doctor, and psychologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, was engaged in the quality and well-being of the young generation. It is through Pavlov’s optics that I look at the importance of the material organization of the school environment. The interest in pupils’ environment seems to be politically influenced in order to determine stimulating conditions forming children and youth according to Pavlov’s belief: nothing remains immovable and immutable. There can always be a change for the better - as long as the relevant conditions are met.
Designing the school space understood as the realization of the relevant conditions represents the formation of the external socialist environment affecting pupils' performance or health, their nervous system, and personality as such. On the background of Pavlov’s doctrine, the material form of the school environment becomes the means of constructing a new person of the Socialist era - ideology was inscribed in the material form of the school building.
The vision of targeted co-creation of a young person through the school environment is an interesting issue. The demands of the dictatorship on the organization of society and directing of human lives are obvious. In the case of schools and (the hygiene) of its space, it is not control as such but an effort to advance and human growth to a socialist man. The socialist design of the school space is hence an aspect of working on current well-being but also on the future, which will be even better because it will be socialist. This was a task, but with regard to the Marxist logic of historical development, it was also a commitment to history.
I view the beginnings of the Communist dictatorship through the optics of the past: the starting points and the theses of contemporary school hygiene are a reflection of modern thinking rooted in the Enlightenment. Modern understood as (Kant’s or Foucault’s) attitude, way of thinking and acting, which, among other things, can be characterized by man’s intentional work on himself for the purpose of progress and a better earthly future.
1953–1964
In 1953, Miloš Sovák, a physician and university teacher, published the theoretical foundations of defectology, a science focused on individuals with physical, mental and sensory disabilities. Some contemporaries consider Sovák’s presentation to be the beginning of modern Czech special education. Sovák treated social relations as the most
important component of an actor’s environment in which they find themselves through upbringing and education and in which they sustain themselves. In simple terms: through the work performance in the context of the
building of socialism in 1950s Czechoslovakia. After the advent of the communist dictatorship, defectology was to replace interwar remedial pedagogy and paedopathology, although Sovák developed earlier views published during the 1930s and 1940s, including the period of Nazi occupation. Although defectology was firmly rooted in current socio-political contexts and represented a time-contingent social practice, the reproduction of its expert knowledge was limited by a number of external circumstances, including the closure of an independent university department, the absence of a departmental journal, or the reduction of its curriculum in undergraduate studies.
Childhood is receiving increasing attention in historical research. So far, the Bohemian lands and Slovakia have not been a major focus in this field. While childhoods there were certainly not fundamentally different from those in Western Europe, it can be assumed that the many historic transformations and the diverse social, political, and cultural tensions within these countries produced experiences and ideas of childhood specific to these regions. The contributions to this volume examine aspects of childhood in different periods of Bohemian and Slovak history, starting from diverse perspectives and taking different approaches, and thus aim to stimulate further research.
discipline which in the first years of the Czechoslovak communist regime
proposed a vision of better lives for people with disabilities, a vision
associated with the redefinition of their normality. Our aim is to show how
the turn towards socialist utopia underpinned by expertise stimulated the
formation of new expert knowledge within the new political order. The
idealistic planning and the inclusiveness of the then prevailing
(Czechoslovak) Stalinist discourse helped to change fields of expert
knowledge that had long been on the fringes of social interest into
established disciplines.
after the onset of the communist dictatorship (1950s), it oscillated between two poles. While the first
half of the decade is characterized by efforts to emancipate the Roma population, including the support of Roma culture, in the second half of the decade the state government took restrictive measures,
including a ban on nomadism. However, the state-encouraged and welcome emancipation of Roma fellow citizens was an ambivalent enterprise. On the one hand, the dictatorship took care over the Roma
for fundamental ideological reasons and offered them a chance to become members of the majority of
the society. On the other hand, it expressed its intention with a discriminatory language confirming
the power asymmetry between the majority of the population and the Roma. At the end, the state did
not only fail to overcome racist stereotypes of Czech public, but rather confirmed them.
The study shows that the quality of hygiene was an important aspect of the design and evaluation of public space, particularly in the second half of the 19th century and the broader turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the long 19th century, hygiene was knowledge that described and reflected the human relationship to the external material conditions of its physical existence. Practically everything that a person had to deal with
throughout his life became an object of its interest: nutrition, clothing, work and
rest, exercise and physical education, quality of housing, water supply, circula
tion of fresh air, and sex life.
