“Divorce” of nations from the eyes of a Czech historian

On May 22-23, 2017 the students-historians of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv had the possibility to listen to the lectures of the famous Czech scientist, Professor of the Charles University in Prague Jan Rychlík. The lectures were held within the master program of the specialization “Central Europe in history: from multinational monarchies to Visegrad cooperation” which was started last year at the faculty of history of the University supported by the International Visegrad Fund.

Professor Jan Rychlík is famous for his works in the field of the contemporary history of Central Europe and interethnic relations. He has the fundamental three-volume study of Czech-Slovak relations from the time of the first emergence of Czechoslovakia in 1918 to the final collapse of the state in 1992. In addition, he is the author of a number of national histories of the countries’ region, in particular Ukraine as well as numerous articles published in the Czech, Slovak, English, Polish, Bulgarian and Hungarian languages.

At his lectures Professor Jan Rychlík considered the causes of collapsing multinational states such as the USSR, SFRU and Czechoslovakia noting the failure of the ruling regime to convince people of the appropriateness of their co-existence in the single state body. Each nation saw their future in their own independent state that became fatal for federal projects in the XX century. Telling the students about the evolution of Czech-Slovakian relations after the official “divorce” of the two nations in 1992, Professor Jan Rychlík gave a lot of interesting examples from his own life connected with both Czech Republic and Slovakia and outlined the features of the attitude to the recent common past in each of the states.

The lectures of Professor Jan Rychlík have completed this year’s series of guest lectures for students-historians. Next they are expected to have the examination session and the tour of historic places in Central Europe. But today the initiators of the program note that due to the organizational support of the Vice-Rector for Research, Teaching and International Cooperation Mariya Zubrytska and the Dean of the faculty of history Roman Shust the master program of the specialization “Central Europe in history: from multinational monarchies to Visegrad cooperation” has taken a worthy place in educational suggestions of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv.