Vladimír Helfert's 1917 essay, Motiv Smetanova “Vyšehradu”: Studie o jeho genesi [The motive of Smetana's “Vyšehrad”: A study of its genesis], was a landmark publication in Smetana scholarship. In it, Helfert aimed to prove that the first movement of Smetana's Má vlast, “Vyšehrad,” was thematically related to his opera, Libuše. After posing several close music analyses, the author concluded, “[‘Vyšehrad’] relates organically and tightly to Libuše … Smetana felt the need to supplement the operatic apotheosis of the nation with a purely orchestral apotheosis… . Libuše and Vlast are a unitited and inseparable concept of a magnificent national apotheosis.” For Helfert, not only were both works closely related, but their “organicism” confirmed their status as one great monument to the nation. The formalist rigor of Helfert's musical analyses combined with his nationalistically-charged conclusions has proven attractive for many generations of scholars: today, it is difficult to find a study of Smetana that does not cite Helfert's writing.

Despite its apparent timelessness, Helfert's study was deeply indebted to the political context in which he produced it—a context once again shaped in part by the UB. The UB's position as a tastemaker of Czechness shifted dramatically at the beginning of the twentieth century. As explored in previous chapters, UB members, particularly during the 1870s, spearheaded a Smetana-led revolution aimed at refashioning the Czech culture as politically and culturally progressive. At this point, the UB was at the vanguard of aesthetic and political action. From around the 1900s onward, however, it came under attack for not being nationalistic enough, and not nationalist in the right ways. These criticisms came from a number of growing, ever-more-radical political movements among Czech nationalists. Pieter Judson nicely summarizes the way these movements affected Czech politics at the turn of the century when he explained, “Rival factions within Czech … movements … continuously raised the stakes against each other … The Young Czechs … defeated the Old Czechs decisively in the parliamentary elections of 1891 by making a virtue of their greater nationalist vigor.