Issues

This thematic issue explores the processes of politicization and political socialization in Central and East-Central Europe from the late 19^th to mid-20^th centuries, a period of significant societal and political transformation. Focusing on non-elite and subaltern populations, the issue highlights the multifaceted ways individuals and groups engaged with emerging political structures and contemporary discourses. The contributions explore themes of interaction, reinterpretation, and adaptation, examining how political awareness and participation evolved under varying social, cultural, and institutional conditions. The studies investigate diverse settings, from the role of gymnastic associations in fostering national consciousness to the mobilization of women and workers through social networks and participation in organized activities. They further explore cultural tools of political engagement, such as political cabarets, and the contested narratives surrounding a factory town’s transition from capitalism to socialism. Together, these articles offer insights into the dynamic and context-specific nature of politicization in modernizing states, advancing our understanding of political socialization during this transformative period.

Intellectual history has gradually found its way into East-Central European historiography. This issue is dedicated to broadening the scope and objects of research traditionally focused on by recognizing the importance of actors’ motivations and the intellectual paths of their ideas. Moving beyond attempts to place the region of East-Central Europe on the ideational map, historians associated with the fields of intellectual history, history of ideas, and history of political and social thought, gathered in this issue, continue to explore the ideas of specific actors from the 19th century to the post-1989 frameworks. Thus, the presented issue aims not to focus on particular personalities or periods of time but rather praises both the richness and importance of thought conducted by various authors. The selected case studies delve into utopian thinking, the transformation of Catholic thought, dissident sociological concepts, neoliberalism, and revolutionary dynamics. Furthermore, each contribution underscores the intricate intertwinement with broader European, and even global, realms within which the analysed actors and their intellectual constructs gained significance, often culminating in palpable political ramifications. The aim of this issue is to engage in communication with the ongoing intellectual-historical endeavours in the respective region.

The current issue focuses on terminological and interpretative problems which are key to the historical study of crime in the past. While they may seem like purely theoretical questions, the answers reached provide crucial contributions to the understanding and documentation of developmental changes in the perception, assessment, sanctioning and explanation of crime in the distant past. Based on a qualitative analysis of contemporary sources from the judicial criminal practice, including the language and terminology of official and private correspondence, legislation, legal literature, and religious and political writings, the authors present crime not only as a form of social pathology, but also as an important indicator of societal change. The classifications and severity of different types offences as well as the perception of phenomena closely linked to criminality such as morality, honour, violence, social threats or public endangerment and public interest, to a large extent reflect the changing values and attitudes of society towards different behaviours. The research in this issue reveals how special conditions and the military presence in the borderlands generated new forms of criminality, the relationship of legislation to smoking and alcohol consumption, and in the case of smoking, the different justification for restrictions set according to the changing needs and priorities of society.

This issue of Forum Historiae is dedicated to an exploration of social and political trust and distrust, phenomena which have continually influenced the structure of social hierarchies and remained decisive factors for acceptance, exclusion and control in different types of societies and regimes. Social scientists agree that liberal democracies cannot function without trust, which takes the form of social capital, and even autocracies and dictatorships cannot be based on fear alone or promises of material wellbeing without some modicum of trust between rulers and the ruled. The studies presented in these pages focus on concerns of political and interpersonal trust—or the lack thereof—in both democratic and communist regimes dealing predominantly with the relationships between citizens and political institutions, and between institutions and their representatives. There is a distinct focus on the Cold War era, however, in some cases, continuities in developments extend beyond the given period. Authors centered their work on a discussion of the phenomenon of trust and distrust across East-West borders in the spheres of economy and cultural and scientific relationships, as well as the émigré’s circles.

The articles presented in this issue offer an interdisciplinary view on the history of independent publishing in both the late socialist and post-socialist periods. Different variants of do-it-yourself cultural creativity highlight the space that lies between the established high-brow and popular low-brow cultures. Specifically, the intersections between the approaches of art history, musicology, cultural studies, sociology, literary history, and media studies constitute a representative spectrum for these reconciliations. We would like to highlight the observation of all our contributors that self-published press and books bring a specific value to the building of communities or scenes that are not only locally embedded, but also interlinked globally, and show how various cultural trends were established and developed in different sociocultural and national settings. Our cases show that the socialist and post-socialist contexts enabled interesting shifts in the economic and social positioning of self-publishing activities.

