The Real Winners of the 1989 Velvet Revolution? Research of Economic Management in Czechoslovakia in the Period of the So-Called “Normalization” and Transformation (1970–2011). An Oral History Project

0387425 - ÚSD 2013 AR eng C - Konferenční příspěvek (zahraniční konf.)
Vaněk, Miroslav
The Real Winners of the 1989 Velvet Revolution? Research of Economic Management in Czechoslovakia in the Period of the So-Called “Normalization” and Transformation (1970–2011). An Oral History Project.
17a Conferencia internacional de historia oral. Los retos de la historia oral en el siglo XXI: diversidades, desigualdades y la construcción de identidades. Buenos Aires: Dirección General Patrimonio e Instituto Histórico, 2012 - (Barela, L.). ISBN 978-987-1642-17-5.
[Conferencia internacional de historia oral. Los retos de la historia oral en el siglo XXI: diversidadese, desigualdades y la construcción de identidades /17./. Buenos Aires (AR), 03.09.2012-07.09.2012]
Grant CEP: GA ČR(CZ) GAP410/11/1352
Institucionální podpora: RVO:68378114
Klíčová slova: management * contemporary history * oral history
Kód oboru RIV: AB - Dějiny

The paper focuses on business and management groups in ex-Czechoslovakia and later Czech Republic, namely on managing and assistant directors of big companies as well as medium and small enterprises. The project team has conducted fifty interviews with these narrators-members of the economic elite. Analyzed and interpreted results of these interviews represent a central research question that the Czech and Czechoslovak historiography (as well as historiographies of other post-socialist countries) still hasn’t dealt with. That is also why the Oral History Center has undertaken this research task. Through interviews we learn not only about the selection process through which these people were chosen for leading economic positions and to which extent it was influenced by the sophisticated system of the so called nomenklatura (the key administrative positions in all spheres of the countries’ activity held only by the Communist Party members, their “cadre profile” being unquestionable) but also how important was the actual knowledge of the profession. Surprisingly for some, many of these 2 managers didn’t leave the leading positions after the country’s “new condition”. Some historians believe that this is precisely the problem of our transformation period: that the economic environment in the new democracy (i.e. after 1989) has been occupied and dominated by former communists who used their contacts from the past to privatize the Czechoslovak economy. But is it really so? Wasn’t it also because of the fact that even in authoritarian regimes many leading positions are occupied by real experts? A fact we may not like to accept but many interviews indicate. On the other hand, there certainly was a considerable group of managers who gained their positions only because of the Communist Party membership and influential acquaintances. These were indeed “political figures” rather than professionals and inevitably had to leave after 1989. My paper should answer the question whether the economic elite members have been the main winners of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989.
Trvalý link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0218891