Hygiene did not only target the individual, though, in that the health bene-
fit to the individual was merely a piece in the jigsaw of national or state benefit.
It led the individual, and though him the entire collective, to a life that was longer,
of better quality and, from the perspective of the state or national whole, more
productive. It is an aspect of modern Foucault’s biopower.
The appearance and quality of public space also came to be of interest to
hygiene. Attention was therefore given to the appearance, width, cleanliness, du-
stiness, or natural ventilation of streets, and the size of public space. The aim of
hygiene was prevention. This is not only about protecting existing conditions,
since it entails active behaviour within the current situation for the future benefit
of the individual and of the national or state population. It was about establishing
new and desirable conditions and forms of human life. Sanitary care for public
space therefore consciously works on a future that is better, because it is healthier.
Evidence for this is provided by sanitation projects in European cities and the
reconstruction of parts of the Prague Old Town and New Town at the turn of the
19th and 20th centuries.
When new collective identities and movements, namely national, political,
or class-related, entered the public space and shaped the phenomenon of street
politics, they often entered an already value-connoted environment burdened by
a somewhat less obvious “ideology”, meaning a view of hygiene. The nationali-
sation of the street, expressed for example by the nationally-relevant naming or
installation of statues, monuments, or commemorative plaques or the construc
tion of ideologically-contaminated buildings, may ultimately be very close to its
sanitation. The politicisation and sanitation of the street stem from the same
discursive space and pursue the same objective.
Schools for youth requiring special care reflected children’s abilities. They attempted to educate youths, get them out of social isolation, prepare them for practical life and enable them to gain socially beneficial work. In the system of schools for youth requiring special care, special schools were for children of defective mental development. These children became the object of attention of modern defectology based on the teaching of the Soviet physiologist and psychologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. Contemporary defectology and pedagogy aimed to rehabilitate special schools — their attempts were based on promoting the ethos of work, which was considered to be an important part of the new socialist morals. From that point of view, one’s beneficiality benefit and appreciation were based
on his/her engagement in the process of building socialism. It was not about the dehonestating act of moving children to special schools but about the fact that through engaging in the work process, defective children could become full members of the society building socialism. The important factor of (self-)identification and appreciation of an individual was now his or her work performance, not lowered intellect. The defectology theses and the idea of a pupil’s future engagement in the work process are an expression of the optimistic belief of fatality rejecting the sciences about overcoming handicaps, correlating with rejection of social uselessness and wasting of labour. Together with the specific viewpoint of work, the expert theses of communist defectology expressed the values of new socialist morals, which attempted to change mutual interpersonal and social relations and, in general, to create a new man of the Stalinist era. It offered defective individuals the possibility to live a full life in socialist society, not on its fringes. Finally, the new normality was promoted in relation to defective people — it was a normality defined by the ideal of work performance. It was defectology as a specific aspect of the truth of socialism, which negotiated or even constructed a new definition of the boundary separating our “inner” space of the normal (or politically formed and in this case mainly work-engaged) from the outside space of the ostracised and excluded individuals outside of the promoted values and identities.
Modern lab, lab of modern, or an enlightenment project?
After the beginning of Communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, school became an openly political institution. Its material structure and also the spacial organization of the school environment were assigned an educational and also a political function.
As a modern state, Czechoslovak Communist dictatorship took care of its citizens. The health of the young generation was considered to be a significant state issue. Science, relying on the teachings of Russian physiologist, doctor, and psychologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, was engaged in the quality and well-being of the young generation. It is through Pavlov’s optics that I look at the importance of the material organization of the school environment. The interest in pupils’ environment seems to be politically influenced in order to determine stimulating conditions forming children and youth according to Pavlov’s belief: nothing remains immovable and immutable. There can always be a change for the better - as long as the relevant conditions are met.
Designing the school space understood as the realization of the relevant conditions represents the formation of the external socialist environment affecting pupils' performance or health, their nervous system, and personality as such. On the background of Pavlov’s doctrine, the material form of the school environment becomes the means of constructing a new person of the Socialist era - ideology was inscribed in the material form of the school building.
