The Czechoslovak New Wave

The Czechoslovak New Wave
Author: Peter Hames
Publisher: Wallflower Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005
Genre: Czechoslovakia
ISBN: 9781904764427

This study of the most significant movement in post-war Central and East European cinema examines the origins and development of Czechoslovakian film during this time, as well as the political and cultural changes which influenced some of the most important works.

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia
Author: Mary Heimann
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Czechoslovakia
ISBN: 9780300141474

A revisionist history, this volume sets out to debunk many of the myths about Czechoslovakia.

Avant-garde to New Wave

Avant-garde to New Wave
Author: Jonathan L. Owen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2011-02-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0857451278

The cultural liberalization of communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s produced many artistic accomplishments, not least the celebrated films of the Czech New Wave. This movement saw filmmakers use their new freedom to engage with traditions of the avant-garde, especially Surrealism. This book explores the avant-garde's influence over the New Wave and considers the political implications of that influence. The close analysis of selected films, ranging from the Oscar-winning Closely Observed Trains to the aesthetically challenging Daisies, is contextualized by an account of the Czech avant-garde and a discussion of the films' immediate cultural and political background.

Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler

Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler
Author: Igor Lukes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 349
Release: 1996
Genre: Czechoslovakia
ISBN: 0195102665

A diplomatic history of events leading up to the Munich crisis in 1938 in which Great Britain and France decided to appease Hitler's demands to annex the Sudentenland. The book aims to integrate a full understanding of the Czech role with wider events.

The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation

The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation
Author: Bradley F. Abrams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780742530249

The material effects of World War II, in combination with Eastern Europe's disappointingly undemocratic interwar history, placed radical social change on the postwar agenda across the region and shaped the debates that took place in immediate postwar Czech society. These debates adopted both a cultural form, in struggles over the meaning of the recent past and the nation's position on the East-West continuum, and a directly political form, in battles over the meaning of socialism. The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation examines the most important and politically resonant fields of historical and cultural debate in Czech society immediately after World War II. Bradley Abrams finds that communist public figures were largely successful in controlling debate over the nation's recent past--the interwar First Republic and the experiences of Munich and World War II--and over its location on the East-West continuum. This success preceded and was mirrored in the struggles over the political issue of the times: socialism. The communists engaged their political foes in the democratic socialist and Roman Catholic camps, and, surprisingly, found significant support from a major Protestant church. Abrams's careful reading of major publications re-creates a postwar mood sympathetic to radical social change, questioning the standard view of the communists' rise to power. This book not only contributes to the specific literature on Czech history, but also raises questions about the relationship between war and radical social change, about the communist takeover of the region, and about the role of intellectuals in public life.

The Czech Black Book

The Czech Black Book
Author: Historický ústav (Československá akademie věd)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1969
Genre: Czechoslovakia
ISBN:

This is an hour-by-hour account of the fall of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968.

Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands

Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands
Author: Eagle Glassheim
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2017-01-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822981947

In this innovative study of the aftermath of ethnic cleansing, Eagle Glassheim examines the transformation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland from the end of the Second World War, through the Cold War, and into the twenty-first century. Prior to their expulsion in 1945, ethnic Germans had inhabited the Sudeten borderlands for hundreds of years, with deeply rooted local cultures and close, if sometimes tense, ties with Bohemia's Czech majority. Cynically, if largely willingly, harnessed by Hitler in 1938 to his pursuit of a Greater Germany, the Sudetenland's three million Germans became the focus of Czech authorities in their retributive efforts to remove an alien ethnic element from the body politic—and claim the spoils of this coal-rich, industrialized area. Yet, as Glassheim reveals, socialist efforts to create a modern utopia in the newly resettled "frontier" territories proved exceedingly difficult. Many borderland regions remained sparsely populated, peppered with dilapidated and abandoned houses, and hobbled by decaying infrastructure. In the more densely populated northern districts, coalmines, chemical works, and power plants scarred the land and spewed toxic gases into the air. What once was a diverse religious, cultural, economic, and linguistic "contact zone," became, according to many observers, a scarred wasteland, both physically and psychologically. Glassheim offers new perspectives on the struggles of reclaiming ethnically cleansed lands in light of utopian dreams and dystopian realities—brought on by the uprooting of cultures, the loss of communities, and the industrial degradation of a once-thriving region. To Glassheim, the lessons drawn from the Sudetenland speak to the deep social traumas and environmental pathologies wrought by both ethnic cleansing and state-sponsored modernization processes that accelerated across Europe as a result of the great wars of the twentieth century.