# East European Quarterly/Volume 15/Number 1/Palacký and Czech Politics After 1876

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PALACKÝ AND CZECH POLITICS AFTER 1876
Bruce M. Garver University of Nebraska at Omaha
František Palacký has exercised an enormous influence on Czech political as well as scholarly and intellectual development. This paper aims to delineate and evaluate his enduring political influence in at least four respects. He directly influenced his own and succeeding generations by his statesmanlike personal example and by origniating and advocating specific political programs and policies. Immediately and in the long run he indirectly conditioned Czech politics through the laws and self-governmental institutions that he helped establish in the 1860s and most importantly through his political ideals and interpretations of Czech history.
For most Czechs, Palacký set a positive example as a patriotic and intellectual statesman, whose character, aspirations, and peasant origins very much typified those of the liberal Czech intelligentsia and upper middle class. Born in 1798 to a literate and fairly prosperous family of Protestant Moravian peasants, he had by 1848 won recognition abroad and at home as a distinguished scholar and as the principal political spokesman of his people. In doing so, he set an example to which many upwardly mobile Czechs could aspire. Moreover, Czechs from all walks of life could identify with, if not emulate his achievements and also appreciate his having resurrected the national past and helped acquire international recognition for the nation.$^1$
Palacký’s continuing political influence also owes much to the fact that he was the first Czech to define a comprehensive national political program as well as the first to be acknowledged internationally as a political leader. That program, based on historic Bohemian state-rights (České státní právo), sought autonomy for the three Czech lands–Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia–within the framework of a reformed and federated Habsburg Monarchy.$^2$ Palacký’s efforts to advance civil liberties and national autonomy during the tumultous years from 1848 through 1851 and during the eleven years of constitutional crisis after 1860 may be seen as the logical continuation of his scholarly contributions to the Czech national revival during the Vormärz. More than any other Czech, he and Karel Havlíček directed that national revival toward political as well as ​cultural and economic goals.$^3$ Beginning in 1848, Palacký served for a quarter century as the principal Czech spokesman in dealings with the Habsburgs or with political allies and opponents. He either authored or co-authored all important declarations of Czech political aims, from those of 1848 and 1849 to the rescript of 1871. These he further clarified by publishing timely political essays and by delivering policy speeches to imperial assemblies in 1848 and 1849 and after 1860 to the Bohemian diet or the upper house of the Reichsrat.$^4$
Czechs have honored Palacký for political as well as intellectual and moral leadership, not only by word and deed but by large public festivals often designed to demonstrate national solidarity as well as to commemorate Palacký’s achievements. This occurred at the celebration of his seventieth birthday in June, 1868, that coincided with the laying of the cornerstone of the Czech National Theatre to be built by popular subscription and with the holding of tábory (mass open air assemblies) that demonstrated for Bohemian state-rights and greater civil liberties. Political overtones also appeared at the international convocation of June, 1898, in Prague to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of Palacký’s birth. At the same time, twenty-two years after his death, the Czechs commemorated the fiftieth anniversaries of the Prague Slav Congress, the revolutions of 1848, and the abolition of serfdom and the manorial system. In 1898, the Czechs also were beginning to recover from a serious political defeat sustained when German riots prompted imperial withdrawal of the 1897 Badeni language ordinance requiring all civil servants in the Czechs lands to be able to read and write Czech as well as German. In 1898, the Czechs not only honored Palacký’s many positive contributions to knowledge, national welfare, and Slavic solidarity, but also noted how far they had to go to accomplish those objectives he had helped delineate thirty to fifty years before.$^5$ In commemorating in 1926 the 50th anniversary of Palacký’s death, many Czechs regarded the recently established Czechoslovak Republic as the logical culmination of Palacký’s scholastic and political endeavors.$^6$
