History | Topic Archive

In a recent edition of Czech Books we looked at the Prague-inspired poetry of the Scottish poet, Edwin Muir. But it was not just in his poetry that Muir evoked the atmosphere of the Czech capital. David Vaughan finds out more in this week’s Czech Books.

Czechoslovakia played an active part in the Soviet Union’s propaganda war with the United States during the 1950s, a time of edginess and paranoia on both sides. There was no shortage of people trying to flee across the Iron Curtain to the West, but every now and then the flight would be in the other direction, and someone from the West would actively seek asylum in the Communist Bloc. For the communist regimes this was a propaganda opportunity not to be missed.

The last communist president of Czechoslovakia Gustáv Husák became the symbol of the spineless regime that ruled the country after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Himself a political prisoner in the 1950s, he oversaw the persecution of opposition activists in the 1970s and 80s – an intellectual who supported the reforms of the Prague Spring turned into the Soviet Union’s lackey. We look at the life of Gustáv Husák on the 99th anniversary of his birth.

With its rich history and impressive neo-Renaissance architecture Zbiroh Chateau is a big attraction in its own right. In the course of the next two months it will moreover boast a rare exhibit – the Lucan portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, an alleged self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, which has never before been shown outside Italy.

By the mid 1960s political control over many aspects of cultural and social life in Czechoslovakia had relaxed considerably. This was the height of the “New Wave” in Czechoslovak cinema, in theatre socialist realism had long gone out of fashion and in music the swinging sixties were well under way. But it wasn’t just through the music it was playing that Czechoslovak Radio tried to keep pace with the changes. One programme that broke the traditional mould was launched in 1966 and was called “The 33 Questions of Marcel Proust”. These were questions

Archbishop, later Cardinal, Josef Beran, become a symbol of opposition to totalitarian regimes. He was dubbed the archbishop who refused to be silenced. The punishment for speaking out was imprisonment first under the Nazi occupation and then the Communists.

Writers were at the forefront of the Velvet Revolution. But when the dust settled on the political changes they found a fast changing publishing revolution underway that left some of them sidelined. We look at the changes in the publishing and literary world over the last two decades.

The village of Nehvizdy, in central Bohemia, on Wednesday commemorated the 70th anniversary of the start of Operation Anthropoid, the targeted killing of the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich. Two Czechoslovak commandoes who carried out the killing, landed near the village on the night of 28 December, 1941.

The Czechoslovak legions occupy an almost legendary place in Czech history. They comprise the armed forces that fought during and after World War I on the allied side in pursuit of an independent Czechoslovakia. The biggest force, and most potent myths, centre on the Russian force, which became embroiled in the civil war, spending three years and travelling thousands of miles before returning home. We look at the myths and facts about their exploits.

With Christmas just round the corner, we break our chronological journey through the archives this week to go back to Christmas 1945. We’re in Kročehlavy, a suburb of the industrial town of Kladno near Prague. This was home to the survivors of one of the horrors of the wartime occupation, the murder in June 1942 of all the men and most of the children from the nearby village of Lidice. Only one Lidice family had survived the massacre intact: Josef Horák was one of two young pilots from the village who had fled at the beginning of the occupation,