The Literary Organ of Politics": Tomas Masaryk and Political Journalism, 1925-1929

"The Literary Organ of Politics": Tomáš Masaryk and Political Journalism, 1925-1929Author(s): Andrea OrzoffSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 275-300Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185729 .

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"The Literary Organ of Politics": Tomas Masaryk and Political Journalism, 1925-1929

Andrea Orzoff

In a disingenuous understatement, Tomas Masaryk, the founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, told his biographer Karel Capek that "newspapers, the literary organ of politics, have interested me all my life." In fact, Masaryk's true relationship to newspapers was one of passionate en- gagement. The president wrote pseudonymous newspaper articles and editorials; he founded or contributed to founding many newspapers and

journals; he also meddled in and pressured newsrooms and editorial boards. Throughout his presidency, Masaryk devoted himself to the affairs of the interwar political press, as did other leading figures within the Hrad, or "Castle," the informal nexus of powerful figures and institutions influenced by and allied with Masaryk and Eduard Benes, then foreign minister, later president.2

Political newspapers, for the president, were essential to the creation and direction of the Czechoslovak state. On the one hand, their intimate relationships with their sponsoring political parties made them an important means of exerting political control and influence within the party system. Thus newsrooms became a logical extension of the usual arenas of political contention, such as Parliament. On the other hand, newspapers

Research for this article was supported by the International Research and Exchanges Board as well as the American Council of Learned Societies. I also thankJamie Bronstein, Peter Bugge, Katherine David-Fox, Melissa Feinberg, Iiigo Garcia-Bryce, Rene Hadji- georgalis, Lynn Patyk, Nancy Wingfield, and the anonymous reviewers of Slavic Review.

1. Karel Capek, President Masaryk Tells His Story, trans. Dora Round (London, 1934), 205.

2. Interwar contemporaries clearly understood the Castle as an extremely powerful organization, practically a rival party, although one lacking a coordinated mass base. The Castle's centers of information gathering, fundraising, and influence involved the presidential chancellery; the secretariat of Benes's Ministry of Foreign Affairs; departments in other ministries, such as the Ministry of the Interior; the president's and Benes's discre- tionary funds; and Masaryk's and Benes's personal friendships with many important or influential figures, such as powerful bankers and parliamentary leaders. Czechoslovak par- liamentarians and political journalists began publicly discussing the Castle's existence as a rival political institution as early as 1920. The many valuable studies on the Castle as a political phenomenon include Karl Bosl, ed., Die Burg: Einflufireiche politische Krdfte um Masaryk und Benes, 2 vols. (Munich, 1973-1974); F. Gregory Campbell, "The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and the Zivnostenska Bank," Bohemia:Jahrbuch des Collegium Carolinum 15 (1974): 231-53; Josef Harna, Zdenek Deyl, and Vlastislav Lacina, "Materialy k politickym, hospodarskym, a socialnim dejinam Ceskoslovenska v letech 1918-1929," Sbornik k dejindm 19. a 20. stoleti 7 (Prague, 1981), 73-79;Josef Harna, "Poznamky ke studiu struktury poli- tick6ho systemu burzoazniho ~eskoslovenska," Sbornik k dejindm 19. a 20. stoleti 10 (Prague, 1986), 171-92; Antonin Klimek, Boj o Hrad I: Hrad a Petka, 1918-1926 (Prague,1996), and Klimek, Boj o Hrad II: Kdo po Masarykovi? 1926-1935 (Prague, 1998), as well as Klimek's many articles in Stfedn[ Evropa; Jaroslav Pechacek, Masaryk, Benes, Hrad: Masarykovy dopisy Benesovi (Munich, 1984; reprint, Prague, 1996); Zbynek Zeman and Antonin Klimek, The Life ofEdvard Benes 1884-1948: Czechoslovakia in Peace and War (Oxford, 1997).

Slavic Review 63, no. 2 (Summer 2004)



Slavic Review

made possible direct communication with the electorate, allowing the Castle at least partially to subvert or evade party politics and to try to per- suade and educate the reader. Like many interwar Czechoslovak leaders, Masaryk and Benes were intellectuals, whose careers were built on the written word and who viewed it as a crucial means-perhaps the crucial means-of shaping an appropriately responsive electorate.

The Castle hoped specifically that newspapers would help them ac- complish several political tasks: through newspapers, they intended to exert political influence, instruct Czechoslovak citizens, and perhaps even create a citizen coalition behind Castle policy. The Castle's tacit model seems to have been an idealized version of a late-nineteenth-century daily paper which had briefly managed to achieve a similar combination of political effects: Ndrodni listy (National pages). Representing the "progressive" or liberal wing of the Czech national movement, Nirodni listy was the preeminent Czech-language daily in Bohemia and Moravia from 1861 until World War I, in terms of its popularity, its literary quality, and its importance for the Czech national cause. Its reputation was built notjust on the prominence of its writers but also on its consistent defiance of Aus- trian authoritarian imperial policies; during the 1880s, the Taaffe government confiscated the paper 330 times, roughly once every twelve days. The paper campaigned on behalf of patriotic Czech causes such as rais-

ing funds to build the National Theater or the monument to Jan Hus, fifteenth-century religious martyr and Czech national hero, in Prague's Old Town Square.3 Ndrodni listy helped to attract Czech-speakers to the Czech-national cause and then embodied that cause for them, both craft-

ing and representing the nation. It was also one of the most important sources of the Young Czech party's strength.4

Moreover, newspapers were the perfect means of exercising a particular symbolic, indirect political influence long viewed by Masaryk as deeply beneficial. The president's prewar political activity and writings had artic- ulated the idea of a "nonpolitical politics," particularly in his 1896 study of the work of mid-nineteenth-century Czech nationalistjournalist and public intellectual Karel Havlicek Borovsky. Havlicek Borovsky had advocated

organizing outside the political realm to "raise the level of the education and consciousness of the nation, and especially of the intelligentsia," thereby providing "moral government." Like Havlicek Borovsky, writes historian H. Gordon Skilling, "Masaryk continued to believe that parliamentary politics was not the only kind of political work, and was often not the most effective . . . [way to] raise the political level of the people."5 Likewise, Masaryk's small prewar Realist party had been founded in the 1890s with the explicit expectation of being a party above other parties, a beacon shining down on Austrian political life, providing moral leader-

ship and intellectual clarity: a party hoping, not for power, but for influ-

3. On Ndrodni listy and the Young Czechs, see Bruce Garver, The Young Czech Party, 1874-1901, and the Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven, 1978), 102-9.

4. Ibid., 107. 5. H. Gordon Skilling, T. G. Masaryk: Against the Current, 1882-1914 (University Park,

1994), 35-36.

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ence.6 The Castle often seemed to aspire to exercise the same kind of leadership over Czechoslovak politics during the years of the First Repub- lic: the press was a crucial venue.

It should be noted that Masaryk did more than manipulate newspapers: he wrote for them, largely via anonymous contributions easily recognizable as his (and publicly deplored by other Czechoslovak politicians). Limitations of space preclude a detailed discussion here, but the president's concerns as expressed in his freelancing mirror those mani- fested in his newsroom interventions. In anonymous articles that ran in various center-left papers and journals from 1919 to 1932, Masaryk con- sistently tried to deny legitimacy to the political right, its domestic and international agenda, and its leading figures. The president reacted most sharply to the right's integral Czech chauvinism, shading into fascism, as well as to rightist politicians' distrust of and attacks on Benes. In these articles, Masaryk also developed and defended his claim to be considered the country's founder, as well as Benes's position as his successor. Con- temporaries dubbed the president's polemics with other Czech politicians and would-be founders the "battle of the legend-makers."7 Masaryk's insistence on being the republic's most prominent freelancer makes clear his sense of the press's political import.

The political right, Masaryk's opponent in his articles, remained the Castle's target in its forays into the press. The Castle's main enemy was the conservative National Democratic party, led by Karel Kramar and Viktor Dyk. Masaryk and Kramar had distrusted one another since their days as Young Czech colleagues in the Austro-Hungarian Reichsrat and as cofounders of the small Realist party in the early 1890s. After the birth of the new state, the National Democrats were initially the republic's strongest party, and Kramar was the country's first prime minister; but in the 1920 elections the National Democrats lost strength-for which they blamed the Castle-and never regained it.8 By the end of the 1920s, the National

6. Ibid., 50-51. 7. See Andrea Orzoff, "Battles of the 'Legend-Makers': Austria-Hungary and the First

World War in Interwar Czechoslovak Politics" (unpublished manuscript). Masaryk's contributions appeared in the Realist daily 6as;Jaroslav Stransky's Phitomnost and Lidove noviny; Legionnaire publications such as Cin and Ndrodni osvobozeni; the National Socialist Ceske slovo; and, less frequently, in the Prager Presse. Various manuscripts are located in Archiv kancelare prezidenta republiky, Prague (hereafter AKPR), signatura (sign.) T 12/24 ("Tomas Masaryk"); Archiv Ustavu T. G. Masaryka, Prague, fond MAR (hereafter AUTGM, MAR), Tisk-propaganda, karton 2, slozky 10 and 11, also the slozka marked "1927"; AUTGM, MAR, Dokumentace, karton 9, slozka 56. Finally, the edited memoirs of Masa- ryk's personal assistant, Antonin Schenk, retell as an anecdote Masaryk's 1932 Pritomnost article attacking poet and writer J. S. Machar. See Jindriska Smetanova, TGM: "Proc se nerekne pravda?" Ze vzpominek dr. Antonina Schenka (Prague, 1996), 79-89. Many of these article manuscripts are collected in the series edited byJiri Brabec et al., T G. Masaryk, Cesta demokracie: Projevy, clanky, rozhovory (Prague, 1990-1997). Historian Jifi Kovtun lists Masaryk's most frequent pseudonyms as O. Skala, C.P., Xp., Dr. KT., O.R., T., and R. See Kovtun and Zdenek Lukes, Prazsky hrad za T G. Masaryka (Prague, 1995), 41.