Palacký, like most Czechs of his and later generations, by no means regarded political success as the measure of all things. After all, the Czech national revival initially encouraged economic growth and achievements in scholarship, the arts, and letters. During the Vormärz and again during the fifties, two periods when the Habsburgs curtailed civil liberties and popular participation in public affairs, Palacký by example and exhortation urged Czechs to advance individual achievement and public welfare through intellectual, artistic, and commercial endeavor.$^7$ He also supported those ​private philanthropic, patriotic, and cultural associations by which Czechs collectively worked to further national revival and prepare for the day when imperial laws would authorize limited civil liberties and popular political activity. Despite imperial censorship of his and other patriotic writings and the imprisonment of many contemporaries, Palacký confidently expected that his countrymen would ultimately obtain more national autonomy and civil rights within a federated Habsburg Monarchy. His having worked patiently and intelligently toward these goals in trying times surely encouraged his fellow countrymen in similar circumstances to do likewise.$^8$
Palacký’s political influence after 1876 also owed much to the fact that he had for more than three decades led the Czech people toward greater national autonomy and individual freedom with wisdom, prudence, and courage. His conduct of politics from 1848 to 1876 appeared wise to posterity, in large part because he based that conduct upon clearly defined goals, thorough knowledge of political circumstances, and a keen sense of historical development. This conduct was also wise to the extent that he delineated political objectives for the Czech nation compatible with those of other small nations seeking to achieve some measure of national emancipation and social reform. He also tried to base Czech politics on such broad principles as liberalism and the right of each nation to cultivate its best and most unique qualities in order to contribute to the general well-being of mankind. By conducting Czech politics in accordance with these principles and with the aspirations of other small European nations, Palacký, recognizing that no small nation could or should go it alone, sought to encourage Slavic solidarity and the cooperation of all Europeans in advancing individual and national freedom and achievement. Simultaneously, he thus helped reassure the Czechs that they acted in accordance with powerful and irreversible historical currents in seeking to advance individual rights and national autonomy. In this sense, the Czechs’ confidence by 1876 in their ultimate success appeared especially warranted in light of the recent German and Italian unifications and the rapid advances toward unity and independence made by smaller European peoples, such as the South Slavs, the Irish, the Norweglans, and the Greeks.$^9$
Palacký’s political tactics may appropriately be defined as prudent, at least to the extent that he and his National Party colleagues did not act without carefully considering pertinent political circumstances and the possible consequences of any action. These tactics and his notions of what would be politically possible as well as desirable powerfully conditioned middle class and agrarian Czech politics until the disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy. Prudence, a realistic appraisal of Czech political ​inexperience and weakness, and recognition of constraints imposed by an authoritarian constitutional monarchy led Palacký in January, 1861, to ally with the party of conservative great landowners, at that time the only powerful political force favoring greater autonomy for the historic Czech lands. He did so, recognizing that that party upheld ideals and interests more often than not incompatible with those of most Czechs, especially peasants or workers of little property or education. Palacký and Rieger nonetheless found this alliance necessary in obtaining a majority of votes in the Bohemian Diet on certain issues and in trying to wring concessions from the imperial authorities. Prudence and a sense of the possible also helped dictate Palacký’s expression of Czech demands for greater political autonomy in terms of historic Bohemian state-rights, on the theory that the crown would be more likely to restore what it had once taken away than to make political concessions on the basis of any natural rights of man or of small nations.$^{10}$ Bohemian state-rights based on historical precedent also, in Palacký’s opinion, reminded Czechs of that glorious past from which they derived a sense of nationl identity and confidence concerning the future. But prudence, more than that precedent, required that party programs be based upon existing laws and institutions and phrased in terms that did not frighten the Habsburgs, even though Palacký viewed that dynasty as an episode in the histories of peoples who long predated and would long outlive it.$^{11}$ Indeed, so long as the Czechs kept this in mind and maintained self-governmental institutions and a liberal state-rights program, they did not need to fear making small day-to-day compromises with the Habsburgs.
