October 2014 - September 2015
Mail adamhudek(at)gmail(dot)com
Adam Hudek, a fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg from October 2014 to September 2015, has been a researcher at the Institute of History (Department of the History of Sciences and Technology) at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava since 2007. He completed his PhD there in 2007 on Slovak historiography between 1948 and 1967, and is a graduate of Comenius University in Bratislava, with degrees in History and Political Science. He was awarded a Herder Scholarship at the University of Vienna in 2004-2005 and the International Visegrad Fund Fellowship at the Institute of Czech History, Charles University, in 2011-2012.
The main topic of the project Between Czechs and Hungarians: Slovak "National Communism" in the Socialist Czechoslovakia is the problem of ambivalent and changing relations between communist ideology and nationalism in the socialist dictatorships of Central and Eastern Europe. This phenomenon is studied primarily with regard to so-called Slovak national communism in the comparative context of the Czech lands and Hungary. Research on "national communism" includes an analysis of communist national identity-building narratives and mythology. The struggle to legitimize the communist program was impossible without (re)defining the nation-building project by applying a universalizing Marxist-Leninist ideology to particular national political, economic, social and cultural conditions. From the end of WWII on, communist parties in Central and Eastern Europe presented themselves as heirs of national traditions and guardians of national interests. This national accent was an ever-present problem for the ideological orthodoxy of Slovak communist intellectuals, and as such it became a target of accusations of 'bourgeois nationalism'. The communist utopia of Slovak communist intellectuals remained closely connected with the nineteenth-century project of national emancipation against 'Czech and Hungarian claims to Slovakia'. These national interactions occurred on both political and historical levels. While the political level was prevalent in Slovak-Czech relations, discussions over Marxist interpretations of particular key moments in the common past with Hungary had a significant impact on the formation of Slovak national communist argumentation. The main aim of the project is to create a conceptual model for the analysis of Slovak national communism and to situate it within a broader comparative framework.
Adam Hudek, Najpolitickejšia veda: slovenská historiografia v rokoch 1948-1968 [The most political of sciences: Slovak historiography,1948-1968], Bratislava: Historický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied, 2010.
Dušan Škvarna and Adam Hudek, eds, Cyril a Metod: v historickom vedomí a pamäti 19. a 20. storočia na Slovensku [Cyril and Methodius in Slovak historical consciousness and memory in nineteenth and twentieth centuries], Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV vo vydavateľstve Typoset Print s.r.o., 2013.
Adam Hudek et al., Overcoming the Old Borders: Beyond the Paradigm of Slovak National History, Bratislava: Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Prodama, 2013.
with Břetislav Dančák, Mateusz Gniazdowski and Judit Hamberger, Two Decades of Visegrad Cooperation: Selected V4 Bibliography, Bratislava: International Visegrad Fund, 2011.
Dušan Kováč, Adam Hudek and Frank Handler, Vademecum súčasných dejín - Slovensko: sprievodca archívmi, výskumnými inštitrúciami, knižnicami, spoločnosťami a múzeami [Vademecum of contemporary history - Slovakia: a guide to archives, research institutions, libraries, associations and museums], Bratislava and Berlin: Bundestiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED, 2008.
'Gustáv Husák v historiografii - pohľady marxistickej a exilovej historiografie [Gustáv Husák in Marxist and exile historiography]', in Gustav Husák: moc politiky - politik moci [Gustav Husák: power of politics - politics of power], edited by Slavomír Michálek, Miroslav Londák et al., Bratislava: Veda, 2013, pp. 85-103.
'Die Geschichtswissenschaft und das Jahr 1989. Die Rolle der Historiker bei der Formierung des historischen Bewusstseins in der Slowakei (im Vergleich mit Tschechien und Deutschland)', in Das Jahr 1989 im deutsch-tschechisch-slowakischen Kontext, edited by Edita Ivaničková, Miloš Řezník and Volker Zimmermann, Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2013: pp. 235-252.
'Images of Edvard Beneš in Slovak Marxist and Nationalist (Ľudák) Narratives' in Edvard Beneš: Vorbild und Feinbild: Politische, mediale und historiographische Deutungen, edited by Ota Konrád and René Kupper, München: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013, pp. 247-260.
'The Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Years 1945-1952', Historický časopis 60, supplement (2012): 67-96.
'National Museums in Slovakia: Nation Building Strategies in Frequently Changing Environment' in Building National Museums in Europe 1750-2010: Conference proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28-30 April 2011, edited by Peter Arrosson and Gabriella Elgenius, Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011.
'Between Czechs and Hungarians: Constructing Slovak National Identity from the Nineteenth Century to the Present', History Compass 9 (2011): 257-268.
'The Attempt to Construct a Marxist Master Narrative in the Period 1948-1955', Historický časopis 56, supplement (2008): 111-132.
review of Vítězslav Sommer, Angažované dějepisectví. Stranická historiografie mezi stalinismem a reformním komunismem (1950-1970) [Activist historiogaphy: Party history between Stalinism and reform communism, 1950-1970] (Nakladatelství lidové noviny, 2012), in Bohemia: Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der böhmischen Länder 54, no. 1 (2014): 237-241.
review of Tibor Frank and Frank Hadler, eds, Disputed Territories and Pasts: Overlapping National Histories in Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), published in H-Soz-u-Kult on 28.10.2011.
review of Michal Kopecek, ed., Past in the Making: Recent History Revisions and Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989 (Central European University Press, 2008), published in H-Soz-u-Kult on 10.04.2009.
review of Emilia Hrabovec and Beata Katrebova-Blehova, eds, Slowakei und Österreich im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine Nachbarschaft in historisch-literarischer Perpektive (LIT Verlag, 2008), published in H-Soz-u-Kult on 01.12.2008.
review of Peter Dráľ and Andrej Findor, eds, Ako skúmať národ: Deväť štúdií o etnicite a nacionalizme [Exploring the nation: Nine studies on ethnicity and nationalism] (Tribun EU, 2009), in East Central Europe 37 (2010): 140-142.
The full list of publications can be viewed on the website of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.