Book Review: The Political Control of Czechoslovakia
| Date | 01 December 1955 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070205501000417 |
| Author | H. Gordon Skilltng |
| Published date | 01 December 1955 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEWS
301
Miksche
has
become
an
advocate,
the
Austro-Hungarian minority
politically
dominated and
socially
exploited
the
majority.
Poli-
tically,
the
Austrian
portion
of
the
Dual
Monarchy
was
more
progressive,
while
the
Hungarian
portion
in political
and
social
terms
was
truly
feudal.
For
these
reasons,
the
Dual Monarchy
was
an
anachronism
and
could
not
be
saved
after
the
first
world
war,
which
had
been
fought
by
the
Allies
expressly
to secure
the
liberty
of
small
nations.
On
the
other
hand,
we
can
agree with
the
author,
that
the
greatest
mistake
of
the
Allied
powers
after
the
first
world
war
was
their
failure
to
advise
and
to
aid
the
small
nations
of
the
Danubian
region
to
co-operate effectively
in
order to
obtain
the
advantages
of
a
great
Commonwealth. Such
an
association
could
have
developed
a
feeling
of
mutual
toleration
among
those
states.
In
this
case,
it
is
questionable
whether
the
second world
war
would
have
occurred.
Toronto,
Canada
JAN
SMEREK
THE
POLITICAL
CONTROL
OF
CZECHOSLOVAKIA.
By
I.
Gadourek.
1953.
(Leiden: Krosese. xvii,
285pp.
$3.25
u.s.)
This
"study
in
social
control" by a young
Czech
sociologist,
living
in
the
Netherlands,
is
the
first
volume
in a
series
to
be
published by
the
so-called
Czechoslovak
Foreign
Institute
in
Exile,
with
headquarters
in Leiden.
The
general
purpose
of
the
series
is
said
to
be
to
contribute
to
the
restoration
of
freedom
in
Czechoslovakia
through
inquiry into
the
forms
of
social
con-
trol
in
that
country
and
in
the
west.
This
book
falls
into
two
parts,
very
unequal
in
value.
The
first,
more
than
half
of
the
contents,
is
a
detailed
description
of
the
organizations
and
techniques
of
political
control in
communist
Czechoslovakia
in
the
spheres
of
politics,
economics,
education,
religion,
science
and
arts,
and
recreation.
This
contains
new
and
interesting
information,
although
not
without
occasional
errors,
and always monistically
interpreted
in
terms
of
the
single
concept
of
"control."
The
second
part
involves
the
"conceptualization"
of
this
material
as
a
case-study
of
the
"arrested
culture"
that
is
the
product
of
communist
rule.
Conclusions
that
hardly
seem
momentous
are
drawn:
that
control
is
"conscious"
rather
than
unconscious,
centralized,
not
diffused,
and
primarily
political,
rather
than
economic,
cultural
or
other.
Other
propositions,
scarcely
more
than
hypotheses,
relate
to the
three
"personalty
types":
the
communist,
the
apathic
(sic)
neutral,
and
the
"re-
sistant
personality."
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