8. On the polemics among Masaryk, Dyk, and Kramfr, over wartime resistance and other matters, see Orzoff, "Battles of the 'Legend-Makers."' Some of the polemics were published: see Viktor Dyk, Ad usum pana presidenta republiky (Prague, 1929) as well as Karel Kramfa, Kramdtiuv soud nad Benesem: Spor dr. K Kramdie s ministerem zahraniinich veci

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278 Slavic Review

Democrats had moved closer and closer to the radical right, first flirting and later allying themselves openly with the Czech fascists, though the

party retained the loyalty of much of Czechoslovakia's financial and industrial elite.9

More important, the leaders of the Castle and the National Democrats had radically different visions of Czechoslovakia's role in postwar Euro-

pean politics. Kramair, married to a Russian, had long espoused variants on pan-Slavism and was less familiar with the languages and cultures of the west. He also distrusted the new country's ethnic minorities and even

by the early 1920s had moved toward an integral Czech nationalism verg- ing on chauvinism. Kramar's Czechoslovakia would ensure the supremacy of the Czechs over the country's substantial German and Hungarian minorities, avenging them for centuries of presumed and actual oppression under Austria and Hungary.10 Masaryk and Benes, by contrast, intended Czechoslovakia to be a pillar of western values in eastern Europe, stead-

fastly adhering to parliamentary democracy and supporting the League of Nations. The two Castle leaders were more conversant with western intellectual tradition and political practice than Kramar. Although they intended the state's leadership positions to be filled by Czechs and Slovaks, Masaryk and Benes were nonetheless interested in bringing "activist"

(state-supporting) German and Hungarian parties into the government." In short, for Masaryk and Benes, weakening the National Democrats was an important part of the Castle's overall goals: encouraging the country down the path toward tolerant cosmopolitanism, inclusion of the coun-

try's national minorities, and cooperation with and dependence on the democracies of western Europe.

The threat constituted by the political right seemed particularly acute between 1925 and 1927.12 The 1925 parliamentary elections had shat-

dr. Ed. Benesem, 2d ed. (Prague, 1938). On Masaryk and Kramia in the Young Czech party, see Garver, The Young Czech Party, 160-62, 264, 313-14, and Skilling, T . G. Masaryk, 40- 45, 55. On Kramfa, the best overall work is now Martina Winkler, Karel Kramar (1860- 1937): Selbstbild, Fremdwahrnehmungen und Modernisierungsverstindnis eines tschechischen Poli- tikers (Munich, 2002). On Masaryk and Kramia during the interwar years, see Antonin Klimek's Boj o Hrad series.

9. On the National Democrats' political evolution, see Lee Blackwood, "Czech and Polish National Democracy at the Dawn of Independent Statehood, 1918-1919," East Eu-

ropean Politics and Societies 4, no. 3 (1990): 469-88; Stanley B. Winters, "Passionate Patriots: Czechoslovak National Democracy in the 1920s," East-CentralEurope/ LEurope du Centre-Est 18, no. 1 (1991): 55-68; and David Kelly, The Czech Fascist Movement, 1922-1942 (Boulder, Colo., 1995).

10. For brief statements of Kramfa's position, seeJoseph Rothschild, East Central Eu-

rope between the Two World Wars (Seattle, 1974), 95; Winters, "Passionate Patriots," 55-60; and Blackwood, "Czech and Polish National Democracy," 477-79, 481-82, 487-88. For more detail, see Winkler, Karel Kramai.

11. Masaryk's famously tactless comment about Bohemian Germans being "emi-

grants and colonists" demonstrates that, in the words of Joseph Rothschild, though the Czechs intended to be benevolent landlords, they would not let the other minorities for-

get who owned the house. Masaryk's comment, from his 1918 address to the National As-

sembly, is reprinted in, among others, Milan Machovec, Tomds G. Masaryk (1968; reprint, Prague, 2000), 308.

12. On the unease among Czechoslovak political circles during this time, see, for ex-

ample, Antonin Klimek and Petr Hofman, Vitez, kteryprohrdl: General Radola Gajda (Prague,



TomasiMasaryk and PoliticalJournalism, 1925-1929

tered the relative consensus that had previously characterized Czecho- slovak political culture.13 Antonin Svehla, longtime prime minister and leader of the Agrarian party, found himself unable to craft a lasting parliamentary coalition and even retired briefly from politics between March and September 1926.14 Amid the uncertainty, the leftist press reported in late spring 1926 that Czech fascists, supposedly led by rightist army general Radola Gajda, intended to mount a putsch against the government during the Sokol congress in Prague inJuly. The Castle later accused Gajda, unjustly, of selling state secrets to the Soviets. Gajda was put on trial for treason and became a lightning rod for anti-Castle sentiment on the right.l5

Along with other observers, it seemed to Vojtech Tuka, strategist for the Slovak People's Party, that the Czechoslovak parliamentary system would not be capable of resolving these crises. "A revolutionary mood flared up again in 1926. There were wild rumors: 'The leftist parties are planning a coup,' 'The Czech fascists are preparing a coup.. .' I could understand either possibility. I met with the Czech fascists about taking power together, with the condition that Slovakia would receive autonomy under the new regime, and I met with the communists, to see whether we might not coordinate some kind of action. It did not matter to me."16

Some of the rumors circulating at this time were about the Castle. Some socialist journalists wrote favorably of Marshal J6zef Pilsudski's May 1926 "cleansing" coup in Poland and raised the possibility that Masa- ryk might grant himself similar powers. Masaryk did in fact consider the

1995), 65. Nor was the concern limited to the Castle: fears also circulated that Masaryk and Benes might attempt a "constitutional coup" on the model of J6zef Pilsudski's May 1926 "sanacja" in neighboring Poland. See Andrea Orzoff, "Battle for the Castle: The Friday Men and the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1938" (Ph.D. diss, Stanford University, 2000), 146-51; also mentioned in Tomia Dvoirk, "Narodni strana prace (1925-1930)" series in Stiedni evropa 76-78 (1998), specifically 78:119.

13. Just prior to the elections, the three strongest parties in the governing coalition (the Agrarians, the Social Democrats, and the National Socialists) had repeatedly betrayed agreements to pass one another's legislative priorities; collaboration became impossible. Relations between the main parties and their smaller supporters also deteriorated. The 1925Jan Hus celebrations provide a neat example of the breakdown of Czechoslovak political cooperation: see Cynthia Paces, "Religious Images and National Symbols in the Creation of Czech Identity, 1890-1938" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1998) as well as Paces, "'The Czech Nation Must Be Catholic!' An Alternative Version of Czech National- ism during the First Republic," Nationalities Papers 27, no. 3 (1999): 407-28.

14. See Victor Mamatey, "The Development of Czech Democracy, 1920-1938," in Victor Mamatey and Radomir Luza, eds., A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948 (Princeton, 1973), 128-40.

15. The Castle's informer, Ludvik Henych, wrote on 2June 1926 that in Prague alone there were 40,000 organized members of the fascist movement; in Moravia and Bohemia together roughly 200,000; he had no information on Silesia and Slovakia. Historian An- tonin Klimek notes that Henych frequently exaggerated; but even half such a number would still be significant. See Klimek and Hofman, Vitez, ktery prohrdl, 68, on this and on the Gajda trial. Also important on the Gajda trial are Kelly, The Czech Fascist Movement; Jonathan Zorach, "The Enigma of the Gajda Affair in Czechoslovak Politics in 1926," Slavic Review 35, no. 4 (December 1976): 683-98; and, for more general context, Mamatey, "The Development of Czechoslovak Democracy 1920-1938."

16. Klimek and Hofman, Vitez, ktery prohrdl, 65.

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possibility of a Castle coup, as did BeneS.17 The Castle feared, not just for the continued existence of the political center in 1925-1927, but also for the strength of the centrist press, then undergoing real stress. Publishing tycoon Jaroslav Stransky's two Castle-loyal papers, Pritomnost (The present) and Lidove noviny (The people's newspaper), were in danger, as we shall see.18 The daily Ndrodni osvobozeni (National liberation), published by the centrist wing of the Czechoslovak Legionnaires, had long been a reliable adherent of centrist policies. (The Legionnaires were Czech veterans of World War I who fought on the side of the Allies. After their 1920 return to Czechoslovakia, those Legionnaires remaining politically active divided into three camps, one of which supported Masaryk and the Castle.) But the Legionnaire community itself was becoming increasingly divided, and in 1926 the editorial board began interfering strongly with the news-

paper's previously independent stance, which the Castle feared might compromise Ndrodni osvobozeni's previous support.

At a time of seeming crisis, such as from 1925 to 1927, the press became even more important. Some of the battles over the press are narrated here. The Castle's mid-1920s involvement in the press illustrates the Castle's view of newspapers as crucial, multifaceted political and cultural instruments. Additionally, this article's focus on newsroom politics adds detail to a scholarly portrait of Tomas Masaryk that has, in the last twenty years, moved sharply away from Masaryk's own mythologized self-portrait as a disengaged observer of and benign moral influence on interwar politics. Rather, the situations described here clearly show Masaryk to be a

canny, active politician, focused on shoring up the political center and

minimizing the influence of the right. The Castle reacted to the elec-

torally insignificant right as a real threat, understandably so given the

prominence of rightist parties and politicians elsewhere in central and eastern Europe. Led by well-known politicians, the National Democrats held the trust of influential sectors of the electorate and publicly ex-

pressed sympathy for fascism. Journalistic politics, both those detailed here and those in Masaryk's freelance articles, were an important reason for the National Democrats' radicalization; but journalistic politics also

provided a potential means of countering or containing the right. Finally, the episodes narrated here demonstrate the importance of the nineteenth-

century Czech national movement for the political culture of the interwar

Republic.

17. Various suggestions were circulated, among them revising the constitution to create a directly elected presidency and to expand the president's executive powers. See Or- zoff, "Battle for the Castle," 149-51; also see Klimek and Hofman, Vitez, kteryprohril, 65- 67, as well as Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 371. The only western-language historian I have found who mentions the Castle discussion of a "constitutional coup" is Daniel Miller, Forging Po- litical Compromise: Antonin Svehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party, 1918-1933 (Pitts- burgh, 1999), 152-54.