By deed as well as by word, Palacký argued that the advancement of Czech interests at times required courageous and principled action, as well as clearly enunciated principles, prudent conduct, and a keen sense of historical continuity. At moments of great danger or opportunity, the Czechs had to have the courage to act decisively on the basis of principle instead of expediency. This he did on several occasions, notably in sending his famous open letter to the Frankfurt Vorparlament of 1848, in attending the 1867 Slavic Ethnographic Congress in Moscow, and by having with Rieger brought the Czech question to French attention before and during the Franco-German War. All three acts aroused strong Habsburg and Austrian German disapproval and led to Palacký being denounced for “Panslavism” or for meddling in foreign policy, whose management remained the prerogative of the crown. By these actions, Palacký may temporarily have set back the Czech national movement to the extent that more imperial officials became prejudiced against it and its leaders. But, at the ​same time, he set a courageous and heartening example for his countrymen and demonstrated that they would refuse to settle for less than first-class citizenship within the Monarchy and the same rights and responsibilities enjoyed by the politically and economically more advanced countries of Western Europe and North America.$^{12}$
From 1876 to 1914, Palacký exercised an indirect but profound influence upon Czech politics through the laws and self-governmental institutions that he and his National Party colleagues, F.L. Rieger, Karel Mattuš, and Jakub Škarda had helped establish during the early 1860’s. Subject to imperial supervision within the “two-tracked” Cisleithanian system of government, the Czechs used these institutions at the communal, district, and provincial levels to obtain a substantial degree of political autonomy. Like Palacký, most middle-class Czechs regarded these institutions as the first step toward the eventual achievement of Bohemian state-rights and the greater federalization and liberalization of the Habsburg Monarchy. This they did despite the fact that class voting in communes and districts and curial voting for the provincial diets insured that men of wealth and education would control all self-governmental institutions. In fact, Palacký did not challenge the view of his colleagues that such men ought to lead and speak for the entire nation. Also in the early sixties, he and his associates took the lead in organizing the National, or Old Czech Party and several of the more important Czech patriotic and cultural associations that, unlike the party, would continue to develop after 1914. At the same time, they established, as noted, the alliance between the National Party and the conservative great landowners that would endure, based as it was upon unrepresentative self-government in an authoritarian constitutional framework, until the collapse of the Monarchy.$^{13}$
After 1876, Palacký’s political programs from the sixties appeared increasingly to be reactionary if not anachronistic, especially as articulated by the National Party. Unrepresentative self-governmental institutions primarily served an educated and propertied elite that ostensibly governed in the interests of the entire nation. So long as a majority of Czechs had no formal education or experience in self-government, Palacký himself had preferred rule by an elite to letting all citizens share equally in the management of public affairs. In contrast to the Young Czechs and ultimately all Czech parties but his own and the more conservative Catholics, he opposed establishing not only universal manhood suffrage but political parties in the modern sense of the word and any sort of multi-party system. Seldom did he show much concern for what became two pressing problems of later nineteenth century Czech politics-the social question and the emancipation ​of women. In fact, he tried during the last decade of his life to dampen class struggle and political factionalism, each of which he thought to be an undesirable aberration in Czech historical development and an obstacle to maintaining a unified national political movement led by the National Party. In his opinion, Czechs should dampen any political or class conflicts among themselves in the interests of struggling, on the one hand, against German efforts to maintain political privileges and, on the other, against imperial attempts to increase centralization and arbitrary authoritarian rule.$^{14}$
Outmoded as most of Palacký’s policies may appear in a twentieth century context, they did much more than merely reflect or cater to bourgeois interests. Highly unrepresentative self-governmental institutions that became bastions of wealth and education nonetheless helped, for two generations, to maintain Czech political autonomy in practice as well as in theory and to train Czechs in the exercise of political responsibility. Moreover, the strongly patriotic and liberal basis of Czech politics that most Czechs took for granted by 1900 owed much to Palacký’s initial and continuing support. During the sixties, for example, he had waged a long and successful struggle to prevent conservative Czech Catholics and their aristocratic and clerical supporters from gaining control or decisively influencing policies of the National Party.$^{15}$
By the turn of the century, the three mass Czech political parties—the Social Democrats, Agrarians, and National Socialists, the first founded in 1878 and the others in 1898—and the several progressive parties of the intelligentsia sought to extend civil liberties and broaden the electoral franchise in all self-governmental and representative institutions. By markedly increasing popular participation in politics, by emphasizing economic interests and advocating greater social reform, the mass parties especially challenged the antiquated and authoritarian Habsburg system much more severely than did the elite National and Young Czech parties. By the turn of the century, all mass and progressive parties as well as a majority of the Young Czechs advocated almost every reform that Palacký had at one time either opposed or sought to postpone. Each party nonetheless continued to honor Palacký as a great statesman, awakener, and historian, while quite properly blaming contemporary Old Czech and Young Czech party leaders for upholding many of the unrepresentative institutions and outmoded policies he had helped establish. This outlook thereafter generally characterized all but the most conservative and Catholic of Czech parties. If this had not been the case, or if Palacký’s practical politics were considered the most important part of his political legacy, ​he would not today be honored at home and abroad as the political and intellectual “father of his country.”$^{16}$
Most Czechs have always recognized that Palacký and his colleagues, despite their opposition to universal suffrage and popular participation in politics, regarded the common people with affection and did not deliberately encourage their exploitation by an intellectual or commercial elite. Palacký, in fact, deeply revered if he did not idealize the common people, from whom he and most other Czech political and intellectual leaders had arisen. Moreover, his vision of future Czech politics did not in principle exclude greater popular participation. To be sure, he thought that only an educated and nationally conscious electorate could be trusted to vote responsible and intelligently. The number of citizens eligible for that sort of electorate, small during his lifetime, grew quite rapidly after the advent in 1869 of free, compulsory, and secular elementary education for all Czechs. Besides, some efforts to broaden popular political activity, including those undertaken after 1900 by T.G. Masaryk’s Progressive Party, even cited Palacký in advocating the simultaneous moral and intellectual education of a future mass electorate.$^{17}$
Like almost all Czech political leaders of his and later generations, Palacký did not on principle advocate a policy either of compromise or of opposition toward the authoritarian Habsburg Monarchy. Czech politicians sought by legal and non-violent means to advance what they discerned to be the national interest. They chose to compromise or cooperate with the Habsburgs, if that appeared likely to bring satisfaction. If not, they usually undertook non-violent opposition to the imperial government, often by means of the press, self-governmental institutions, and popular demonstrations. In trying to realize his state-rights program, Palacký often encountered intransigeance on the part of the Habsburg dynasty and the privileged social strata that upheld it. He did not lose his confidence and sense of mission, despite the fact that he and the Czech cause suffered severe setbacks in 1849 and 1851, from 1862 through the later sixties, and again in 1871. Throughout, Palacký refused to compromise “Bohemian state-rights,” even to the extent of refusing to elect delegates to a central Reichsrat for Cisleithania or to participate in deliberations of the Bohemian diet so long as that situation obtained. Thus, the policy of the National or Old Czech Party was, in theory, more resolute in passively opposing the dynasty than any policy pursued by the politically more radical Young Czechs, who after establishing themselves as an independent political party in December, 1874, participated actively in the Bohemian diet. To be sure, Old Czechs as well as Young Czechs meanwhile continued ​to manage self-governmental institutions in all predominately Czech communes and districts.$^{18}$
From the turn of the century onward, Czechs increasingly remembered Palacký more for his view of history and sense of national mission than for a number of specific policies undertaken by the very conservative National Party. This intellectual and ideological, as opposed to pragmatic influence remained paramount at least until 1948, if not beyond, and even facilitated the enactment of such progressive measures as universal suffrage, civil rights, free public education, and social reform. This may in the long run have been Palacký’s most enduring contribution to Czech and Slovak politics. To a considerable degree, his view that the Czech nation had a civilizing mission that helped justify national self-preservation and growth and his belief that the Hussite era marked the high point in Czech historical development, were increasingly transformed and transmitted by T.G. Masaryk, whose idea of the Czech question and understanding of the past owed much to Palacký. To the extent that Masaryk and other progressives sought to separate the timeless in Palacký’s thought from what they discerned to be his conservatively-oriented and outmoded political program of the sixties, they emphasized again, as Palacký and other Czech Romantics had done, the importance of ideals in politics as guides to action and as standards against which the success or failure of any policy might be judged. Also, having had more time to observe Habsburg inability to reform an antiquated political system, they, much more than Palacký, criticized the Monarchy and questioned its ability to survive.$^{19}$
