The first Czechoslovak republic was idealized both in the West and in Czechoslovakia for a long time. The images of Masaryk's state reproduced tirelessly the stereotypes of an “island of democracy” and the “guarantor of stability in Central Europe.” Since the 1970s in Western historiography and in the last fifteen years in Czech debates, historians have tried to reflect critically upon some of these characterizations. However, a more complex critical analysis is still lacking. Andrea Orzoff attempts to go beyond the existing historiography by dealing with the very core of the interwar Czechoslovak ideology.

The main question of her readable book concerns the relation between Masaryk's ideals and the political reality of interwar Czechoslovakia. The author starts with a relatively standard description of Masaryk's and Beneš's activities during World War I, including a short excursus into Masaryk's political thought since the 1890s. In the second chapter, Orzoff describes the institutional support of Masaryk's authority, which allowed the transfer of ideas into political strategy and propaganda in the republic and abroad. Not content with a static picture of a powerful political center (the “Castle” of the title), the author concentrates in the next two chapters on Masaryk's battles with political opponents in Czechoslovakia and with indifference and antipropaganda abroad. In the last chapter, Orzoff describes the changes in the myths over the course of the 1930s and briefly (in 15 pages) the dramatic transformations of Czech state and society between 1938 and 1948.

Readers who know the Czech historiography about this topic can benefit from much new information, above all concerning the international context of the Castle's politics. Compared to the homonymic book from Antonín Klimek (Boj o hrad, 2 vols. [Prague, 1996–1998]), Orzoff does not reduce Castle politics to pragmatic power struggles and compromises, emphasizing instead the ideological background of Masaryk's and Beneš's often authoritative and manipulative political methods. Also, the description of the allies of the Castle is more complex than in previous literature about this issue, especially in the analysis of the irreplaceable political role of Karel Čapek. The comprehensiveness of the Castle's intellectual and institutional support gives us a satisfactory answer as to why Masaryk's and Beneš's ideas could be transferred to political practice as successfully as they were. As a result, Orzoff comes closer to a complex, critical analysis of one of the core elements of Czechoslovak policy between the wars than does Klimek's book, which very often gives the impression of being a collection of stunning revelations.

In terms of the desirable critical reflection on interwar Czechoslovakia, however, Orzoff goes only halfway. Especially in the first part of the book, Masaryk and Beneš play such a dominant role, destroying the old and influencing intensively the shape of the new Central Europe, that one has to ask if the author does not take on a part of the same myth that she actually wants to deal with critically. Similarly, Orzoff does not describe her concept of myth and propaganda consistently enough, so that in some cases both of these distinct notions are used as though they were interchangeable. (Orzoff writes, for example, that the publishing house Orbis was “producing and selling myth” [4].) One could likewise challenge the relatively unreflective presumption that there is a dichotomy between a myth and reality, as when the author writes of the “obvious contrast between the Czechoslovak myth's insistence on egalitarian tolerance and the disproportionate nationalism” [214]). Is not a myth an expression of the social reality? Can there be a successful “myth” about democracy, which (if pushed through by undemocratic means) does not shift a society toward democracy? All these questions go beyond Orzoff's book because they would require a deeper analysis of the social roots, impact, and reception of Castle's politics and propaganda in the broader public.

The same goes for Orzoff's criticism of the First Republic's undemocratic character (“neither parliamentarians nor the electorate had any real say over policy,” 93), which, in her interpretation, the manipulative and elitist politics of the Castle also maintained. These very normative claims would require a subtle conceptualization of democracy and at least partial comparisons with other countries considered as democracies at that time. One could ask if informal power and influential supporters of outstanding political personalities are an essential part of every political system. Nevertheless, Orzoff's description of the development of the political instruments that helped Masaryk to realize his visions is a beneficial contribution to our understanding of interwar Czechoslovakia and is well worth reading.