Author: Petr Roubal
Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press
ISBN: 8024638517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425
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Book Description
Every five years from 1955 to 1985, mass Czechoslovak gymnastic demonstrations and sporting parades called Spartakiads were held to mark the 1945 liberation of Czechoslovakia. Involving hundreds of thousands of male and female performers of all ages and held in the world’s largest stadium—a space built expressly for this purpose—the synchronized and unified movements of the Czech citizenry embodied, quite literally, the idealized Socialist people: a powerful yet pliant force directed by the regime. This book explores the political, social, and aesthetic dimensions of these mass physical demonstrations, with a particular focus on their roots in the völkisch nationalism of the German Turner movement and the Czech Sokol gymnastic tradition. Featuring an abundance of photographs, Spartakiads takes a new approach to Communist history by opening a window onto the mentality and mundanity behind the Iron Curtain.
Author: Mary Heimann
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300141474
Category : Czechoslovakia
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A revisionist history, this volume sets out to debunk many of the myths about Czechoslovakia.
Author: Ladislav Cabada
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739167332
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
The book focuses on the description and analysis of the historical formation of the Czechoslovak and Czech positions in the international system during the course of the 20th century. The first part of the book presents a brief outline of the history of Czechoslovak foreign policy between the First World War and the end of the Cold War. The authors focus on the key periods and turning points in the role of the small Central European state in the international system as well as on the significant actors formulating Czechoslovak foreign policy from the inside and influencing it from the outside. The second, analytical part of the book focuses on the key issues connected to the change of the position of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic after 1993 in world politics, and on the formulation of Czech foreign policy priorities and strategies in the globalized world after the end of bipolar confrontation. The authors analytically investigate the activities of the Czech Republic in (Central) European regional integration processes and the integration of the state in the global system of development cooperation. A great deal of attention is paid to the key political actors of the Czech foreign policy discussion and their impact on the formulation of foreign policy goals. Special attention is paid to the dilemmas of Czech foreign policy: the hesitation between the role of a small state and a medium power and also the span of Czech foreign policy between Atlanticism, anti-Americanism and Europeanization.
Author: David Francois
Publisher: Europe@war
ISBN: 9781913336295
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
On 20 August 1968, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, dozens of thousands of tanks and armored vehicles, and hundreds of military aircraft of the Warsaw Pact armed forces invaded Czechoslovakia in an operation code-named Danube. It was the largest military undertaking in Europe since 1945. Starting with a description of the history of Czechoslovakia, especially after the communist takeover of power in 1948, this volume describes the birth and development of the Prague Spring in 1968 and an attempt to reform the communist system from within. It recounts the hostility this process encountered on the part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR/Soviet Union), and its allies within the Warsaw Pact, and provoked a split in the Kremlin about solutions for the resulting 'Czechoslovak problem'. The crisis that developed throughout the spring and summer of 1968 led to the military intervention. While paying special attention to the military and strategic aspects of the Czechoslovak crisis, this volume also provides a blow-by-blow account of its impacts upon the Czechoslovak armed forces and the Warsaw Pact. The subsequent military operation - codenamed Operation Danube - is described in all of its components, including the airborne and ground aspects, and the political operation that supported it. Within only 24 hours, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces secured the entire territory of Czechoslovakia, de-facto overrunning the local armed forces in the process. The Czechoslovak population organized non-violent resistance, thus highlighting the political aspects of the intervention. However, it was hopelessly out of condition to prevent the ultimate downfall of the so-called 'Prague Spring', and the related hopes. Nevertheless, the application of military power against a popularly-supported political reform marked a turning point in the Cold War, and forever changed the balance of power in Central Europe. Guiding the reader meticulously through the details of the forces involved, their organisation and equipment, Operation Danube offers a uniquely in-depth account of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and is profusely illustrated with more than 100 photos, maps, and exclusive colour artworks.
Author: C. Nolte
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230288685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
This overview of the history of the Sokol, the Czech nationalist gymnastic organization, from its founding in 1862 until the outbreak of World War I emphasizes its role in articulating national values and facilitating mass mobilization in the political context of the multinational Habsburg state. By including background on the German Turnverein , this study goes beyond the Czech context to explore the intersection of gymnastics and mass nationalism in Central Europe.
Author: Zuzana Palovic
Publisher: Hybrid Global Publishing
ISBN: 9781948181884
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 618
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Book Description
Take a journey into the borderland of the red empire, during an ideological battle that saw the world ripped in half. Dare to step into communist Czechoslovakia, where the controlled 'east' and the free 'west' converged at their closest. This is a story of ordinary people caught up in the midst of the 20th century's greatest political experiment. Through tales only told in whispers, glimpse into the everyday reality of those whose entire universe was ruled by the hammer and sickle.