Masaryk, to be sure, took a much more present-minded view of the past than did Palacký and reinterpreted many of his views in light of social and political problems facing the Czechs at the turn of the century. Like Palacký, Masaryk was a Protestant and an intellectual who entered politics from a successful scholarly career. He, too, thought that political activity was an important means of social service that logically continued and necessarily complemented his teaching and scholarship. He furthermore approved Palacký’s having identified the achievements and ideals of Czech and Hussite Reformation leaders as the high point in Czech history and having contended that these ideals might appropriately guide nineteenth century Czech political and intellectual development. Moreover, Masaryk, likewise desiring to arouse the Czechs to a sense of purpose larger than self-preservation or national advancement, not only endorsed Palacký’s interpretation of the past but contended that Palacký and other leading awakeners had, by reviving and popularizing the great Hussite and Reformed traditions, further strengthened and justified such democratic ​(lidové) currents in Czech politics as free intellectual inquiry, universal suffrage, extended civil rights, and social reform.$^{20}$
Given Masaryk’s close identification with Palacký, the founders and leaders of the first Czechoslovak Republic generally emphasized the extent to which Palacký had resurrected a glorious past for the Czechs that, in turn, inspired confidence and offered guidance and consolation. Though Palacký advocated neither democracy in politics nor Czechoslovak independence, he could in word and deed be regarded as a progenitor of the First Republic. By emphasizing that history is primarily that of peoples and not of dynasties or states, he had begun the moral and intellectual emancipation of the Czechs from Habsburg domination. By working to establish and strengthen institutions of self-government in communes, districts, and provinces, he had helped initiate the gradual political liberation of his people from alien aristocratic and dynastic rule. By identifying the “contact and conflict” (stykání a tykání) between Czechs and Germans as the overriding theme of Czech history, he encouraged the Czechs to rid themselves of German cultural and political domination without abandoning those benefits that association with Germans might provide. By stressing the advantages of political and religious tolerance, he urged the Czechs to restrain national chauvinism and intolerance that could only be counterproductive. By insisting that historical scholarship be honest and based on fact, he had indirectly helped stimulate critical evaluation of politics and society. Finally, his advocacy of free, universal, and secular education and of every citizen’s responsibility for advancing individual and national welfare had helped promote informed and responsible citizenship.$^{21}$
Czechoslovak Marxist scholars have also recognized much in Palacký that is timeless or even positive in the Marxist sense of the word, especially his profound understanding of history and the continuity between past and present. Like earlier generations of politicians and scholars, most admire Palacký’s perserverance, hard work, and dedication to certain ideals, however mistaken some may appear in retrospect. But few contemporary Czechoslovak Marxist scholars can without reservation regard Palacký as a “progressive” historical figure. Deservedly criticized is his having become willy-nilly if not deliberately a spokesman for the interests of an upper middle class elite or having at times confused such interests with those of the nation as a whole. Equally, if not more problematic for Czechoslovak Marxist scholars is the paramount place of religious ideals or morality in Palacký’s political outlook and sense of Czech historical development. Masaryk’s politics and interpretation of Palacký remain ​suspect on the same grounds. To some degree, Palacký’s prudent practical politics can be discounted as an unavoidable adjustment to difficult circumstances or as something appropriated by a nascent bourgeoisie for selfish ends. Because one cannot similarly explain away the fact that religious idealism constitutes the basis of Palacký’s political ideology, few Marxist scholars can consider his political influence to have been entirely positive.$^{22}$
During the past century, Palacký has profoundly influenced Czech politics in at least six respects:
(1) He not only first clearly defined Czech political aspirations but did so in historical and in international perspectives. Political questions appeared much less overwhelming if considered in these perspectives instead of as problems of a particular moment. If one could not take this broad view, Czech political aims would appear quite hopeless and Czech political history simply as a series of humiliating defeats. This sense of history and past achievement has also helped give Czechs the confidence to work toward desirable goals despite the likelihood of being repeatedly defeated.
(2) To some degree Palacký, by exhortation and by personal example, helped condition Czech acceptance of leadership by an intellectual elite. He had advocated elitism and paternalism in Czech politics at a time when both may have been necessary for guiding a politically inexperienced and untutored nation. This attitude, like his having opposed universal suffrage and a multi-party system, appeared increasingly anachronistic after 1876. Nonetheless, many middle-class Czechs continued to be enamored of leadership by an intellectual elite and somewhat prone to hero worship. This was evident during the First Czechoslovak Republic in popular admiration and even hero worship of the President-Liberator and several political party leaders, despite the establishment of representative republican institutions and political democracy by an intellectual elite. Such leadership ended abruptly with the Nazi occupation and did not reemerge during two decades of Communist rule after February, 1948, when mediocrity in high office went hand in hand with Stalinist dictatorship. To the degree that the Czechoslovak intelligentsia recovers its nerve and influence, it is likely to be somewhat attracted to the style of leadership established by Palacký and perpetuated to some extent by Masaryk.
