Zdeněk Kárník

His early influences include his elder brother František who worked as a lecturer and later as an assistant professor at Vysoká škola politických a hospodářských věd (University of Political and Economic Sciences) and was a resolute patriot and an anti-nazi resistance supporter during World War II; he died prematurely at age 38.

Professor Kárník's professional creed was: “Find the cause of the phenomenon regardless of others’ and your own previous conviction or opinion.” In his inaugural dissertation, První pokusy o založení komunistické strany v Čechách (Initial Attempts at Founding a Communist Party in Bohemia), he focused on radical leftist groupings, primarily anarchists and anarchist-communists.

His chef d’oeuvre about ‘socialists at the crossroads’ focuses in detail on the developments in the social democrats’ policies in Bohemia during the First World War in the Czech, Austrian-Hungarian, and international political context.

The extensive trilogy on the First Republic brings a multifaceted analysis and description of the political, economic, demographic, social, and cultural and scientific development between the two world wars.

The timeline in itself is of principal importance, suggesting that the author examined both the prelude to the rise of the first Czechoslovak state towards the close of the Habsburg monarchy and its epilogue – the Second Republic.

Kárník's editorial work is also of importance: Karel Kazbunda, Otázka česko-německá v předvečer Velké války (Czech-German Question at the Dawn of the Great War, 1995), Bolševismus, komunismus a radikální socialismus v Československu, I–V (Bolshevism, Communism, and Radical Socialism in Czechoslovakia, 2003–2005), K novověkým sociálním dějinám českých zemí, I–IV (On the Modern Times History of Bohemia, 1998–2001), etc.