The medieval concept of fidelity to the king, which meant loyalty as well as obedience, formed the basis of personal hierarchical relationships between him and his people in the Middle Ages. The tendencies of rulers to reward loyalty and punish those, who were disloyal, were common and frequent. This loyalty to the king was important for the political order and preservation of the power of the sovereign as well as his closest people. This issue of Forum Historiae has focused on topics connected to fidelity in historical texts and in practical use in the era before the year 1300. The musings on the period views on fidelity with examples from the Kingdom of Hungary; an analysis of Cosmas’ Chronica Boemorum work with the category of fidelity; views of the early medieval juridical norms, and the exile as common punishment for acts of treason and infidelity in the Moravian principality in the 9th century; an examination of the assemblies of the freemen during the same period and in the 12th century; a question of tithes awarded by king in the 11th century; consideration of the current research on the notion, idea and perception of dynasties in medieval Europe; as well as the expulsions of German kings in the 5th and 6th century, are all, among others, to be found in the studies published here.

In recent years, historians have increasingly come to question the declaration of armistice a decisive line which divides a state of war from a state of peace. Countries have often mobilised their full potential and all possible options, produced propaganda and celebrated heroes all in order to defeat the enemy; families lost their fathers, sons, husbands or brothers; many soldiers returned home crippled, etc. Such processes and events cannot simply be stopped, or forgotten by signing a ceasefire, although the overwhelming majority of the population waited for this to happen. A state of war does not end through a ceasefire, from a legal or military point of view. The concept of exiting the war (sortie de guerre) shall handle this complicated process, which has its own duration and logic. In the current issue of Forum Historiae, historians from the Visegrad Four countries and France apply it to the greatest military conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries, those being the Napoleonic Wars and the two World Wars.

The art of the early 19th century and especially the question of its directions after the year 1800 has repeatedly been the subject of attention of art historians in recent decades. The conventional image of the 19th century as a century of varying historicist styles, insisting on academic rules, sentimental and/or heroic religious and historic imagery and bourgeois taste seems to have more to it than just being a prelude to the modernism that emerged. In Central European visual arts, the question of transition from the late 18th century into the modern era is related to the study of a series of long undervalued artists whose names have (now) either almost vanished or were dismissed (in the past). An example of this are Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789 – 1869) and his followers – Nazarenes – also known as monk-artists. This issue of Forum Historiae, first entirely in English, is devoted to studies which examine European Nazarenism and role of Joseph Führich (1800 – 1876) in it, from various points of views and perspectives, taking into account the autonomous reception of Nazarenism in different countries, but also the unifying role of the model images produced by key Nazarene artists.

During the long course of the 19th century, cities overcame significant changes in their urbanistic development, construction of technical infrastructure and improving the housing quality. This process accelerated at the turn of the 19th and the 20th century and in the case of cities in the territory of today's Slovakia, especially after the creation of Czechoslovakia (1918). The emphasis during this evolution was on improving the quality of life in a city including development in areas such as technical and transportation infrastructure, modern building methods and architecture, or public hygiene and healthcare. However, it also included the culture of living, ways of spending leisure time, and relationship to the surrounding nature. In general, the process of the modernization of a city was neither balanced nor continuous. It was influenced by frequent changes in political regimes, with a significant change in models of urbanism and culture after 1918. The authors of this issue of Forum Historiae characterize the changes of the "city in Slovakia" using examples, especially the ones of Prešporok/Bratislava, Košice, Prešov and Žilina.

The means that people used to make it clear that they were feeling impoverished, marginalized, humiliated or disadvantaged in society were varied. They generally depended on the intensity of the feeling of threat and injustice, on the mentality and political culture of the affected group or class and also on the options made available to them by the ruling regime. The inter-war republic was no exception. Whether it was violent hunger riots of rural or urban "riff-raff" or cultured middle-class protests, they usually signalled where the neuralgic points of social cohesion were and where obstacles to the more harmonious society lay. On the other hand, the reactions of the state and social elite showed the extent to which society was able to cope with social problems, whether these problems pushed society forward, on the way to achieving its ideals or whether the problems brought it to an ever deeper paralysis. The Forum Historiae 2/2015 deals with the outlined aspects of the phenomenon of social and political protest.

An emphasis on the variety of a status of the power was a common feature of medieval political thinking. However, this fact has been sometimes overlooked. Therefore, how was the power being exercised in the Early Middle Ages? How were the political entities organised? Can we really consider these as unified kingdoms and principalities? Is it correct to perceive them in the same manner as modern states? The studies published in this issue of Forum Historiae are attempting to address such questions. Our aim is to join a discourse concerning the political entities functioning, power manifestations and a position of the sovereign in the Middle Ages. Such a discourse has been ongoing within the West European medieval studies for a long time and has also been still more and more frequently approached by historians of the neighbouring countries. Besides, the objective is to fill a gap within the Slovak medieval studies which seldom address the topics presented in this issue.