(3) Much more enduring has been Palacký’s influence in helping demonstrate to Czechs and Slovaks how to work within established institutions and laws, however unsatisfactory, to advance individual and national interests. A case in point was Palacký’s encouraging Czechs to improve their lot in Austria-Hungary by taking over self-governmental institutions ​and, to a lesser extent, minor posts in the imperial bureaucracy. Circumstances and institutions have changed with time, but the principle so well illustrated by Palacký endures. For example, Czechs and Slovaks made a great success of parliamentary democracy during the twenty years’ truce, upholding those principles and institutions so dear to the British, French, and Americans who had supported Czechs and Slovaks in achieving national independence. Since 1948, Czechs and Slovaks have tried to advance their interests within the ideological and institutional constraints of a people’s republic. In a number of respects, the relationship of Palacký and the Old Czechs to Austria-Hungary is thus analogous to that of the KSČ leadership to the Soviet Union.$^{23}$
(4) Palacký helped give Czech politics of the later nineteenth and early twentieth century its characteristically patriotic and liberal foundations and encouraged, through his scholarly as well as polemical writings, a politics more often popular (lidová) than democratic (demokratická), at least in the sense of advocating policies designed to uplift and improve the lot of the common people while not allowing much popular participation in making and executing those policies.
(5) Palacký was among the first Czech politicians to take a courageous stand on principle at a decisive moment, as he did in 1848, in 1867, and 1871. He has not been the last to do so, as indicated by the actions of his fellow countrymen in the struggle for national independence after 1914, in opposing Nazism after 1939, and most recently in trying to establish “socialism with a human face.” One cannot argue, much less prove, that every Czech taking courageous action against heavy odds was inspired by Palacký. One can simply contend that Palacký by courage as well as by intellectual leadership and prudent conduct helped set the style for subsequent Czech and Slovak politics.
(6) Finally, Palacký’s influence as a prophet and intellectual leader endures primarily to the extent that he demonstrated to the Czechs that to conduct politics without ideals or a sense of history is to court disaster. Guidance of this sort would be especially necessary in Czech polítics, given the great discrepancies, past and present, between aims and achievements, between theory and practice, and between ideals and reality. One simply cannot make much sense of Czech politics in any generation—apparently a series of many compromises and defeats—without taking account of Czech tenacity of purpose and national identiy. This may, in part, explain why Palacký excercised greater posthumous influence in politics through his articulation of Czech political ideals than through any practical political programs that he endorsed or implemented. This is what ​he may have anticipated. His historical and political writings appear largely to have been written with one thought in mind. Politics cannot be sensibly or successfully conducted without some sense of history and one’s place in the world or without some purpose larger than personal or national achievement. Masaryk expressed much the same opinion in contending that the realist in politics is often that person who acts in so far as possible in accordance with certain ideals and principles.$^{24}$
In part, Palacký appears to have emphasized the need for certain national and liberal ideals precisely because the Czechs as a small nation surrounded by large predatory neighbors had often to compromise and to struggle against heavy odds. Unless some ideals, some sense of purpose, and some sense of historical continuity were maintained, the inevitable politics of compromise might lead to a loss of will and purpose and possibly to spiritual, if not to physical annihilation. Not only have high aspirations and a strong sense of national identiy given courage to Czechs in trying times, but they have also served as the measure against which day-to-day personal and political conduct has to be judged, however ineffective or short of desirable that conduct may be.
NOTES
1. The standard biography of Palacký is Vácslav Řezníček, František Palacký: jeho život, působení a význam, 3rd ed. (Prague, 1912). On Palacký’s youth and early intellectual development, see Karel Kálal, Palackého mladá léta (1798–1827) (Prague, 1925), and J. Hanuš, “Z mladších let Fr. Palackého,” Česká revue, I (1897–98), pp. 1025–37 and 1326–1345.