18. In 1925, Lidove noviny became the core of National Labor Party propaganda and

organization: many Lidove noviny staffers were party members. See Orzoff, "Battle for the Castle," chap. 2, as well as Julius Firt, Knihy a osudy (Brno, 1991); Ferdinand Peroutka, Deniky, dopisy, vzpominky (Prague, 1995); and Tomas Dvofrk's "Narodni strana prace (1925-1930)" series in Stiedni evropa 76-78 (1998).



Tomds Masaryk and PoliticalJournalism, 1925-1929

Most important, the Castle's maneuvers in the press also make clear the extent to which newspapers and their staffs served both as pawns and as powers in the game of interwar Czechoslovak politics. Such a perspective opens the sphere of Czechoslovak political culture to encompass print culture and reading publics and highlights the direct connection the Castle and its contemporaries assumed between the written word and the ballot box. Interwar journalism provides an important venue for examin-

ing behind-the-scenes elite involvement in a state commonly understood as a behind-the-scenes democracy-or, to paraphrase Ferdinand Peroutka, one of the interwar republic's sharpest observers, a "democracy of small rooms."19 Some of those rooms, clearly, were newsrooms.

Papers and Parties: The Interwar Partisan Press

Czech-language journalism had burst into vibrant development in the late nineteenth century.20 By the interwar period, the Czechoslovak press constituted a thriving, multilingual journalistic marketplace for all readers, from highbrow to lowbrow. Czechoslovakia's tabloid, or "yellow," press did an energetic business: fashion magazines for both men and women flourished along with Prague's budding couture "ateliers": journals serial- izing or commenting on literature, art, and even linguistics found a devoted audience.21 In 1920, there were 2,259 periodical publications in Czechoslovakia, of which 1,521 were "Czechoslovak" and 759 were published by other ethnic groups, such as Germans, Hungarians, and Poles. By 1930 the total number of publications had risen to 3,933.22

In the Czech lands, however, politics had traditionally provided journalism's foundation. The Czech press before World War I had been both overwhelmingly contentious- described by historian OwenJohnson as "a battle of all against all"-and highly politicized. Nor did that change after the war: a 1920 survey reported that at least one-third of interwar papers

19. Peroutka wrote of Antonin Svehla that he was a "politician of small rooms." See Peroutka, Deniky, dopisy, vzpominky, 149.

20. On the history of Czech and Czechoslovak journalism, see F. Gregory Campbell, "The Interwar Czech Press" (paper presented at "The Role and Functions of the Media in Eastern Europe: Perspectives over Time," Indiana University, 9-11 November 1983); Vojtech Dolejsi, Noviny a novindii: Zpozndmek a vzpominek (Prague, 1963); Garver, The Young Czech Party; Owen Johnson, "Unbridled Freedom: The Czech Press and Politics, 1918- 1938,"Journalism History 13, nos. 3-4 (1986): 96-103; Derek Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton,1998); Sayer, "The Language of Nationality and the Nationality of Language: Prague 1780-1920," Past and Present 153 (November 1996): 197-98. Less helpful, but still worth consulting, are Frank Kaplan, "The Czech and Slovak Press: The First 100 Years," Journalism Monographs 47 (January 1977): 1-54; the textbook edited by Milena Berankova, Dejiny ceskoslovenske zurnalistiky, vols. 1-3 (Prague, 1981); and Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (New York, 1997).

21. On Czechoslovakia's gutter press, see Johnson, "Unbridled Freedom," 99. On highbrow artistic and scholarly journals, see, for example, the work of Jindfich Toman, "Karel (apek and/vs. the Prague Linguistic Circle," in Andrew W. Mackie, Tatyana K. McAuley, and Cynthia Simmons, eds., For Henry Kucera: Studies in Slavic Philology and Com- putational Linguistics (Ann Arbor, 1992), 365- 80.

22. Berankova, Dejiny ceskoslovenske zurnalistiky, 3:58.

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identified themselves as political.23 The number actually sponsored by political parties was no doubt higher, since most parties published semipro- fessional papers aimed at attracting different occupational groups, such as teachers or the employees of large firms like the Skoda works in Plzen. Moreover, Czechoslovakia did not outlaw any political party, even the most extreme, until 1938; nor did the government fully repress any party's political press.24

Most of the interwar political press was enthusiastically partisan, and interwar politicians viewed their party's press apparatus as acutely important.25 Each party possessed its own morning daily, its own evening paper-usually more of a sensationalist tabloid than the more august morning edition-and sometimes even its own weekly opinion journals and cultural magazines aimed at women and youth. Of the three largest newspaper printing firms, two of them were dominated by political parties; Novina was supported by the powerful Agrarians, by the mid-1920s the country's largest political party, while Prazska akciova tiskarna was dominated by the National Democrats.26 The Agrarian party press can serve as example here: by 1928, the party owned thirteen printing houses and published thirty-eight newspapers, including six dailies.27 Frequently a party press encompassed a wide range of dailies, magazines, and weeklies, published in different cities and directed at various regions and linguistic groups all over the country, from north Bohemia to sub-Carpathian Ruthenia.28 Czech-language press factionalization was mirrored by the country's other ethnicities, which also had their own well-developed partisan presses.29 The government published its own newspapers through

23. Jan Nahlovsky, "Casopisy v ceskoslovenske republice," teskoslovensky statisticky vest- nik 4, nos. 4-7 (February 1932), cited inJohnson, "Unbridled Freedom," 98.

24. That said, censorship of articles and even entire issues of newspapers was not un- common. The files of the Presidium of the Ministry of the Interior, located in the Statni Ustiedni Archiv (hereafter SUA) in Prague, record censorship and confiscation even of

journals friendly to the state, such as Peroutka's Pritomnost. See, for example, SUA, fond PMV (Presidium ministerstva vnitra), Statni zastupitelstvi v Praze, confiscation of Pritom- nost dated 9 April 1924.

25. Julius Firt, "Die 'Burg' und die Zeitschrift Pritomnost," in Bosl, ed., Die Burg, 2:111. Also see Campbell, "Interwar Czech Press," 6-7.

26. Johnson, "Unbridled Freedom," 98. 27. Miller, Forging Political Compromise, 91-92. 28. To offer an example, the National Democratic Party published the following pa-

pers: the dailies Ndrodni listy (National pages), Ndrod (Nation), and Role (Role) in Prague; Cesky denik (Bohemian daily) in Plzefi (this paper was associated with the Skoda works); Moravskoslezsky denik (Moravian-Silesian daily) in Ostrava; Pozor (Attention) in Olomouc; Ndrodni noviny (The national news) in Brno; Obzor (Horizon) in Pierov; the magazines Zensky svet (Women's world), Mlady ndrod (Young nation), Ndrodni student (National student), Ndrodni ucitel (National teacher), and Ceskd revue (Bohemian review), among others. On the National Democratic press, see Berankova, Dejiny ceskoslovenski zurnalistiky, 3:170-71.

29. The Czechoslovak Hungarian press, consisting predominantly of "independent" newspapers, differed from the other ethnic partisan presses. On the Hungarian press, see

Lajos Turczel, "A czehszlovakiai magyar sajto fejlodese 1919 es 1945 kozott," Magyar Konyvszemle 97, no. 4 (1981): 299-316. This article catalogues the various Hungarian pe- riodicals published in Czechoslovakia but does not assess their political affiliations or sources of funding. It focuses on the left. I thank Holly Case for her assistance with trans-

lating this article. For a balanced assessment of the German press, see Norbert Linz, "Der

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the Third (propaganda and culture) section of Benes's Ministry of For- eign Affairs, most prominently Ceskoslovenskd republika (Czechoslovak Re- public) and the esteemed but low-circulation German-language Prager Presse, intended to convey Czechoslovak issues and opinion to a European audience that could not read Czech.30

The republic also possessed "independent" newspapers, dailies not supported by party funds: among these were the Stransky family's Lidove noviny, based in Brno, and the Prague Legionnaire daily Ndrodni osvobozeni.3' Journalistic independence did not generally correlate with modern or Anglo-American assumptions about journalistic neutrality: independents often took strong political stances, usually in defense of the Castle.32 Independent German papers in Prague, such as Max Brod's Prager Tag- blatt, published by and for Prague's German Jews, also maintained a general support for Masaryk and the center. Rather than having to toe a party line, however, journalists at these papers were free to espouse whichever political platform they chose. The support of independent newspapers could be valuable for many reasons: these papers could defend particular policies, but they were also useful in creating a particular ideological at- mosphere and bringing ideas into common currency. The Castle's lack of overt political control over these papers meant that support from the independents allowed the Castle to claim its ideas were attractive to a wider public.

The president and his chancellery staff paid careful attention to the republic's newspapers. The Castle chancellery monitored the newspapers, evening editions, and magazines of each established governing party, in addition to those papers that represented groups hostile to the state or its public order. Papers were important political bellwethers; information about party newspapers, whether about subscribers or a change in editorial positions, could offer valuable information about the parties themselves and therefore about the Castle's ability to craft lasting political coalitions that might support Castle policy. Some of the Castle informants on the world of Prague journalism included such cultural luminaries as Arne Laurin, redoubtable chief editor of the government's Prager Presse, and Karel Capek, novelist, playwright, and journalist-of-all-trades for Li- dove noviny.33

For the intellectuals writing for and reading its pages, the world of journalistic politics offered a chance to articulate and defend points of

Aufbau der deutschen politischen Presse in der ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik (1918-1925)," Bohemia:Jahrbuch der Collegium Carolinum 11 (1970): 284-307.

30. The Third Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responsible for information and propaganda, published these and other papers, as well as works of literary merit by Czechoslovak authors. See Andrea Orzoff, "Diplomacy by Other Means: The Third Section and Cultural Diplomacy in Interwar Czechoslovakia" (unpublished). On the Prager Presse and its circulation figures, see Berankova, Dejiny ceskoslovenskg zurnalistiky, 3:152, and Dolejsi, Noviny a novindii, 63.

