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Doctors of Humanity: American Assistance to Czechoslovakia After World War One

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  • Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
  • When: December 5, 2018, 13:30 – 17:00

In connection with the centenary of Czechoslovakia and the establishment of modernday Czech-American relations, it is worth remembering the humanitarian and development aid the US provided to the newly established Czechoslovak state in its first years of existence.

The aim of two discussion panels is to foster a debate on the significance of the presence of US non-profit, volunteer and aid organisations in Czechoslovakia, evaluate their legacy within the broader concept of the “Americanisation” of Czechoslovakia and discuss the political background to their work. They will also focus on how cooperation between the Czechoslovaks and Americans functioned and what values, ideas and know-how were brought by, for instance, Hoover’s food aid, the Christian organisations YMCA and YWCA, the American Red Cross and others, as well as how this highly organised human(itarian)ism helped Czechoslovakia materially and left its mark on the civic sector. International and Czech experts will take part in the debate.

If interested, please register here https://bit.ly/2FpCCtE

The event will be translated into Czech and English.   

The event takes place with kind financial support of the US Embassy in Prague

PROGRAMME

13.30 Registration

13.45 – 14.00  
Welcome reception at the Library: Michael Žantovský
Introduction: Stephen B. King, the US Ambassador to the Czech Republic

14.00 – 15.30
Panel 1: “The Great Rescue Work”: Hoover’s Food Aid for Europe and Czechoslovakia

Panellists: Bertrand Patenaude (Hoover Institution – Stanford University), Halina Parafianowicz (Institute for History and Political Sciences at the University of Białystok)

Moderator: Michael Žantovský

15.30 – 15.45 Coffee break

15.45 – 17.15
Panel 2: “America in Czechoslovakia”: American non-profit organisations and development of the civil sector in Czechoslovakia after World War One

Panellists: Milada Polišenská (Anglo-American University in Prague), Petr Chlápek (a YMCA representative), Růžena Zaoralová – Roman Zaoral (Higher Medicinal School – FHS UK), Marek Skovajsa (Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, FHS UK)

Moderator: Jana Čechurová

17.15 – 17.30 A glass of wine

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JANA CECHUROVA is a lecturer at the Institute for Czech History of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, where she is also the vice-director. She focuses on the history of political and social elites and elite associations, right-wing policy and politicalculture, especially during the so-called First Republic. Besides this, she does editorial work on personal sources, the latest of which being the autobiographical book by Vaclav Havel entitled My Memoirs.

PETR CHLÁPEK is a Protestant priest and a primary school teacher in the Krkonose Mountains. He did a degree in Protestant Theology at the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. His thesis, The YMCA and Its Importance for Czech Society (2004), deals with the history and work of the YMCA from the establishment of Czechoslovakia to the present day.

HALINA PARAFIANOWICZ is a professor at the University in Białystok, Poland where she specialises mainly in the interwar history of Central and Eastern Europe and also the new history of the USA, especially with regard to their diplomatic relations to Central European countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia. She has published a number of works on this topic, including Czechoslovakia in the US Policy in 1918–1933Poland in the European Policy of the USA During the Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover and the recent political biography of Herbert C. Hoover The Often Forgotten President.

BERTRAND M. PATENAUDE is a historian teaching at Stanford University, where he lectures on modern history and international relations and is also an expert at the Hoover Institute. He is the author and editor of many books on Russian and Soviet history, the most well-known being The Big Show in Bololand (2002) which describes Hoover’s American mission in the famine-struck Russia in 1921. His book Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary has been published in Czech (Paseka 2011).

MILADA POLISENSKA is a professor of history and international relations at the Anglo-American University in Prague. She specialises in the modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe, as part of which focuses on diplomacy and the history of nationalism. She is known for her monographs “Czechoslovaks in the Gulag and Czechoslovak Diplomacy 1945–1953” or two volumes of “Diplomatic Relations of Czechoslovakia and the USA 1918–1968”.

MAREK SKOVAJSA is a lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University and collaborates with the Czech Sociological Review as an editor. His main specialisation is the history of sociology, sociological and political theory, democracy and civil society. His publications include Sociology in the Czech Republic (2017, with Jan Balon), Structures of Meaning (2013) or The Civil Sector. Organised Civic Society in the Czech Republic (2010, editor).

RUZENA ZAORALOVA teaches at the Emanuel Potting Secondary and Higher Medicinal School in Olomouc and has also taught at the Palacky University where she lectured on the history of nursing. She is an expert in the history of medicinal schools during the so-called First Republic. Her articles follow the role played by American workers and their organisations in the development of Czechoslovak healthcare.

ROMAN ZAORAL is a lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University and in the past has also worked for the Czech Academy of Sciences, National Museum, Central European University in Budapest and Palacky University in Olomouc. As a historian he is focused on the history of mediaeval economy and as an intern of the Mellon Foundation he worked for the Warburg Institute in London. As an intern of the Ministry or Foreign Affairs, he also assisted in research into the history of Czech expatriates in Canada. He and his wife prepared a study on the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation in connection with the establishment of the Masaryk School of Healthcare and Social Care as a new type of school in Czechoslovakia between the wars.

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