Professor Oldřich Tůma (Institute of Contemporary History, The Czech Academy of Sciences) Paid an Academic Visit to IWH

    On June the 28th, 2019, Professor Oldrich Tuma (former president of Institute of Contemporary History, The Czech Academy of Sciences) was invited to IWH, CASS, and took part in an academic communication on topics such as the development of Eastern European countries since the Eastern European upheaval and the Sino-Czech relationship.

    First of all, Professor Tuma expressed his personal view on the concept of "Eastern Europe". He pointed out that the western world named all socialist countries in Europe after World War II as "Eastern Europe", which serves as a concept with obvious geopolitics. Even after the Eastern European upheaval in 1989, the concept "Eastern Europe" remained influential, which can mislead people to believe that these countries are similar rather than different. But Professor Tuma believes that Eastern European countries remained varied in economy, religion and diplomacy even in their socialist period. After the Eastern European upheaval in 1989, the developments of these countries showed great variety; and the so-called divergency between Eastern Europe and Western Europe does not exist at all. The transformation and development of Balkan countries were rather slow; while Czech, Slovak, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia completed their transformation very quickly. Besides, the diplomatic policies of Eastern European countries are also varied. Poland and the three countries around Baltic are hostile to Russia; while other countries are generally friendly to Russia. These countries take different attitudes to NATO and EU, and adopted different policies after joining these organizations. These facts demonstrate the existence of vivid variety within the concept of "Eastern Europe".

    Next, Professor Tuma offered an exhaustive analysis of history and reality of the Sino-Czech relationship. He said that the relationship of China and Czech started in 1930s. After socialism was established in the two countries, Sino-Czech relationship developed fast and "Chinese craze" once appeared in Czech. Nevertheless, influenced by various factors, the Sino-Czech relationship was almost interrupted after the 1960s. This status continued to 1989. Afterwards, with the Reform and Open Up of China and the economic transformation of Czech, the relationship of the two countries developed very fast. The communication of politicians become frequent; the cultural communication presents great variety; the enthusiasm of learning Chinese keeps rising in Czech; and Chinese restaurants have become common in Czech. However, the scale of trade and investment between the two countries is still limited; and a part of it is done via Germany. Recently there is also some doubt about the prospective of Chinese investment in Czech. But generally speaking, the Sino-Czech relationship is improving and has great potentiality.

    After the lecture, the participants discussed on topics such as the difference between European civilization and Western European civilization, the collective agriculture in Czech, population structure in Czech and the situation of immigration.