31. On Legionnaire politics, see Kelly, The Czech Fascist Movement. 32. I thank Martin Jan Stransky for his clarification of this point. See Berinkova,

Dejiny ceskoslovenske zurnalistiky, 3: 56n46. 33. Evidence of Laurin's and 1apek's involvement abounds in Prague archives, par-

ticularly in AUTGM and AKPR.

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view, to work with like-minded writers and editors, and perhaps to de-

velop political influence, all the while maintaining a gentlemanly distance from the electorate. The journalist, unlike the parliamentarian, could maintain intellectual independence and was not required to follow in- structions or vote the party line: while he was expected to hew to it in his articles, he could at least choose the issue and the time. Due to Prague's small size, Prague journalism-like Prague politics-was quite an intimate endeavor. Friends reviewed friends' novels and plays; old enemies rehashed old grievances in columns and feuilletons.

Yet this discussion neglects perhaps the most important characteristic of interwar journalism: endemic financial insecurity, both for journalists and for the papers themselves. The major partisan dailies-as well as the

independents with which they competed-were sold at a loss to attract readers. This kind of competition was especially fierce among evening editions. Every newspaper thus developed massive deficits, which sometimes threatened the existence, notjust of the newspaper, but also of the

political party that published it.34 In a letter to President Masaryk, the editors of the centrist daily Tribuna, in dire financial straits by 1926, defended its precarious financial condition by asking rhetorically, "What daily [paper] these days isn't in the red?"35

As with the papers, so with their employees. Commentary in memoirs and correspondence indicate that debt was commonplace among journalists in interwar Prague. Laurin was reportedly in the habit of saying to his newsroom staff, "An Austrian officer needed to have syphilis, so as not to flee before the enemy. A reporter needs to have debts for him to do

anything at all. But you won't wheedle a new [wage] advance out of me, not even on bended knee!"36 Internal documents from Stransky's Lidove

noviny indicate that many reporters and editors remained in debt for the entire interwar period, often to their employer, who covered their debts or vouched for their reporters' ability to pay.37

Renowned journalist and editor Ferdinand Peroutka can serve as an instructive example. Like many of his colleagues, Peroutka lived beyond his means and was mired in debt for much of the interwar period. Per- outka traveled to Paris and bought furniture for his apartment from the

design atelier of Adolf Loos and Mies van der Rohe.38 Peroutka was also known to enjoy Prague's nightlife, and even to do much of his writing and

34. Berankova, Dejiny ceskoslovenske zurnalistiky, 3:57. 35. Typewritten copy of a letter to Masaryk by the editors of Tribuna, 25 August 1926:

AKPR, sign. T 45/24, document 929/26. Another copy of this document can be found in AUTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, sloika 5-Tisk 1923-1932.

36. Frantisek Kubka, Na vlastni oli: Pravdive male povidky o mych soucasnicich (Prague, 1959), 99-101.

37. See Moravsky zemsky archiv (Moravian Regional Archive, Brno, hereafter MZA), fond G426, for example, fascikl 40 (K. Z. Klima) and karton 86 (Edvard Bass). Ferdinand Peroutka's papers also reveal significant debt. Even such "mandarins" as Ferdinand Per- outka, Edvard Bass, and K. Z. Klima were deeply indebted, constantly drawing advances on their pay: Bass was forced to go to trial over unpaid debt at least once.

38. MZA, fond G426, fascikl 39 (Ferdinand Peroutka) contains various bills from van der Rohe's studio sent to Peroutka's office.



Tomas Masaryk and PoliticalJournalism, 1925-1929

editing in clubs or restaurants. Peroutka's third wife, Slavka, wrote of her husband, "His lifestyle was bohemian. Friends say that he lived for his nightlife. That I don't know, but I do know that he enjoyed visiting night- clubs, that he enjoyed lunching and having dinner with his friends in pleasant restaurants. Whatever he earned, he spent."39

Newspapers' political importance made their financial precarious- ness, and their reporters' straitened circumstances, into both a political issue and a political opportunity, especially for politicians with deep pock- ets or high-placed connections. The creation of new newspapers, and the takeover or even closure of others, as well as the loyalties, placement, and replacement of reporters and editors, remained politically significant throughout the interwar period.

The Castle's Press: Jaroslav Stranskl, Lidove noviny, and Pritomnost

Until 1927, the leaders of the Castle could not rely on a consistent partisan press. Although he joined the National Socialists in 1923, Benes could not count on the reliable support of the National Socialist party press until late 1926. Masaryk never affiliated himself openly with a party, though he was said to vote Social Democratic.40 Masaryk's former political party, the Realists, had fallen apart by 1921; even before its demise, the party had never possessed much of a wide popular base. Its newspapers, such as the daily 6as (Time) or the opinion weekly Nase doba (Our age), had either ceased publication or dwindled to a tiny circle of subscribers.

Thus the Castle turned for the most part to the independent papers and particularly to the papers published by Brno tycoon and politician Jaroslav Stransky. Both Stransky and his father, Adolf, moved easily from practicing law to politics and publishing. Both had served and held positions in the Young Czechs and their successor party, the National Demo- crats; by 1919, Adolf had opted for a permanent career in politics.41 Mean- while, Jaroslav returned to Brno to oversee his family's publishing enterprises-but not exclusively.42 Between 1921 and 1924, Jaroslav held

39. Slavka Peroutkova, "Slavka Peroutkova," in Peroutka, Deniky, dopisy, vzpominky, 250.

40. The Czechoslovak National Socialists were a moderate socialist party bearing no resemblance to the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party. Until 1926 the Na- tional Socialist press apparatus was dominated by editors and journalists faithful to Jiri Stribrny, a power within the party until his Castle-sponsored ouster in 1926. See Orzoff, "Battle for the Castle," 173-81. On the National Socialists, see the work of T. Mills Kelly, including "Taking It to the Streets: Czech National Socialists in 1908," Austrian History Year- book 29, no. 1 (1998): 93-112. Various sources discuss Masaryk's voting tendencies, noting as well that his closest friends and associates began in the Social Democratic party, such as lawyer Vaclav Boucek. See, among others, Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 170.

41. Adolf Stransky, minister of industry under Kramia 1918-1919, was voted into the Senate in 1920, where he remained politically active until his death in 1931. On the Stran- sky family and Lidove noviny, see Jii Pernes, Svet lidovych novin 1893-1993: Stoletd kapitola z dejin ceske zurnalistiky, kultury a politiky (Prague, 1993), 52.

42. Martin Cank, 'Jaroslav Stransky: Pravnik, zurnalista, politik" (Master's thesis, Filozoficka fakulta Univerzity Palackeho v Olomouci, 1993), 18, 20-21, 23. During this same time period, Jaroslav Stransky finished his Habilitationsschrift on criminal law, later becoming a professor at Brno's Masaryk University and writing several books on the sub-

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various positions within the National Democratic party, trying to bring it more in line with the progressive liberalism he had inherited from his father. He also built up a publishing empire. By 1925, Stransky's holdings included Lidove noviny, judged by many historians as the republic's high- est-quality daily, as well as the weekly opinion journal Pritomnost, to be discussed in more detail below. Stransky also owned the Brno printing house

Polygrafie, and by 1925 had acquired the prestigious literary publisher F. Borovy.43

By far the most important card in Stransky's-and the Castle's-hand was Lidove noviny. Adolf Stransky had founded the paper in 1893 as a partisan afternoon daily for his tiny Moravian Populist party, aligned with the

Young Czechs.44 By 1919, chief editor Arnost Heinrich had transformed it into a nonpartisan morning paper, containing both breaking news and belles lettres and known for accurate, timely reporting paired with stylis- tic vivacity.45 When Jaroslav took over Lidove noviny after World War I, he added a Prague bureau and staffed it with some of the country's finest

young writers. Throughout the interwar period the paper gradually increased in popularity. By 1937, the paper sold 44,000 copies daily, 76,000 copies on Sundays, and had 32,000 subscribers-respectable numbers

given that Lidove noviny was more expensive than many other dailies.46 One historian has dubbed Lidove noviny the First Republic's only New

York Times or Le Monde-a newspaper written so well, and from such a

cosmopolitan perspective, as to be able to attract a global audience.47 Though generally acknowledged as the Castle's organ, Lidove noviny was admired for its sophistication in news-gathering, drawing on correspondents all over Czechoslovakia and Europe.48 In addition, the paper's long- standing interest in belles lettres ensured its cultural prominence. Since the turn of the century it had commissioned essays and feuilletons by leading Czech authors-even poets-such as S. K. Neumann, Viktor Dyk, and Antonin Sova and by the composer LeosJanacek.49 The younger writers reporting out of its Prague office included the Capek brothers, Edvard Bass, Karel Polacek, and Peroutka. Karel Capek, the country's most inter-

nationally prominent author and playwright, has been described as "the

paper's [interwar] motive force; it owed its ever-increasing popularity to him."50 Capek "loved Lidovky with fanatical devotion," according to con-

temporary Frantisek Kubka: in addition to doing what he had been hired

ject. I thank MartinJan Stransky for pointing out this source. See also Pernes, Svet lidovych novin, 53.

43. Ibid., 57. 44. Garver, The Young Czech Party, 109; Pernes, Svit lidovych novin, 9-14. 45. Pernes, Svet lidovych novin, 58. 46. Ibid., 56-58. 47. That is, if that audience could read Czech. While noting the paper's literary and

journalistic quality, historian F. Gregory Campbell nonetheless concludes that the young state's insistence on Czech and Slovak as its state languages inevitably isolated it from the wider world and the rest of Europe. See Campbell, "Interwar Czech Press," 11, 23-27, 31-32.

