suspect on the same grounds. To some degree, Palacký’s prudent practical politics can be discounted as an unavoidable adjustment to difficult circumstances or as something appropriated by a nascent bourgeoisie for selfish ends. Because one cannot similarly explain away the fact that religious idealism constitutes the basis of Palacký’s political ideology, few Marxist scholars can consider his political influence to have been entirely positive.22
During the past century, Palacký has profoundly influenced Czech politics in at least six respects:
(1) He not only first clearly defined Czech political aspirations but did so in historical and in international perspectives. Political questions appeared much less overwhelming if considered in these perspectives instead of as problems of a particular moment. If one could not take this broad view, Czech political aims would appear quite hopeless and Czech political history simply as a series of humiliating defeats. This sense of history and past achievement has also helped give Czechs the confidence to work toward desirable goals despite the likelihood of being repeatedly defeated.
(2) To some degree Palacký, by exhortation and by personal example, helped condition Czech acceptance of leadership by an intellectual elite. He had advocated elitism and paternalism in Czech politics at a time when both may have been necessary for guiding a politically inexperienced and untutored nation. This attitude, like his having opposed universal suffrage and a multi-party system, appeared increasingly anachronistic after 1876. Nonetheless, many middle-class Czechs continued to be enamored of leadership by an intellectual elite and somewhat prone to hero worship. This was evident during the First Czechoslovak Republic in popular admiration and even hero worship of the President-Liberator and several political party leaders, despite the establishment of representative republican institutions and political democracy by an intellectual elite. Such leadership ended abruptly with the Nazi occupation and did not reemerge during two decades of Communist rule after February, 1948, when mediocrity in high office went hand in hand with Stalinist dictatorship. To the degree that the Czechoslovak intelligentsia recovers its nerve and influence, it is likely to be somewhat attracted to the style of leadership established by Palacký and perpetuated to some extent by Masaryk.
(3) Much more enduring has been Palacký’s influence in helping demonstrate to Czechs and Slovaks how to work within established institutions and laws, however unsatisfactory, to advance individual and national interests. A case in point was Palacký’s encouraging Czechs to improve their lot in Austria-Hungary by taking over self-governmental institutions
