The article studies the "afterlife" of the former Subcarpathia, the present-day Transcarpathia, within the Czech society after 1989. The discourse about the region was framed by the understanding of the Czech society of their revolution of 1989 primarily in terms of political and cultural return to the inter-war Masarykian Republic. It maps the different ways the Czech society coped with this deficit in its restoration endeavours in the early 1990s. Within the Czech public discourse uncritical conception of selfless and successful civilising mission in the East still prevails, based on a belief that local population gratefully accepted and now nostalgically longs for such input. For some time after 1989, the theme became one of the key components of Czech debates concerning the past, its neighbours and own identity within the integrating Europe.
Mieczysław Marcinkowski’s diary entitled Wbrew losowi. Z partyzantki i tułaczki 1939–1945 was created in two periods of the author’s life and two geographical and cultural areas (Subcarpathia during wartime in Poland and California in the 1990s). Developed by a group of Rzeszów scientists, the diary of a Home Army fighter in Subcarpathia, later a refugee, now living in Pasadena, USA, is a record of events, experiences and reflections from wartime occupation and postwar exile. It is a convincing record of facts, which makes it a valuable source text for historians. It is also a work of some literary quality, written in spontaneous and sincere language that triggers empathy in the reader, and it is fairly original at the composition level.
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