48. Pernes, Svet lidovych novin, 58. 49. Ibid., 27-28. 50. Ibid., 67.



Tomais'Masaryk and PoliticalJournalism, 1925-1929

to do-that is, literary and theatrical criticism- Gapek assisted anywhere he was needed, filling in for vacationing staff members and writing just about any kind of column, feuilleton, editorial, or article.5' Lidove noviny staffer Edmond Konrad noted that Capek often wrote for any rubric in the paper; in the 1920s he would often write five contributions to a single day's issue, many signed with pseudonyms.52 In return, Capek's literary work was profoundly influenced by Lidovky. His 1935 novel Vdlka s mloky (War with the newts) clearly breathes the air of the newsroom. In fact, literary scholar William Harkins dubbed that novel, along with the 1922 Tovdrna na absolutno (Factory for the absolute), a roman feuilleton, and both novels appeared serially in Lidove noviny before being published in book form. (The roman feuilleton is a pastiche, combining genres such as newspaper articles, memoirs, scholarly works, even manifestoes. Accord- ing to Harkins, "The compositional character is that ofjournalism; there is no hero, and characters enter or leave the novel in so far as they are 'newsworthy.'" 53)

Also profoundly important was the weekly opinion journal Pitomnost, published by Stransky but founded by President Masaryk in 1924. Jour- nalist Peroutka had attracted Masaryk's attention through a series of con- troversial essays on Czech history in the pages of Tribuna, anotherjournal the president had helped to found. In April 1923, Peroutka received an invitation to the presidential villa in Lany, near Prague, where the president offered him the funds to begin a new weekly.54 Although Jaroslav Stransky legally owned the magazine, and supported it financially until it was no longer in the red (Pfitomnost did not turn a profit until the early 1930s), Pritomnost was inspired, edited, and directed by Peroutka's self- reliant vision.55 It was an immediate critical and intellectual success. Pnitomnost usually covered fourteen pages with tiny print, analyzing the most important questions and events of the week, but also dealing with ongoing questions: a journal of ideas rather than a weekly review. Per- outka himself or a prominent intellectual usually wrote the front-page editorial, which usually discussed politics. The magazine's long-running rubrics were national economics, European economics and politics, social issues, translations of short literary pieces and feuilletons by prominent European writers, and occasional comment on women's issues. The list of contributors to Piitomnost included some of the country's most prominent writers and thinkers: Josef Kodicek; Rudolf Fuchs; Karel Polacek; the brothers Capek; Stransky; Egon Ervin Kisch; Bass; Rudolf Bechyne, prominent Social Democrat and several-time cabinet minister; Legion- naire author Josef Kopta; professors Vilem Mathesius, Josef Macek, and Otakar Vocadlo; and the theatrical directors K. H. Hilar and Otokar Fischer.56

51. Kubka, Na vlastni oci, 125. 52. Edmond Konrad, "Karel Capek novinSr," Nac vzpomenu (Prague, 1957), 186-88. 53. William Harkins, Karel Capek (New York, 1962), 73, also 95, 103. 54. Peroutka, Denziy, dopisy, vzpominky, 141-42. 55. Firt, Knihy a osudy, 58. 56. About Pitomnost, see Martina Winkler, "Die Krise der Intelligenz: Zur Debatte um

die Rolle der tschechischen Intelligenz in der Zeitschrift Pritomnost 1924-1939," Bohemia:

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Yet only half of the president's 1923 offer of funds had been intended to support Pritomnost; the other half would also go to Stransky, but for a very different enterprise. Stransky's half was seed money to found the Na- tional Labor Party, a center-left "bourgeois" (nonsocialist) party named after and inspired by the British Labour Party. Both Masaryk and Benes publicly disavowed any connection to the new party, though both contributed funds and moral support.57 The new party was intended to fill a void in the political spectrum, attracting voters put off by the National Democrats' anti-Castle sentiments but unmoved by the appeals of the moderate socialist parties.58 Stransky and the other founders also hoped to break the power of the Petka, the unconstitutional and unofficial coalition of the leaders of the country's five largest political parties, with which the president was growing impatient and of which Benes had never approved.59 But the National Labor Party's most direct effect on national politics was to diminish support for the National Democrats, particularly in Moravia and Slovakia, in the 1925 elections. The National Labor Party's hopes faded quickly, and it folded into the National Socialists by 1929; but in 1925 it did the National Democrats real damage and was perceived as yet another Castle-sponsored attack on the right.60

Meanwhile, Phitomnost carved out an independent path, surprising and irritating the president. According to Peroutka, Masaryk had wanted Pritomnost to survey the latest intellectual and political trends in Czecho- slovakia and Europe, mentioning everything of significance to take place or be published that week. But Peroutka refused to create another old- fashioned review journal, choosing to focus in depth on a few central issues of political, economic, and intellectual importance. Peroutka was

Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kultur der bohmischen Ldnder 39, no. 2 (1998). Peroutka and

Bechyne knew one another from the Spolecensky klub, a leftist social club in the heart of Prague that particularly welcomed Social Democrats. They were said to be close friends. On the Spolecensky klub, see Josef Kroutvor, Potize s dejinami: Eseje (Prague, 1990), as well as Peroutka, Denzky, dopisy, vzpominky.

57. See Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 346, as well asJosef Schieszl's diary in SUA, Prague. 58. Ferdinand Peroutka, "Schazi nam jeste jedna politicka strana? I.," Pritomnost,

7 May 1925. 59. The P6tka, at the behest of Agrarian Antonin Svehla, had begun unofficial meet-

ings in 1920, with the goal of stabilizing a Parliament rocked by chaos in the Social Dem- ocratic party, at that time the largest and most influential political party. Initially, Masaryk had approved of the creation of this group, acknowledging the rawness of parliamentary debate and the need for discipline and leadership. Among the most helpful discussions of the Petka are Daniel Miller, Forging Political Compromise, as well as his "Antonin Svehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party, 1918-1933" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1989), esp. 172-77; Mamatey, "The Development of Czechoslovak Democracy,"esp. 105- 10; Klimek, Boj o Hrad I; and Vera Olivova, The Doomed Democracy: Czechoslovakia in a Dis-

rupted Europe, 1914-1938 (London, 1972), esp. 124-49. Also see F. Gregory Campbell's "Central Europe's Bastion of Democracy," East European Quarterly 11, no. 2 (Summer 1977). Like Mamatey, Campbell concludes that the Petka was a critical stabilizing force for the young republic, whether or not it was unconstitutional. Various incarnations of this unofficial group continued until the end of the First Republic and even formed the basis of the postwar National Front coalition. Daniel Miller is extremely helpful, not only on the Petka, but also on the Sestka and Osmicka, the Petka's successors.

60. On this perception generally, see DvoIrk, "Narodni strana prace (1925-1930)," Stiedni evropa 76-78 (1998).



Tomas Masaryk and PoliticalJournalism, 1925-1929 289

aware that the journal "vexed" the president, although Masaryk himself never tried to repossess the journal, or to take Peroutka off its staff.61 But-at least in the 1920s-the president was suspicious of Phtomnost and its editor.

Nor was Pritomnost Stransky's only problem: the National Labor Party was causing real difficulties for Lidove noviny, his flagship paper. In 1925, Lidove noviny had become the core of National Labor Party propaganda and organization: many Lidove noviny staffers were party members, and some writers even stood for Parliament.62 Stransky borrowed funds from Lidove noviny to pay his party's debts and forced many new "reporters" onto the paper's payroll, though their work in the newsroom was largely imaginary. By 1927, Lidove noviny's fortunes were hard-pressed.

In 1927, against this already strained backdrop, the president decided to found a new opinion journal to be published by the Czechoslo- vak Legionnaires. The new journal, called 6in (Deed), would be published by Legionnaire publisher Bohumil Prikryl.63 It would use Masaryk's nineteenth-century Nase doba model, providing a review of each week's most significant happenings. Its publisher was also significant. The Le- gionnaire publishing house was dominated by the centrist Legionnaire faction, loyal to the president but generally above public reproach or accusations of partisanship. Stransky, in contrast, was by 1927 viewed as part of the Castle. Therefore a Stransky-published journal such as Pritomnost might be less capable of reaching out to the wider audience Masaryk hoped to attract, whereas a Legionnaire journal might attract supporters from non-Castle circles. Moreover, as stated above, the Castle had already lost confidence in Pritomnost and Peroutka: that same year, Jan Hajek, the press chief of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Benes's close colleague, offered to take Piitomnost off Stransky's hands-but without Peroutka.64 Stransky and Peroutka resisted, but Stransky's financial weakness made both the newspaper and Phitomnost very vulnerable.

Cin would of course compete for readers' loyalty and attention with Pritomnost; and Stransky reacted sharply to the news of a new Castle- sponsored journal. Stransky argued to the president that harm to Stran- sky's publishing house meant harm to the politics of the center.65 Even the evidence that the centrist camp could not agree on a single journal might be enough to spur doubt: "Please keep in mind, Mr. President, that the reading public upon which our political weeklies depend is extremely narrow... I only want to submit for [your] consideration whether, with this

61. Peroutka, Deniky, dopisy, vzpominky, 143. 62. The (apek brothers, Peroutka, and K. Z. Klima, the editor of the Prague news-

room, placed themselves last on the party slate; they would have received a mandate only if the party had swept the elections. See Firt, Knihy a osudy; Peroutka, Deniky, dopisy, vzpominky; and of course Dvorak's "Narodni strana prace (1925-1930)."

63. Peroutka, Deniky, dopisy, vzpominky, 143. 64. Peroutka's own reminiscences of this event are quoted in Firt, "Die 'Burg' und die

Zeitschrift Piitomnost," in Bosl, ed., Die Burg, 2:112. 65. For Stransky's complaints to Jan Masaryk, see AUTGM, MAR, Politicke strany 4,

slozka 18, "Strana prace Dr. Stransky," report titled "Dr. Stransky," dated 12January 1927, name 'Jenda" written in upper-right corner.



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[magazine], a well-begun [political] line does not disintegrate unnecessarily, whether [the new magazine] indicates organizational anarchy."66

In the end, the question was moot: Cin never reached the same intellectual and cultural prominence of Peroutka's Prhtomnost and remained far indeed from the prominence of Lidove noviny. Cin was published, and faithfully followed the president's desired model, but spoke to a relatively narrow circle of readers, a fact that did not escape the president. Masa- ryk's manuscripts for his "freelance" articles indicate that only a single manuscript out of some twenty was destined for Cin. Far more are marked "Piitomnost. "Yet the Cin episode demonstrates Masaryk's determination to craft a widely read and appropriately loyal centrist press, even if it angered his allies.