2. On Palacký’s intellectual achievements, relationship to the scholarship and thought of his times, and enduring intellectual influence, see Josef Fischer, Myšlenka a dílo Františka Palackého, 2 Vols, (Prague, 1926–27). An excellent critical study of Palacký’s historical writing and idea of history is Joseph Zacek, Palacký: The Historian as Scholar and Nationalist (The Hague, 1970). On Palacky in the context of the development of Czech writing of political history, see also Jaroslav Werstadt, “Politické dějepisectvi a jeho čeští představitele,” Československý časopis historický, XXVI (1920), pp. 1–93.
3. On Palacký’s contributions to Czech politics up to 1876, see Adolf Srb, “Politická činnost Františka Palackého,” in Josef Kalousek, Bohuš Rieger, et al., Památník na oslavu stých narozenin Františka Palackého (Prague, 1898), pp. 545–601. A good survey of Palacký’s understanding of “society, nation, and the state” that underlay his state-rights program is František Kutnar, “Palackého pojetí společnosti, národa a státu,” in František Kutnar, ed., Tři studle o Frantiskw Palackem (Olomouc, 1949), pp. 7–42. A comprehensive collection of Czech political statements and programs during the period 1848–1860, in which those composed by Palacký and Rieger figure heavily, is Jan M. Černý, ed., Boj za právo: sborník aktů politických u věcech státu a národa českého od roku 1848 (Prague, 1893). On the establishment of ​the Czech political program of Bohemian state-rights, see Bruce Garver, The Young Czech Party 1874–1901 and the Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven, 1978), Chapter 3, and Valentin Urfus, “Český státoprávní program na rozhrání let 1860–1861 a jeho ideové složky,” Právněhistorické Studie, VIII (1962), pp. 127–170, and “Český státoprávní program a české dělnické hnutí v období vzniku první dělnické strany v Čechach,” Právněhistorické Studie, IX (1963), pp. 97–111.
4. Palacký’s principal political essays and speeches may be found in the first volume of a three-volume work edited by Bohuš Rieger, Spisy drobné, Vol. I: Spisy a řeči z oboru politiky (Prague, 1898).
5. On the centenary celebration in 1898, see the reports in Národní listy, June 14, 15, and 22, 1898, and Naše doba, V (1897–98), pp. 926–927, and a general discussion of that celebration in the context of recent political crises by Garver, Young Czech Party, Chapter 9. The memorial volume of commemorative addresses and scholarly papers is the Kalousek and Rieger, et al., Památník. On the celebrations, see also V.J. Nováček, “K jubileu Františka Palackého,” Osvěta, XXVIII (1898), pp. 481–485. For police reports see Státní ústřední archiv (Prague), fond PM, 8/1/15/1295 and 3372 (1898). The French consul in Prague reported to Paris on the celebrations: see Archives diplomatiques, Autriche-Hongrie NS 12, dispatch dated June 23, 1898.
6. The commemorative volume issued on that occasion is Rudolf Uránek, Josef Pekař, František Žilka, et al., Památník Palackého 1926 (Prague, 1926).
7. On Palacký during the Vormärz, see letters to Pavel Josef Šafařík dated 26.XII.1832, 21.II.1833, 24.V.1837, 15.III.1839, and, afterward, 16.IV.1848, in Korespondence Pavla Josefa Šafaříka s Františkem Palackým (Prague, 1961). On Palacký’s view of his cultural and scholarly work of that time in the context of political expectations, see letters and diaries in the collection Františka Palackého korrespondence a zápisky, ed. V.J. Nováček, 3 Vols. (Prague, 1898–1911).
8. Testimony on this point comes from many sources, including T.G. Masaryk, Palackého idea národa českého (Prague, 1898; 4th edition, 1947).
9. On Palacký’s desire to further international cooperation and Slavic reciprocity, see part VIII of “Idea státu Rakouského,” Drobné spisy, I, pp. 261–267, and “Drobné řeči v Moskvě a Petrohradě (20. V. a 15. června 1867),” Drobné spisy, 1, pp. 285–288. See also Milan Prelog, Pout Slovanů do Moskvy roku 1867, trans. M. Paulová (Prague, 1931), pp. 48–49, 94–96, 102–103, 141–45.
