SOU OBÉ DùJINY - Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV - Akademie věd ČR

Zápas dvou kultur Summaries v totalitním systému 245of contemporary history is well established in Great Britain. Apart from a number ofother research institutions, the important Institute of Contemporary British History(now the Centre for Contemporary British History) and its journal ContemporaryBritish History have been on the scene since the mid-1980s.The central theme of British contemporary history is, according to the author, therecurring search for the causes of the decline in the international standing of GreatBritain in the second half of the twentieth century, which is symbolized by the end of theEmpire and underscored by the long recession in the 1970s. Answers were sought ininternational relations (the post-war international constellation and decolonization),politics at home (the post-war political consensus, the building of the welfare state,the growing strength of the labour unions), economics (a disproportionately costlycivil service and failure to modernize), culture and mores (the suppression of theentrepreneurial spirit, the dwindling away of Victorian virtues). A new impulse, onethat was also mutually bound with politics, was given to this historiography in theyears that Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. She had made it her aim to restoreBritish prestige and productivity by mobilizing traditional virtues. The wide range ofdiscussions about the decline included some downright revisionist approaches (forexample, John Charmley’s), but also led to a shift in the field of contemporary historytowards an interdisciplinary, international approach.In the last part of the article, the author considers the periodization of contemporaryhistory in Great Britain. Some historians consider the field to include even the ReformActs of 1832, which expanded male suffrage. More often, however, historians pointto the First World War as marking the beginning of contemporary history, but mostlysay that it is the Second World War or its end. Some historians, however, argue thatcontemporary history for Great Britain does not begin till the Suez Crisis (late 1956).In any case, the predominant view today is that contemporary history includesthe twentieth century while its centre of gravity is shifting to the period after theSecond World War. This sort of periodization now corresponds also to the pragmaticconception of contemporary history as periods limited by the memories of livingcontemporaries of the events and people under discussion.ReviewsA Struggle of Two Cultures in a Totalitarian System:Some Thoughts on Jiří’s Knapík’s Most Recent BookKarel HrubýKnapík, Jiří. V zajetí moci: Kulturní politika, její systém a aktéři 1948–1956. Prague:Libri, 2006, 398 pp.In the first part of this review the reviewer praises Knapík for providinga systematic, comprehensive, and vivid picture of the institutional framework