Ndrodni listy and Tribuna: The Castle against the Right Even as Stransky's National Labor Party made inroads into National Dem- ocratic support, and the Castle put General Gajda on trial, other political battles between the center and the right played out in the newsrooms of two vulnerable dailies: the National Democratic party paper, Ndrodni listy, and a Castle-loyal independent, Tribuna. The president hoped to wrest Ndrodni listy away from the right and restore it to its previous independent progressive liberalism. But the president's attempt to claim Ndrodni listy brought the Castle into direct conflict with the leadership of the National Democrats as well as some of its own allies. Meanwhile, the National Dem- ocrats worked with conservatives within the Agrarian Party to remove Tri- buna from the Castle line of defense. For the Castle, the Tribuna conflict was more complex than the struggle for Nirodni listy, thanks to the involvement of the Agrarian Party, the country's largest and most powerful. But Tribuna lacked Ndrodni listy's cachet and reputation. Nor were its pub- lishers and readers politically important enough for the Castle to exert much effort on its behalf. Between 1925 and 1929, the Castle lost the battle for Nirodni listy; it all but decided not to fight for Tribuna.

By the mid-1920s, Nirodni listy was no longer the shining light of Czech journalism. After the Great War, Kramar purchased Ndrodni listy, transforming it into a party paper for the States' Rights Democrats, the

Young Czechs' successor party. Kramar renamed the party the National Democrats and linked it to Czech finance and industry. But party domi- nation had already bled Ndrodni listy of its critical populism and journalistic quality.67 By the mid-1920s, Ndrodni listy had settled into staunch opposition to the Castle, leading to the departure of some of its strongest young writers. The paper's editorial board was home to some of the party's farthest-right voices.

Meanwhile, the National Democrats had various internal problems, the most significant being debt andJaroslav Preiss, the country's most influential financier and a dissatisfied member of the party. Since 1917,

66. AUTGM, MAR, Politicke strany 4, sloika 18, "Strana prace Dr. Stransky," letter fromJaroslav Stransky to Masaryk, 21 January 1927.

67. Garver, The Young Czech Party, 105, 303, 313.

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Preiss had shaped the Zivnostenska banka (Tradesmen's bank) into the most financially powerful institution in Czechoslovakia, working closely with Masaryk and Benes as they created the new state.68 Preiss and Masa- ryk had long been political allies and socialized together outside their official duties.69 Preiss's frustration with the National Democrats meant the Castle could claim a powerful spoiler within party ranks.70 As for debt, the National Democrats' losses at the polls in the early 1920s had already translated into financial difficulties. Maintaining a solid party press was especially difficult for parties whose voter base declined. Many supporters sold their holdings in Ndrodni listy, unnerved by the growing debt of both paper and party. The National Democrats thus ran the risk of losing editorial control over the paper, since they could no longer maintain the paper with party funds. By late 1925, mismanagement and declining sub- scriptions had contributed to the paper's debts to Preiss's Zivnostenska Bank reaching more than 6 million crowns.71

During the last months of 1925, Preiss and the Castle discussed the fact that the National Democratic party was riven from within, and thus might be vulnerable. The party's left wing had already fled to the National Labor Party. At least three different groupings remained, according to Preiss. The faction farthest to the right surrounded Kramar and included many editors of Nirodni listy. Preiss dismissed a second group, the "Dem- ocratic Center," saying that it was "cowardly and lacking influence."72 Finally, there was the "capitalist group" of financiers associated with the Zivnostenska Bank, among whom Preiss now classed himself. This last group, Preiss reported, intended to make Kramar into a figure- head. Preiss's group also intended to force out Ndrodni listy's editor Fran- tisek Sis.73

Conditions seemed ripe for an attempted Castle takeover of Nirodni listy-and, if it should work that way, the National Democratic party-to wrest it back toward the political center. Masaryk and his advisers worked out a quid pro quo arrangement with Preiss and his "capitalist" group: The Castle would support the Zivnostenska Bank in taking over the party; in exchange, the Zivnostenska Bank would turn control of Ndrodni listy

68. One historian writes that "at least until 1923 the building of the Czechoslovak state was tantamount to the building of the Zivnostenska Bank." Campbell, "The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and Zivnostenska Bank," 242.

69. Ibid., 244. 70. In fact, the Castle had many. Various Castle stalwarts were former National Dem-

ocrats. The chancellery staff began to leave the party in 1922 when it became increasingly clear that the National Democratic party leadership opposed the president and Benes. On this topic, see, for example, AKPR, sign. T 635/21, document 880/22, as well as AKPR, sign. T 635/21, karton 52, "Narodni demokracie r. 1921-1935 I-II," document T 1128/23, letter from 2 April 1924.

71. AKPR, sign. T 1412/23, document T 1412/25, "Zaznam ze dne 28. listopadu 1925."

72. Campbell, "The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and Zivnostenska Bank," 244-45. Camp- bell reports that Preiss was a member of this faction, but archival evidence indicates that Preiss was disdainful of the "center" group.

73. Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 354.

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over to the Castle. Though the terms of the deal were clear, the Castle was aware that Preiss was a complicated partner. Sources differ on Preiss's mo- tivations for aiding the Castle in 1925; in addition to possibly taking over the de facto leadership of the National Democrats, Preiss may have been angling for a position of even greater influence over the state's financial policy.74 In short, the negotiations over Ndrodni listy might have unpre- dictable political ramifications, and the Castle had misgivings from the start about Preiss's intentions.75 Still, as recalled by Masaryk's contempo- raryJulius Firt, "there was no way he [Masaryk] could resist the opportunity to refashion Ndrodni listy, a paper with such an impressive tradition."76

Initially the advantage seemed to be the Castle's. Preiss, aided by current and former National Democrats, tried to purchase as many shares as possible in Ndrodni listy, the better to claim a controlling interest. Preiss in fact ran advertisements about his efforts in Nirodniprice (National labor), the journal of the National Labor Party.77 Nor did he lose any time in at-

tempting to dethrone Kramar. On 28 November 1925, Preiss reported that he had bluntly told Kramar the extent of the paper's debt forced him (Preiss) to take drastic action:

Today I had a sharp conflict with Dr. Kramir. It was discovered that Nirodnilisty's [joint-stock company] has six million crowns worth of debt at the Zivnostenska Bank. [This debt] stems from the mishandling of [Frantisek] Sis, the paper's general director, who has founded magazines unnecessarily and has literally thrown money away. ... I informed Dr. Kramia that my duty to the bank's shareholders forced me to insist that this debt be corrected and that this kind of financial leadership end. I [also told him that I] am forced to deny Nirodni listy any further credit. Dr. Kramar became extremely upset, expostulated about ingratitude, and did not want to admit ... that all of this is the result of Sis's incom- petence. On the contrary, he proclaimed Sis to be one of our foremost politicians next to Svehla.78

Only a few months later, Preiss reported that he had himself met with chief editor Sis to discuss changes in the paper, which he [Preiss] intended to have implemented by the following April, after the party's general meeting. He had also had another confrontation with Kramar, in

74. Preiss mistrusted the leadership of then Prime Minister Antonin gvehla. For Preiss on Svehla, see Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 354-55. The possible positions Preiss desired included minister of finance, a cabinet position under the president's tacit control (see Firt, Knihy a osudy, 71, as well as Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 355), and governor of the National Bank, created in 1926 with help from the 2ivnostenska Bank, although Preiss was never its head (that position went to Vilem Pospisil; see Campbell, "The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and Zivnostenska Bank," 243 - 44).

75. Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 354, 369-70. 76. Firt, Knihy a osudy, 71. 77. Discussed in various documents: for example, see AKPR, sign. T 1412/23, docu-

ment 87/27, zaznam titled "Praha 27. ledna 1927." 78. AKPR, sign. T 1412/23, document T 1412/25, "Zaznam ze dne 28. listopadu

1925." The Sis family enjoyed primus inter pares status at Nirodni listy: Frantisek as editor- in-chief, Vladimir as foreign affairs editor, and Miloslava as Parisian correspondent. See Berankova, Dejiny ceskoslovenske zurnalistiky, 3:172.




which he told Kramar his time had passed, flattering him by likening him to former Great Power leaders: '"You have lost, Clemenceau lost, Lloyd George lost, Wilson lost; this is no shame, [but] you are of the old gener- ation, with whom no one will now walk. Precisely for this reason you must cooperate with the cleansing of Nirodni listy."79

But Kramar had no intention of going gently; the National Demo- cratic leadership resisted with every means in its power. Over time, the ideological tone and attacks in Ndrodni listy sharpened, according to chancellery reports by Karel Scheinpflug, one of the last Masaryk supporters to leave the National Democratic party in 1927. In late 1926, Scheinpflug told the Castle that "the content of the paper has deteriorated to the extent that its readers complain they cannot read it. The editors must toss reams of news into the trash and publish endless boring parliamentary speeches, even the same speech two or three times."80 Kramar, supported by other prominent National Democrats, such as Viktor Dyk, refused to remove editor Sis from Ndrodni listy. Many of the remaining moderates on the Nirodni listy staff left; anti-Masaryk stalwarts remained in prominent positions, and Nirodni listy maintained its stridently right-wing, anti- Castle stance.81 Members of the Democratic Center tried repeatedly to force the party leadership to mollify its anti-Castle positions, to no avail.82

Meanwhile, the relationship between Preiss and the Castle was declining into mutual suspicion. Masaryk's confidant Karel Capek, himself a former Nirodni listy reporter, wrote to the president in December 1926: "[Editor-in-chief] Sis has already installed a new regime of his intimates; the mood at the paper is declining. Kramar has evidently requested of Preiss that he somehow come to an agreement with Sis"-that is, that Cas- tle ally Preiss was compromising with the faction he had once identified as his opponent within the party.83 Even in 1926, some of Masaryk's advisers feared that Preiss was already playing both sides of the fence and flirting with the extreme right. They suspected that Preiss harbored presidential aspirations.84 By 1929, Preiss was helping to finance the press enterprises ofJiri Stribrny, a former moderate socialist and Masaryk ally, who shifted to the radical right after 1926. A 1929 presidential chancellery report warned, "[No one is] to believe Dr. Preiss."85

Coinciding with the struggle over Ndrodni listy was an even more prob- lematic conflict over Tribuna. Tribuna was founded in 1919 by three groups: the Union for Progressive CzechJewry (SPCZ), assimilated Czech- speaking Jews; prominent Castle figures, among them Masaryk himself;

79. Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 369. 80. AKPR, sign. T 635/21, document 1349/26, as reported by Karel Scheinpflug,

dated 29 November 1926. 81. Ibid. 82. AKPR, sign. T 635/21, document 146/27, reports from 11-12January 1927. 83. Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 354. 84. See Firt, Knihy a osudy, 71; Klimek, Boj o Hrad I, 355; and Campbell, "The Castle,

Jaroslav Preiss, and Zivnostenska Bank," 243-44. 85. Klimek, Boj o Hrad II, 194.

