In the Layers of Memory. On the Czechoslovak Traces Left by Soviet Diplomat Alexandr Jakovlevich Arosev

Negotiations focused on full diplomatic recognition of the USSR by Czechoslovakia, which was the main task of Alexandr J. Arosev (head of the soviet mission to Prague from 1929-1933), required intense and friendly contacts with local political, economic and cultural elites. On the other hand, these contradicted the expectations of the local Communist community, which was relying on the production of an image of the USSR as the "homeland of all proletarians" and as their protector from alien bourgeois regimes. Moreover, in 1932, Arosev, a divorced father of three teenage girls who lived with him, got married to a local woman, whose circumstances were incompatible with the propagated preferences of the regime that he was supposed to represent. The study concentrates on memories of the everyday tensions between his different professional tasks and his private life, and on a comparative analysis of their interpretations in his diaries and in the published memoirs of his heirs.