Publication details
“Radical and/or rational hospitality? The Czechoslovak Welcoming of Russian Refugees after WWI”
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | After 1918 in Czechoslovakia, a project called Russian Action (RA) was organised to face the crisis of emigration following the Bolshevik revolution. Now mostly forgotten, the RA offers interesting cause for reflection on the ways of dealing with the current migration crisis. The project was revolutionary in its very principle of concentrating not only on immediate relief and basic needs but, primarily, on the long term possibility of re-constituting intellectual elites after the shock of exodus. It offered the Russian émigré community space and financial funds to organize on its own and to form the younger generation (high-schools, university), without having to renounce its language or accept (all) the rules of the hosting society. The project, however, was only partially successful. An analysis of the main difficulties and “failure” of the RA at the beginning of the 1930s offers further insight and opens up the question of the interactions between guests and hosting communities and of the different levels of integration. The evident paradox – linking past and present – is the RA’s posteriority: the project is presented in Czechoslovak historiography in very positive moral terms, praising the country’s generosity. However, in the contemporary Czech (and Slovak) public sphere, a significant change has been seen regarding current refugee problems, with the majority discourse being closed-off and even xenophobe. This contribution would address the subject using tools of historiographical and sociological analysis. |