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and moderate Agrarian industrialists connected to the sugar-beet industry.86 Tribuna was politically centrist, oriented toward the interests of big business: the "economic organ of Czech-Jewish assimilationists."87 The Castle remained connected to the paper after its founding. Its chief editor after 1921 was Bedrich Hlavac, Masaryk's old friend from his days in the Austro-Hungarian parliament, and various Castle supporters got their start at Tribuna, including Laurin and Peroutka before his days as chief editor of Pritomnost.88

Tribuna's difficulties, like those of Ndrodni listy, began financially. By 1924, the paper was hard-pressed to maintain its reputation for quality: it could no longer afford its own correspondents in European capitals, and its daily editions were gradually becoming shorter and shorter. The paper's administrative board, at that time composed mostly of Czech Jews from the SPCZ, approached Agrarian Prime Minister Svehla, asking for assistance with the paper's chronic deficits. At roughly the same time, Stransky's National Labor Party expressed interest in purchasing Tribuna to be its party paper.89

It was here that Tribuna fell victim to the political right's desire to re- taliate against the Castle. Svehla referred the Tribuna board to Agrarian SenatorJosef Simonek, president since 1919 of the Skoda Works, Czecho- slovakia's equivalent of Krupp and Mercedes-Benz.90 Svehla told the paper's general manager, Max Pleschner, that Simonek planned to rescue

86. On Masaryk's financial contribution to Tribuna, see Firt, Knihy a osudy, 77; mentioned also in Pechacek, Masaryk, Benes, Hrad, 91. On the Agrarians, see Miller, "Antonin Svehla," 49. Other powerful centrist Agrarians, such asJan Malypetr and Frantisek Udrzal, were also associated with the sugar-refinery cartel: see Miller, "Antonin Svehla," 212-13. On the Jews, see Livia Rothkirchen, "Czechoslovak Jewry: Growth and Decline (1918- 1939)," in Natalia Berger, ed., Where Cultures Meet: The Story of theJews of Czechoslovakia (Tel Aviv, 1990), 107, 109. The best source on CzechJewry and cultural life is Hillel Kieval: see his The Making of CzechJewry: National Conflict andJewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918 (Ox- ford, 1988) as well as Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands

(Berkeley, 2000). Regarding the SPCZ, see Josef Vyskocil, "Die Tschechisch-Judische Be-

wegung,"Judaica Bohemiae 3 (1967): 36-55. Assimilated Czech-speakingJews such as those in the SPCZ tended to ally themselves wholeheartedly with the Castle; see Kieval, Languages of Community, 181-216. Masaryk had gained the admiration of Czech Jews in 1899, when he defended Leopold Hilsner, an uneducated Moravian Jew, against accusations of ritual murder. A helpful summary of the Hilsner affair and its effects on Masaryk's political thought is to be found in Kieval, Languages of Community, 181-97, as well as Roman Szpor- luk, The Political Thought of Thomas G. Masaryk (Boulder, Colo., 1981), 118-19. Masaryk ac-

knowledged that he was personally reluctant to befriendJews; nonetheless popular or political anti-Semitism horrified him. Various of Masaryk's comments on Jews, Judaism, and anti-Semitism are recorded in AUTGM, MAR, krabice 47-III-6, diar V. Kucery.

87. Arne and Jan Novak, Piehledne dejiny literatury ceski, 4th ed. (Brno, 1995), 1351. 88. Sources are inconsistent about Tribuna 's editorship: Laurin either worked as a re-

porter for the paper or served as its chief editor from 1919-1921 and was then replaced by Hlavac.

89. SUA Loreto, fond PMV, 1925-, sign. Xn/5/3, box 518, folder 8, report dated 25 August 1925, "Letak nove politicke strany NSP."

90. See Miller, "Antonin Svehla," 219-20; also see Miller, Forging Political Compromise, 109.

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Tribuna.9l But in fact, Skoda's board of directors was dominated by Na- tional Democrats, and Simonek was working with them to keep Tribuna out of Stransky's and the Castle's hands. Skoda intended not to rescue Tri- buna but to purchase it, obtaining it for the right.

Tribuna general manager indignantly refused, noting the paper's Jewish subscribers and owners, who supported the Castle. Simonek reportedly replied, "Forget the Jews. You'll remain director, we'll get new editors and reporters; Hlavac is out, and Dr. Lev Borsky will be chief editor." This news implied Tribuna's complete political reorientation: Borsky, a former Castle ally, was already moving hard right.92 Pleschner refused again; through Tribuna's Castle connections, word got to the president.93

The Castle, however, did nothing. Simonek, acting for Skoda, purchased Tribuna for 3.5 million crowns in 1925. The arrangements granted Tribuna nominal editorial independence; but in practice Simonek was able to exercise strong influence over the paper's affairs. At this point, according to Pleschner and the editorial board, it became clear that Skoda intended to run Tribuna into the ground. By 1926 the paper's deficit had doubled, and as Simonek had announced, a right-leaningjournalist (not Borsky) had been installed as editor.94

Tribuna's editorial board recounted this tale in a long letter to the president, asking for his direct intervention to rescue Tribuna from the right. They framed the danger to Tribuna as a danger to the Castle and its ability to convey its message through the press.95 The editorial board asked the president not only to rescue Tribuna financially but also to re- claim its independence by rewriting the paper's shares over to the paper's founders-notjust theJews of the SP(Z, but also such Castle figures such as Premysl Samal, the head of the presidential chancellery.96

Tribuna's founders were not the only ones to approach the Castle. Skoda representatives asserted that they genuinely intended to save the paper-but from its staff, not its debt. They claimed that Pleschner and Hlaviac were incompetent and unreliable and that to maintain Tribuna's quality Skoda would have to create a "supervisory board," essentially a new

91. AKPR, sign. T 45/24, document 929/26: typewritten copy of a letter to Masaryk by the editors of Tribuna, 25 August 1926. The same document can be found in AUTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, slozka 5-Tisk 1923-1932.

92. Borsky was a former Legionnaire and served as ambassador to Rome. But by 1927, he had moved to the far right, helping to found the anti-Castle screed Fronta. On Borsky's political evolution, see Manfred Alexander, "Die Rolle der Legionare in der Ersten Re- publik: Ein politischer Verband und sein Geschichtsbild," Vereinswesen und Geschichtspflege in den bohmischen Ldndern (Munich, 1986), 265-79. Also see Petr Pithart, "Prvni republika: Jakji videla opozice," Svedectvi 18 (1983): 271-314.

93. AKPR, sign. T 45/24, document 929/26: typewritten copy of a letter to Masaryk by the editors of Tribuna, 25 August 1926. Simonek's alleged words to Pleschner were "Nechte Zidy bieet," literally, let the Jews scurry around-an odd comment given that Pleschner was himself aJew.

94. Ibid. 95. Ibid. 96. Ibid.

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editorial board, which would include many different parties and view- points, although the paper would remain politically centrist. Meanwhile, Pleschner and other members of Tribuna's original editorial board re- peated their original calls for help.97

The Castle was unsure whom to believe. In late August 1926, the presidential chancellery received a report on Tribuna by Laurin, the paper's former editor. Laurin found plausible the Tribuna editors' complaints: "It seems [the idea is] gradually to transfer Tribuna into [Simonek's and his allies'] own hands and determine its direction anew, as per indications di- vulged two years ago. I have the impression that their current motto 'Jews out-Hlavac gone' ... would lead in the end to something worse than even the end of Tribuna: that is, to the right."98

But Masaryk and his chancellery staff doubted the veracity of Tribuna's editorial board and leaned toward relying on the Skoda leaders' version of Tribuna's decline.99 Even Laurin, two years later, concluded that Skoda was the Castle's only reliable source of information.100

Even if Pleschner was right, was a small, independent, Jewish-run newspaper worth the difficulty involved in rescuing it? Tribuna's board wanted the Castle to intervene against a respected Agrarian leader, the prime minister's colleague, and the director of one of the country's most powerful corporations. The Agrarians were the country's most powerful party. Clearly, the Castle could ill afford to offend the Agrarians and Skoda. In contrast, Tribuna's loss would be politically insignificant; its founders and readers were already devout Castle supporters.

Thus the Castle turned a deaf ear to Tribuna's editors. In June 1927, the chancellor informed the Skoda group that the president would have no objections should Tribuna represent Czech industrial interests, given that its news reporting remained objective. Briefly, in late 1928, the chancellery reversed course and tried to keep Tribuna under Jewish control, working with Jan Masaryk, Preiss, and five Jewish financial firms.101 But Tribuna ceased publication in early 1929, despite the Castle's maneuvers. The circumstances of the paper's demise are cloudy; possibly Simonek and his allies succeeded in bankrupting the paper and its printing house, as the editorial board members had reported to the chancellery years earlier.