The vision of targeted co-creation of a young person through the school environment is an interesting issue. The demands of the dictatorship on the organization of society and directing of human lives are obvious. In the case of schools and (the hygiene) of its space, it is not control as such but an effort to advance and human growth to a socialist man. The socialist design of the school space is hence an aspect of working on current well-being but also on the future, which will be even better because it will be socialist. This was a task, but with regard to the Marxist logic of historical development, it was also a commitment to history.
I view the beginnings of the Communist dictatorship through the optics of the past: the starting points and the theses of contemporary school hygiene are a reflection of modern thinking rooted in the Enlightenment. Modern understood as (Kant’s or Foucault’s) attitude, way of thinking and acting, which, among other things, can be characterized by man’s intentional work on himself for the purpose of progress and a better earthly future.
Ostouzený i oslavovaný, popularizovaný i potlačovaný, především ale více než sto let přítomný. Tramping, ryze český fenomén, jenž se zrodil ve stínu povltavských lesů na úsvitu československé samostatnosti. Třebaže se jeho počátky skrývají v mlze času, jeho osud představuje pozoruhodný příběh touhy po svobodě, volnosti a opravdovosti, a to napříč generacemi a v různých politických režimech. Trampové se ocitali v hledáčku prvorepublikových mravokárců i státních orgánu, byli sledováni úřady v době protektorátu, komunistický režim je považoval za problémové pásky a chuligány. Dějiny trampingu však nejsou jen historií pronásledování a represí, ale také životní radosti, nezaměnitelného humoru a hledání romantiky i čistých mezilidských vztahů v záři táborových ohňů nebo jen tak pod hvězdnou oblohou. Kniha Putování za obzor ukazuje cestu českého trampování od prvopočátků až do sklonku komunistické diktatury.
Soon after the founding of Czechoslovakia in October 1918, tramps started to roam the countryside of the young republic. These were not the unemployed vagrants or seasonal workers mostly known as the tramps in the early 1870s USA. In the newly formed Central European state, “tramp” became the term used for the young men and later also women who spent their short weekends out in the countryside, recharging after the working week in the city, camping, playfully pretending to be characters out of adventure novels, playing sports. Simply having fun and living their own way in the nature. The word “tramp” was adopted into the Czech language under a different meaning from its English original, although its inspiration came from the romantic depictions of North America in contemporary literature for Czech youths.
The path beyond the city limits for the first Czech tramps had already opened before the First World War: the Czech public first started to read about camping (tenting, bivouacking) in the periodicals at the turn of the 20th century, where camping was described as a leisure time activity beneficial to body and mind. Following the contemporary opinions and hygienic recommendations regarding the public health across national and state boundaries, the first Czech Scout groups recognized the healing power of nature and integrated camping into its outdoor activities. Organized hikers and canoe campers would also camp out during their overnight expeditions.
Czech tramping was born spontaneously after the WWI among young people camping under the forest canopy and on the riverbanks. The most obvious inspiration came from the romanticized idea of the Wild West – tramping drew on its depictions in the popular adventure novels and American Westerns. Many tramps admired the works of Jack London. In the afterwar years, a lot of tramps kept on roving the Czech countryside in regular clothes, however, others put on Western-like outfits and for the weekend’s short duration even transformed themselves into gold-diggers, trappers or sailors. They often adopted nicknames that sounded exotic to the Czech ear (John, Bill, Jerry) and ventured out of the city into the countryside, seeing the nature as a reflection of faraway lands, renaming it and giving it a thrill of adventure. The birth of the tramping movement is inextricably bound to the contemporary popular culture.
The phenomenon of violence has been approached by historians and representatives of other disciplines from a number of different methodological and ideological perspectives. Recently, the concepts of structural and discursive violence and their various manifestations have received special attention in scholarly debates. Violence as an integral part of European modernity also represented a recurrent topic in the scholarly work of the historian Bedřich Loewenstein (*June 29, 1929 in Prague - + May 11, 2017 in Berlin). This collective monograph has been partly composed as a tribute to his lifelong contribution to the research and interpretation of violence as “another modernity”. However, it is not a mere Festschrift: professor Loewenstein actively participated in the preparation of the book as an author, co-editor and source of inspiration. The contributions represent essays on various discourses about violence in modern European history as well as case studies which tackle the phenomenon of violence as “another modernity” from particular perspectives. The individual authors focus on World War I as the "seminal catastrophe" of the 20th century (B. Loewenstein), deliberate interventions into the social structure of Czechoslovak society through "stratification violence" between 1938 and 1989 (M. Havelka), the real as well as virtual violence in the context of carnivals and street festivals (R. Haluzík) or mass relay races in inter-war Czechoslovakia (M. Zapletal), discourses on the causes of violence in the Balkans (F. Šístek), interpretations of violence in the modern history of Ukraine in the context of the current information war (D. Svoboda), the role of violence in the construction of Czech national identity at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (J. Randák), the "dictatorship of the street" in the town of Plzeň during the turbulent period following World War I (K. Řeháček), public violence in Brno and its surroundings as documented in judicial records from the late Habsburg monarchy (M. Řepa), resistance to state-controlled violence through "Švejk-like behaviour", including desertions and self-mutilations in Germany during World War I (B. Ziemann), discourses about peace in early modern Europe as well as contemporary discussions on violence and modernity (B. Loewenstein) and violence in the context of artistic life and its repression by the state and party apparatus after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (S. Bolom-Kotari).
The book deals with the communist dictatorship politics of history, it is specifically dedicated to the formation and promotion of politically updated image of the Hussite movement and the use of the Hussite tradition during the early years of Communist Party rule. Attention is not primarily given to the history of period historiography. Production of historians is viewed in the book as a part of the political use of historical arguments on which alongside academics, an entire ideological apparatus of the communist state (journalists, politicians, ideologists of the Communist Party, textbook writers and cultural workers) participated. (the whole English summary is in the attached pdf file)
Pohled obrácený proti proudu času může motivovat k budování lepšího světa, respektive: Podněty pro dnešní promýšlení sociability lze nalézt i v minulosti. Záleží jen na vůli o inspirativních dějinách mluvit, stejně jako odvaze učinit z nich budoucnost.
odkaz na odemčený text: https://denikn.cz/959719/cesta-historii-tam-a-zase-zpatky-parizska-komuna-ideologickych-narativu-zbavena/?cst=1dad799cc8fe97ea0219cdfb5d8fc20de0e917cd
odkaz na odemčený text: https://denikn.cz/828191/k-prosperujici-budoucnosti-dojdeme-vzajemnou-pomoci-nikoliv-hrubou-silou-a-nespoutanym-individualismem/?cst=fff438f87dd9f83ec7c4d267c5ff4903b3db012d
odkaz na odemčený text: https://denikn.cz/714093/utopie-pro-soucasnost-porazit-ve-volbach-babise-zdaleka-nestaci-opozice-musi-najit-odvahu-zmenit-samu-sebe/?cst=85f4826ad8db437627f5ffdb1b958509b2bfde6a
odkaz na odemčený text: https://denikn.cz/581055/osidnost-lacinych-veci-co-nas-muze-naucit-o-historii-a-ta-zase-o-tom-jak-premyslet-nad-soucasnosti/?cst=8f9de6fe513b600c571c49c8dbcbece92ee45d51
jako obraz dějin římskokatolické církve, Praha, Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů,
2019, 316 s., ISBN 978-80-88292-56-2
Sklenářův Boštík konečně ukazuje a dokládá, kterak v zápase o víru začala katolická církev, stahující se za zdi kostelů, postupně tahat za kratší konec provazu. Tato situace nakonec autorovi umožňuje přemýšlet o selhání části diecézního kněžstva, jež „v konfrontaci s komunistickým totalitním panstvím“ z rozličných důvodů volila „bližší dobro spočívající v setrvání ve farnosti a v možnosti legálního kněžského působení“. Hodnoticí soud si Sklenář dovolit může, dobře totiž ví, že od historikovy práce jej lze jen těžko oddělit. Kniha o děkanu Václavu Boštíkovi je možná skutečně jen jedním z možných „obrazů minulosti katolických křesťanů v českých zemích“. Jde však o zpodobnění výmluvné, jež z východočeské periferie zajímavě nasvěcuje českou katolickou krajinu
doby nesvobody i její moderní historiografii. O to sympatičtější mi kniha Michala
Sklenáře je.