Čas emigrace v Československu. Kondakovovo dědictví a Seminarium Kondakovianum
| Title in English | Time of emigration in Czechoslovakia. Kondakov's Legacy and the Seminarium Kondakovianum |
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Popularization text |
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| Description | When the Czechoslovak Republic was established in 1918, it brought with it a number of national and ethnic disputes inherent in its predecessor, Austria-Hungary. The political situation was unstable - still in 1919 the state's borders were being contested - the economic situation was complicated. In this difficult period, the two most powerful men in the country, Prime Minister Karel Kramář and President Thomas G. Masaryk, the two most powerful leaders of Czechoslovakia, decide to take an incredible step: they open the borders of Czechoslovakia to Russian emigrants fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution. This step is not accidental: were invited to join the country mainly intellectuals and students who are invited to Czechoslovakia. Nor the decision was a purely generous decision: both politicians hoped that, once the situation in Russia has stabilised and the emigrants have returned, this would create exceptional conditions for Czechoslovakia to cooperate with Russia after the war. History, however, will turn out a very different destiny. Most of the Russian emigrants will not return to the URSS and will gradually leave Czechoslovakia. Thanks to this generous action, however, the real elites of the Russian nation - and this is most important for us - the world's leading Byzantologists will reach Czechoslovakia during the First Republic. Thanks to their presence and activities, Prague will become a true capital of Byzantine studies and will be renowned in academic circles from Yale to Oxford and from Harvard to Rome. All this would not have happened if it had not been for the generous vision of the founders of Czechoslovakia, who realized that, notwithstanding all the hardships of the new state, the time for generosity, the time for emigration, had arrived. |
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