The 2020 Radomir Luza Prize was awarded by Center Austria Associate Director Marc Landry during the Fourty-Fourth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association. The prize recognizes outstanding work in the field of Austrian and/or Czechoslovak History in the 20th Century.
We congratulate this year’s recipients, Rachel Applebaum and Abigail Weil!
Rachel Applebaum
Abigail Weil
Luza Prize 2020 Winners’ Commendations:
Rachel Applebaum for her book Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia (Cornell University Press ,275 pp)
Abigail Weil for her Harvard dissertation Man is Indestructible: Legend and Legitimacy in the Worlds of Jaroslav Hašek (Harvard University Diss in Slavic Literature, 320 pp)
Rachel Applebaum displays a deep knowledge of the Czechoslovak space and the "soul of the nation". She finds the right elements and highlights the most important moments which marked the changes in the attitude of Czechs towards the Soviets (I underline the word Czechs, as the Slovak perception is not emphasized except of a short notice about the puppet Slovak State in 1939-1945). Applebaum arrives at original and intriguing new interpretations; she adds a new function to the process of "normalization" and describes it as a transnational policy designed to restore the Soviet-Czechoslovak friendship after the 1968 events. She also illustrates the routinization of the obligatory Czechoslovak-Soviet friendship on interesting examples, such as the mandatory Russian learning in schools. With Russian, according to the textbooks for eight-graders, the pupils would be able to welcome Russian pioneers and correspond with Soviet pen-pals. The thorough work with archival documents from multiple countries and languages, is much appreciated, as well as the high volume of usage of press and literature. Overall, Applebaum’s book is high-quality book, putting the Czechoslovak-Soviet relationship into a new light. I believe, this book truly demonstrates what the decoration with the Radomir Luza Prize is intended for.
The dissertation by Abigail Weil deals with the life and work of Jaroslav Hašek, author of the Good Soldier Švejk, one of the best known and legendary Czech novels. She examines Hašek´s experience during WW I, life in Russia, fascination with Bolshevism, activities in interwar Czechoslovakia, and analyses how all these affected his masterpiece Good Soldier Švejk and more than 1,500 short stories, poems, jokes and articles he wrote. „Haškology“ is a specific discipline in Czech literary science, and there are many researchers who tried to frame a thorough analysis of Hašek´s work in the past. It is obvious that Weil didn´t just compile the opinions of her predecessors but formulates her own conclusions based on her research. It is my sincere hope the dissertation defended at Harvard University will be published soon to revisit the importance of Jaroslav Hašek to non-Czech readership.