Thus Tribuna fell out of the Castle fold, and Ndrodni listy never entered it. In sharp contrast to the Ndrodni listy of the 1860s and 1870s, the paper's twentieth-century incarnation would not become the voice of the nation, although the Castle's failed attempts to claim the paper indicate the political importance of the nineteenth-century Czech national tradition.

97. AKPR, sign. T 45/24. 98. AUTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, slozka 5-Tisk 1923-1932. Docu-

ment not numbered. "Laurin 24.8.26., 2061/26," typewritten. 99. See, for example, Chancellor Samal's note to Masaryk on "[Zaznam] Praha, 14.

zari 1926," AUTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, slozka 5-Tisk 1923-1932. 100. AUTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, slozka 5-Tisk 1923-1932. 4 De-

cember 1928, opis dopisu Laurinuv Benesovi. 101. AKPR, sign. T 45/27, document T 1028/28, "Praha, dne 9. listopadu 1928."

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Also significant was the Castle's relative restraint: Masaryk used clandestine, but never illegal, channels in his efforts to constrain the National Democrats. The republic's party system proved strong enough to with- stand presidential meddling even at a moment of relative crisis. Even the comparatively weak National Democrats maintained their ideological integrity and their party press in the face of an opponent with deep pock- ets and powerful allies. Perhaps the Castle's overall efforts during this period-with the National Labor Party, the Gajda trial, and these media conflicts-contributed to marginalizing the right. But it did not succeed in silencing it.

Meanwhile, Tribuna's significance lies not in its having fallen from the Castle press; but in the Castle's willingness to let it fall, despite concerns about the press during the mid-1920s. As we have seen, Masaryk was willing to struggle to preserve the Castle press and to extend its reach. But he was also a wily enough politician to know which battles to avoid. In this case, fighting for Tribuna would certainly have created more enemies for the Castle, possibly within the powerful Agrarian party. Meanwhile, the only audience Tribuna could bring to the Castle was one that would have supported it even without the newspaper as a guide. The Castle had been willing to aid Tribuna's founding; once its gamble failed to pay off, it allowed the game to fold.

Conclusion

The cultivation of the nation-and this is important precisely in terms of journalism-must be through genuine education and enlightenment.

- Tomia Masaryk'02

The simple fact of the Castle's frequent involvement in the politics of the media underscores two central aspects of interwar Czechoslovak political culture. First, the political press was an integral element of interwar political life, drawing on its historical significance for Czech politics under Austria-Hungary.'03 Second, the Castle clearly believed in the direct political relevance of the written word-that the "literary organ[s] of politics" and the intellectuals who wrote for them could contribute to the success of the Castle agenda and to Czechoslovak democracy-perhaps modeled on the success of the nineteenth-century Czech national movement.

In the 1890 Program of Masaryk's Realist party, he and his cofounders had resolved to try to bring about the "moral, intellectual and material el- evation (of the nation)," and in particular, its "inner strengthening." 104 As president of the interwar republic, Masaryk remained faithful to this same vision, shaping a public persona as the nation's educator and model of en-

102. Tomas G. Masaryk, Karel HavliEek, Snahy a tuzby politickeho probuzeni, 3d ed. (Prague, 1920), 55.

103. Campbell, "Interwar Czech Press," 7. 104. Skilling, T. G. Masaryk, 40-41.

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lightenment. The Castle believed that Czechoslovakia needed a source of political guidance and clarity to help its citizens navigate a new, more

complex era. Masaryk and Benes were deeply concerned very early on about Czechoslovaks' ability to odrakoustet se-to de-Austrianize themselves. In interwar parlance, this term indicated the process of becoming independent citizens, by which Czechs and Slovaks would end a three-

century-long habit of enforced political passivity and opposition devel-

oped as rebellious subjects of Austria-Hungary.105 In Masaryk's and Benes's view, however, this transition from subjecthood to electorate would need to take place under the watchful guidance of an enlightened political elite, whose ideas would help the citizens of the new state orient themselves in a changed Europe.

If Masaryk viewed himself as the state's teacher, there is no doubt that his lecture hall was the press. Like many before them, Masaryk and Benes envisioned the press as a vital instrument through which the elite could educate other citizens. As Masaryk wrote in his analysis of the nineteenth-

century Czech national "awakening," "[In the eyes of] the people our

journalism possessed tremendous authority and seriousness, thanks to the ... great need for cultivation and instruction."106 Nineteenth-century publicists like Karel Havlicek Borovsky had clearly left their mark on the Castle. Like the nineteenth-century Awakeners, Castle leaders and thinkers viewed their involvement with and influence over the media as an appropriately elite-driven beneficial civic education, to create the most fa- vorable circumstances possible for the continued growth of the new state and for the strengthening of democracy.

In particular, the Castle hoped to use the mass media to reunite the

intelligentsia, the financial and economic elites, and other groups central to the nineteenth-century Czech national movement, in a coalition supporting the Castle. A 1925 letter by Masaryk to Prime Minister Svehla in-

directly raises this idea: "I constantly return to the idea that we need a paper led by the intelligentsia. The coalition papers each follow their own direction, one against the next, and the [members of the] intelligentsia, reading these disparate papers, are disoriented. I am not thinking of a new paper, but rather of perfecting [zdokonalenzl an existing one."107

Ndrodni listy's crucial nineteenth-century role helps to explain the Castle's desire to create "a paper led by the intelligentsia" as Ndrodni listy

105. Masaryk used the term in his 1919 address to the Czechoslovak parliament. See

Josef Korbel, Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia: The Meanings of Its History (New York, 1977), 82-83. As is well known, Masaryk largely accepted nineteenth-century nationalist historian Frantisek Palacky's romanticized view of Czech history under the Habsburgs as centuries of oppression. He was challenged in this, most prominently by historian Josef Pekar-see 0 smyslu jeskych dejin (Prague, 1990)-and by Ferdinand Peroutka in hisjdci jsme essay series in Tribuna, 1922.

106. Tomas Masaryk, Ceskd otdzka/Nasi nynejsikrize (1895; reprint, Prague, 1936), 157. All my quotations are from teskd otdzka. Most of Masaryk's arguments had appeared earlier in his Realist journal, Nase doba.

107. AUTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, sloika 11, copy of letter from

Topolcianky, 23 September 1925 ("Z prilozeneho listu vidite, ze pan Bertron sjednanim nasich ministru' neni spokojen").




had initially been or, failing that, to take Ndrodni listy itself. Ndrodni listy made its reputation by harnessing the energy of Czech society to the over- arching ideal of Czech national autonomy: a renovated Ndrodni listy might create the same kinds of connections between Czechoslovaks and Castle policy, based on western-oriented liberal internationalism.108 Masaryk's comments about Nirodni listy, written years after the paper had lost its progressive tone, make clear the paper's importance: "Freethinkingjour- nalism, especially Ndrodni listy, dominated... public opinion. The democratic populist movement had, in journalism, its literary organ."'09 Cer- tainly Masaryk was often critical of Nirodni listy-and the paper of him-yet it remained the Czech lands' most influential daily newspaper, with a central position in Czech cultural and public life. It was this central position that the Castle hoped, with its journalistic enterprises, to claim.

The heightened political tension of the years from 1925 to 1927 lent urgency to Masaryk's ongoing project of shaping, and writing for, the press. If a lasting coalition could not be formed, and if the political right gained enough strength to influence policy, all Masaryk and Benes had worked to create might be lost. The Castle feared the possible fragmenta- tion of the state, pitting nationality against nationality; at worst, increased authority of the right might mean the possible extraction of Czechoslova- kia from the post-Versailles order and a fall into authoritarianism akin to that experienced by other central and east European states. The examples of Poland, Hungary, and Italy, and the difficulties of the Weimar Repub- lic, did not escape the attention of Czechoslovak observers. Widespread doubts about the Czechoslovak parliamentary system in 1925 and 1926 made the importance of newspapers as a surrogate political realm more comprehensible.

In the end, the Castle's failure with Ndrodni listy and Tribuna was more than balanced by its successes with Lidove noviny and Pritomnost-and,just as importantly, by the continuing strength of the Agrarian party twinned with Masaryk's personality cult, identifying the beloved president with the new state. Neither Ndrodni listy nor Tribuna turned out to be necessary to bolster the divided but influential center-left; nor could the National Democrats or the fascists do as much damage to the Castle, its allies, or its policy as the Castle perhaps feared. In other words, the Castle's particular failures pointed to success in a wider, and more important, sense. The Castle lost its battles over Nirodni listy and Tribuna, yet-at least until the Nazi takeover of 1939 and the birth of the Second Republic-it can be safely said to have won the overall war. Even this putative failure might also be viewed as a measure of the strength of the state's (and Masaryk's own) commitment to democracy. Though he engaged in subterfuge and in clandestine approaches, the president never resorted to illegal means or attempted outright takeovers.

108. SeeJulius Firt's recollections of the interwar period in Knihy a osudy; also see the second section of Masaryk's memoirs, Hovory s T. G. Masarykem, which discusses his service in the Austrian parliament and his impressions of nineteenth-century Czech politics under the empire.

109. Masaryk, Ceskd otdzka, 157.

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In short, the Castle's maneuvers in the realm of print culture help scholars to understand the bases of Czechoslovak democracy and political culture, as well as the continuities between Czech politics under Austria-

Hungary and Czechoslovak political life in the interwar Republic. Partic-

ularly, analysis of the media helps clarify the activities and opinions of the Czechoslovak freelancer president, for whom journalism never ceased to serve as the "literary instrument of [national] revival."110 Peroutka can

perhaps best summarize the Castle's belief in the power of newspapers and the political press. "What the average person receives of reality has al-

ready passed through the hands of the journalist.... Today each of us is, more or less, [living] in a journalistic dictatorship.... The journalist sits at the fount of the world.""'

110. The phrase "Zurnalistika jako literarni nastroj obrozeni" begins the list of

subtopics for Masaryk's discussion of nineteenth-century journalism in Ceskd otdzka, 156. 111. "Kapitoly zurnalisticke I.," Tribuna, 22 May 1921, 1.



The Literary Organ of Politics": Tomas Masaryk and Political Journalism, 1925-1929

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