Navigating Turbulent Times: A Microhistory of a Multilingual Small Town in Mid-20th Century Slovakia
2025-11-04
– 2025-11-04
09:30
It is our pleasure to invite you to the next Center for Research on Social Memory seminar and to a conference co-organized by our Center.
Seminar with Tereza Juhászová, chaired by Tomasz Rawski on the subject of "Navigating Turbulent Times: A Microhistory of a Multilingual Small Town in Mid-20th Century Slovakia".
The seminar will take place online, 4 November at 9:30am CET.
Please register using this link in order to participateAbstract
This dissertation is a microhistorical analysis of ordinary life in an intimate community across the ruptures of mid-twentieth-century Central Europe. It uses the small multilingual town of Nižný Medzev in eastern Slovakia as a lens to explore communal relations amidst macrohistorical upheavals, emphasizing the fluidity of time and the varied experiences of change. Inhabited by German, Hungarian, Slovak, and Romani speakers, the town’s residents navigated shifts in state structures and policies—decreed from above but enacted by local actors. Focusing on key everyday spaces—the school, church, factory, fields, and an inn—this study highlights the role of individuals in shaping, restructuring, and stabilizing their community across political ruptures. It argues that in a linguistically diverse setting, language and nationality were not always the decisive factors in determining social cleavages or alliances, even during periods of profound change. Instead, personal ties, social networks, and political affiliations proved more influential in configuring local dynamics. Spanning the 1930s to the late 1960s, the dissertation anchors its periodization in the life trajectories of its protagonists. Drawing on archival materials, biographical interviews, contemporary press, and private collections, it contributes to broader debates on the everyday experience of political upheaval, the local enactment of state policies, and the agency of individuals in navigating historical transformations.
This dissertation is a microhistorical analysis of ordinary life in an intimate community across the ruptures of mid-twentieth-century Central Europe. It uses the small multilingual town of Nižný Medzev in eastern Slovakia as a lens to explore communal relations amidst macrohistorical upheavals, emphasizing the fluidity of time and the varied experiences of change. Inhabited by German, Hungarian, Slovak, and Romani speakers, the town’s residents navigated shifts in state structures and policies—decreed from above but enacted by local actors. Focusing on key everyday spaces—the school, church, factory, fields, and an inn—this study highlights the role of individuals in shaping, restructuring, and stabilizing their community across political ruptures. It argues that in a linguistically diverse setting, language and nationality were not always the decisive factors in determining social cleavages or alliances, even during periods of profound change. Instead, personal ties, social networks, and political affiliations proved more influential in configuring local dynamics. Spanning the 1930s to the late 1960s, the dissertation anchors its periodization in the life trajectories of its protagonists. Drawing on archival materials, biographical interviews, contemporary press, and private collections, it contributes to broader debates on the everyday experience of political upheaval, the local enactment of state policies, and the agency of individuals in navigating historical transformations.
Tereza Juhászová is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Russian and East European Studies, Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. She is also a post-doctoral researcher at Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on the social history of Czechoslovakia, with particular attention to national, social, and gender dynamics in the urban space throughout the 20th century. In 2025, Tereza defended (summa cum laude) her PhD in history at the University of Regensburg and the Charles University.