A topic of the political thinking within the Slovak national movement in 1848 – 1914 has been recently one of those rather marginal ones within the Slovak historiography. However, we believe this topic offers a very good research and interpretative potential. Therefore it was been chosen as a topic of this issue. We have prepared seven academic studies (as well as two reviews) which analyse particular political or national-ideological conceptions and phenomena from various points of view. Texts are bringing several original approaches as well as new interpretations, therefore we believe that the broader academic public will find them interesting. The texts aim to become an impulse for a new research of this intriguing and often neglected topic.

Ethnic stereotypes are often a tool of political manipulation and they serve as a means of escalating ethnic tensions. They represent schematic images not only of ethnic groups and nations but also of members of the same nation. They can assist in influencing public opinion as well as in creating a sense of togetherness – thanks to emotions they are able to trigger. For example, a dishonouring caricature from 1882 depicts nations of the former Kingdom of Hungary disapprovingly grumbling "We are not going!" to an appeal from their Hungarian homeland – a mother offering her arms. The caricature also does not spare Hungarian Kóbi, shown holding his mother´s skirt. It reflects the complicated situation of the Jewish population in the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well. A figure on the right depicts the leader of the anti-Semitic party G. Istóczy exclaiming that the mother should not accept "that Jordan bastard." Historical research of mutual ethnic (as well as other) stereotypes reveals their unrealistic nature as well as the functions they are supposed to fulfill and an importance they possessed during the period of nationalism. We believe that this issue of Forum Historiae will contribute not only to better understanding them but also to overcoming them.

There are some topic which make historians wonder, though they have not approached these topics yet. There are problems which attack people literally every day and so they look for an answer on "where has this come from?" but search for this answers in libraries in vain. Corruption is one of such issues. Many historians abroad are engaged in a research of the corruption while only colleagues from related social sciences have dealt with this topic in Slovakia up to now. Therefore this issue consists of articles written by authors who have researched not only specific forms and manifestations of corruption but also changes of concepts of "corruption" which were conditioned both culturally and politically. Area of the present-day Slovakia is an interesting example for studying how the "arenas" of the practice of corruption were changing and how legal norms and moral rules were developing depending on social structure, economical systems and political regimes. It is also a good example to see how land reforms, arization, privatization and other massive shifts of properties marked sensitivity of a corruption perception. While reading this issue, a reader may follow both continuity and discontinuity in the practices of corrupt behaviour. One may even discover surprising similarities between corrupted clerks of the Emperor Joseph II, corruption scandals from the beginning of the 20th century and current reality.

A so-called "academic" History of Slovakia (first volume published in 1986) dedicated only several pages to a topic of nobility. Only the briefest data were provided and even these were obviously influenced by a class perception of the history which significantly misinterpreted
Tzv. „akademické" Dejiny Slovenska, ktorých prvý diel vyšiel roku 1986, venujú šľachte len the reality. This short, or even superficial image fully accepting requirements of contemporary ideology, did not emerge as a result of a proper and systematic research. To put it simply – the nobility was not a "modern" or "fashionable" topic to deal with at that time, therefore some foreign patterns (especially those ideological ones) had been assumed. Partially, positivistic as well as romantic attitudes of some older authors have been taken over and subsequently, such findings were filtered that they fit in a previously established concept. This situation has essentially changed since the 1990s. Researches turned their attention also to the topic of the nobility. Questions of its origin, contemporary status, differentiations, tasks, relations or even its everyday life have been addressed. The most recent findings concerning noble population and their life in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period are presented in this issue of Forum Historiae.

What is a subject of a historical text? How are results of historiographical research presented? What does such research actually refer to? Theoreticians of history have been looking for answers to these questions, while historians themselves (at least within the context of Slovak institutionalised historiography) have ignored them. One of the most visible consequences of this absence of a theoretical reflection is a recycling of deep-rooted stereotypes, as well as a natural application of terms and schemes which often have questionable or unsustainable content from an analytical point of view. If we want to eliminate the production of historical knowledge of this type, historians´ theoretical reflection on the nature of this discipline is essential. This issue of Forum Historiae claims the same objective. It presents seven studies and three reviews which variously analyse the implications of a narrative form and ideological preconditions of historical texts for the nature of historical knowledge.

Slovak historiography has dedicated appropriate attention to the history of towns, especially to their emergence, legal status, administration and economy, since the 1960s. However, the person of a burgher, town founder or inhabitant, an events mover, has been somewhat neglected along these issues. Nobility as a separate subject did not appear as a focus of attention. As far as towns were concerned, nobles were perceived as a retarding element of their development. However, new researches have widened the scope of findings concerning nobility and towns and has offered a much more varied and wide-ranging image of their coexistence, their cooperation as well as conflicts, in their full complexity. These studies and articles represent written versions of papers presented at the conference "Towns and Nobility, Burghers and Nobles". Their content is focused specifically on the above mentioned aspects of the coexistence of towns, burghers and nobility.