Whose history is it? : Approaches to the interpretation of the post-war history of Roms in Czechoslovakia
Abstract
The text summarizes the different approaches and ways of interpreting the post-war history of Roms in Czechoslovakia since 1980's, concentrating on the most recent publications (Spurný 2013), drawing attention to the changes in the paradigms of interpretation of the "history of Roms" which is a reflection of the developments in interpretaion of the history of Czechoslovakia during 1945-1989 in contemporary historiography. Special emphasis is put on the discussion of sources used in the reconstruction of post-war history to show that the history of the Roms has been thus so far oriented at the study of the approaches to the Roms on the central level, recently the point of view has been also shifted to cover local authorities and general public in selected regions.The history of the Romani communities themselves and the (chaging) attitudes of it members towards the (developments) in the approach of the central and local authorities remains a so far an under-studied topic.