10. Valentin Urfus, “Český státoprávní program na rozhrání let 1860–1861 a jeho ideové složky,” Právněhistorické Studie, VIII (1962), pp. 127–170. On the genesis and development of the state-rights program as defined by Palacký, see František Kameníček, František Palacký v ústavním výboru říšskeho sněmu rakouského (Prague, 1929).
11. The famous statement was “Byli jsme před Rakouskem, budeme i po něm,” (“We Slavs were here before Austria and shall be here after she is gone.”) Spisy drobné, I p. 266.
12. On the 1867 “pilgrimage” to Moscow and Palacký’s participation, see Milan Prelog, Pout Slovanů do Moskvy roku 1867 (Prague, 1931).
13. On communal, district, and provincial institutions of self-government and their political importance, see Garver, Young Czech Party, Chapter 4. On the formation of the National Party and various cultural and patriotic associations in the early sixties, see ibid., Chapter 3.
​14. Among Palacký’s strongest statements on the need for a single party and for dampening conflicts between Czech factions is that published by Pokrok on May 11, 1875, “O roztržce v národu českém,” in Spisy drobné, 1, pp. 413–426.
15. The importance of Palacký’s achievement in this regard is not to be underestimated. See, for example, Antonín Okáč, Rakouský problém a list Vaterland. 1860–1871, 2 Vols, (Brno, 1970), I, pp. 6–12, 26–30, 70–73; II, pp. 180–186, 193, 198, 297–304.
16. See, for example, statements in the various party dailies or weeklies on the occasion of the 1898 Palacký centenary. On the Young Czech view see Česká revue, I (1897–98), pp. 1263–64, as well as Národní listy, June 14, 1898. Specifically on the Young Czech and Agrarian indebtedness to Palacký, see Garver, Young Czech Party, Chapters 3 and 9 respectively.
17. See Rámcový program české strany lidové (realistické) (Prague, 1900), pp. 71, 85, 95, and Program české strany pokrokové, schválen třetím valným sjezdem strany konaným v Praze 6. a 7. ledna 1912 (Prague, 1912), pp. 3–4, 17–18, 21–23.
18. On the policy of “passive resistance” and on this and other issues dividing Old from Young Czechs, see Garver, Young Czech Party, Chapter 3.
19. On Masaryk’s relationship to Palacký, see especially T.G. Masaryk, Česká otázka: snahy a tužby národního obrození (Prague, 1895), pp. 87–161, and Palackého idea, passim.
20. Jaroslav Werstadt, Od “České otázky” k “Nové Evropě”: linie politického vývoje Masarykova (Prague, 1920).
21. Palacký’s view of the relationship between Czechs and Germans is discussed by František Dvorský, “František Palacký a nás nepřítel,” in Kalousek & Rieger, et al., Památník, pp. 443–472. See also František Palacký, “O sporu Čechů a Němců (Výňatek ze spisu o českém dějepisectví 1871).” Drobné spisy, I, pp. 322–331. For his evaluation of the relationship in light of German unification after victory in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71 and the Emperor’s dismissal of the Hohenwart ministry in October, 1871, see František Palacký, “Doslov z r. 1874 (Gedenkblätter),” Drobné spisy, I, pp. 392–411.
22. Among the better Marxist studies of Palacký are Milan Machovec, František Palacký a česká filosofie (Prague, 1961), for intellectual development, and Milena Jetmarová, František Palacký (Prague, 1961), for a general assessment of Palacký’s political and intellectual achievements. The latter work also contains extensive selections from Palacký’s historical and political writing edited by M. Jetmarová.
23. A thorough study of this analogy remains to be written. The situations noted are most analogous to the extent that Czechs in both cases worked within a system and in accordance with a ruling ideology deemed inimical in many respects to individual and national interests and in any case upheld primarily by force.
24. Masaryk best expressed this view in a letter of January 9, 1899, to Karel Kramář, in Archiv TGM, Archiv ústavu dějin KSČ, část 26, roku 1899: “You are fighting for Austria! I am not. Palacký said that we were here before Austria and that we shall be here after Austria has gone, but whereas for Palacký that was only a phrase, I want that to become a fact.” Masaryk always considered his politics to be those of a “realist” in this sense, from his having termed “realism” the politics of himself, Kaizl, and Kramář in the early 1890’s and in accepting the popular designation of “realists” for his People’s Party, established in 1900, and its successor, the Progressive Party.
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