Stirring Resistance from Moscow: The German Communists of Czechoslovakia and Wireless Propaganda in the Sudetenland, 1941-1945

This is a study of the radio propaganda campaign targeted atthe Sudetenland from the USSR from November 1941 to May 1945.Under the supervision of the Czechoslovak communist party andthe Comintern, the broadcasts were composed and conducted bySudeten German communists stationed first in Ufa and then inMoscow. At first, on the basis of limited information, theystrove simply to divide Sudeten Germans at home from the Nazirégime. But from May 1942 they stepped up their appealfor active resistance alongside that of their Czech ‘brothers’in the Protectorate. Through 1943 the appeal remained positive,assuring all German anti-fascists that they would be secureand treated equally in a future Czechoslovak state. By 1944,however, the message subtly altered in tune with Moscow's decisionto expel most Sudeten Germans. The broadcasts failed to spellthis out, but tried to warn their listeners of what might happenif they did not resist. In reality, though many in the Sudetenlandwere disillusioned with Nazism, the level of active resistanceseems to have been small and the broadcasts probably had a minimaleffect. Nevertheless, they alarmed the Nazi authorities andsome of the propaganda arguments certainly matched the growinganxieties of many Sudeten Germans. By 1944 the Sudeten communistbroadcasters themselves were divided over what tone to adopt.Some still felt a certain Sudeten allegiance and vainly resisteda policy line based on presumed Sudeten ‘collective guilt’.The majority bowed before the official, more critical line,accepting that most Sudeten Germans would be expelled afterthe war. The article seeks for the first time to probe the mindsetof Sudeten German communists, and to set this alongside thatof their target audience in the wartime Sudetenland.     

Myths To Live By? Female Solidarity and Female Autonomy Reconsidered

Female autonomy and female solidarity occupy a special place in gender and development thinking. For some feminists, myself included, they represent closely held ideals; as such, they are very difficult to bring into question. This contribution reflects on these ideals in order to raise critical questions about the attachments that gender and development practitioners may have to particular ways of reading ‘gender relations’. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria to explore the lack of fit between received ‘Western’ ideas about gender and the complexity, contingency and multiplicity of relations and identifications among women in this cultural context. It argues that superimposing received notions of gendered power relations on those whom development intervention seeks to assist — in the form of gender myths that have a hold on hearts as well as minds — may offer these women neither succour, nor the means for them to empower themselves.     

Gender Myths and Feminist Fables: The Struggle for Interpretive Power in Gender and Development

Gender and development has grown enormously as a field over the last thirty years. In this introduction, we interrogate the ambivalence that underpins feminist engagement with development and examine what current dilemmas may suggest about the relationship between feminist knowledge and development practice. In recent years, there has been growing frustration with the simplistic slogans that have come to characterize much gender and development talk, and with the gap between professed intention and actual practice in policies and programmes. Questions are now being asked about what has become of ‘gender’ in development. This collection brings together critical reflections on some ideas about gender that have become especially resonant in development narratives, particularly those that entail popularization and the deployment of iconic images of women. This introduction explores more closely the issues raised by such myth‐making, arguing that these myths stem from exigencies within the politics and practices of development bureaucracies, within the difficult politics of feminist engagement with development policy and practice and within feminist politics itself.