Author: Karel D. Bicha
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Czech Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 104
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Book Description
In 1980, the University of Oklahoma Press published a ten-book series titled Newcomers to a New Land that described and analyzed the role of the major ethnic groups that have contributed to the history of Oklahoma. The series was part of Oklahoma Image, a project sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Libraries and the Oklahoma Library Association and made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In response to numerous requests, the University of Oklahoma Press has reissued all ten volumes in the series. Published unaltered from the original editions, these books continue to have both historical and cultural value for reasons the series editorial committee stated so well: "Though not large in number as compared to those in some other states, immigrants from various European nations left a marked impact on Oklahoma's history. As in the larger United States, they worked in many economic and social roles that enriched the state's life. Indians have played a crucial part in Oklahoma's history, even to giving the state her name. Blacks and Mexicans have also fulfilled a special set of roles, and will continue to affect Oklahoma's future. The history of each of these groups is unique, well worth remembering to both their heirs and to other people in the state and nation. Their stories come from the past, but continue on to the future." Editorial Committee H. Wayne Morgan, Chair University of Oklahoma Douglas Hale Oklahoma State University Rennard Strickland University of Tulsa
Author: Jarom¡r Navr til
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9789639116153
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 656
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Book Description
"In addition to revealing the events surrounding the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is the first book to document a Cold War crisis from both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is based on unprecedented access to the previously closed archives of each member of the Warsaw Pact, as well as once highly classified American documents from the National Security Council, CIA, and other intelligence agencies." "Presented in a highly readable volume, the book offers top-level documents from Kremlin Politburo meetings, multilateral sessions of the Warsaw Pact leading up to the decision to invade, transcripts of KGB-recorded telephone conversations between Leonid Brezhnev and Alexander Dubcek." "To provide a historical and political context, the editors have prepared essays to introduce each section of the volume. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information for the reader." "The editors have a unique perspective to offer to foreign audiences since they are members of the commission appointed by Vaclav Havel to investigate the events of 1967-1970."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author: Norman Eisen
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0451495799
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
A sweeping yet intimate narrative about the last hundred years of turbulent European history, as seen through one of Mitteleuropa’s greatest houses—and the lives of its occupants When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past. From that discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had called this palace home. Their story is Europe’s, and The Last Palace chronicles the upheavals that transformed the continent over the past century. There was the optimistic Jewish financial baron, Otto Petschek, who built the palace after World War I as a statement of his faith in democracy, only to have that faith shattered; Rudolf Toussaint, the cultured, compromised German general who occupied the palace during World War II, ultimately putting his life at risk to save the house and Prague itself from destruction; Laurence Steinhardt, the first postwar US ambassador whose quixotic struggle to keep the palace out of Communist hands was paired with his pitched efforts to rescue the country from Soviet domination; and Shirley Temple Black, an eyewitness to the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring by Soviet tanks, who determined to return to Prague and help end totalitarianism—and did just that as US ambassador in 1989. Weaving in the life of Eisen’s own mother to demonstrate how those without power and privilege moved through history, The Last Palace tells the dramatic and surprisingly cyclical tale of the triumph of liberal democracy.
Author: Kevin J McNamara
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610394852
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418
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Book Description
"The pages of history recall scarcely any parallel episode at once so romantic in character and so extensive in scale." -- Winston S. Churchill In 1917, two empires that had dominated much of Europe and Asia teetered on the edge of the abyss, exhausted by the ruinous cost in blood and treasure of the First World War. As Imperial Russia and Habsburg-ruled Austria-Hungary began to succumb, a small group of Czech and Slovak combat veterans stranded in Siberia saw an opportunity to realize their long-held dream of independence. While their plan was audacious and complex, and involved moving their 50,000-strong army by land and sea across three-quarters of the earth's expanse, their commitment to fight for the Allies on the Western Front riveted the attention of Allied London, Paris, and Washington. On their journey across Siberia, a brawl erupted at a remote Trans-Siberian rail station that sparked a wholesale rebellion. The marauding Czecho-Slovak Legion seized control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and with it Siberia. In the end, this small band of POWs and deserters, whose strength was seen by Leon Trotsky as the chief threat to Soviet rule, helped destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire and found Czecho-Slovakia. British prime minister David Lloyd George called their adventure "one of the greatest epics of history," and former US president Teddy Roosevelt declared that their accomplishments were "unparalleled, so far as I know, in ancient or modern warfare."
