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This article introduces four papers addressing problems of higher education in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia. Issues identified include overcoming the Communist heritage, the separation of teaching and research, low student numbers, appropriate diversification of higher education, increasing access, the role of the state, and higher education and the economy. (DB)

The primary aim of this paper is to outline concisely the history of environmental journalism in Czechoslovakia and to compare it to the development of Radio Free Europe's environmental agenda. This comparison can help us better understand how important a role society -- and by extension social constructivism -- played in twentieth-century environmental history. An explanation for these discrepancies can, in my opinion, be found not only in the internal discussions at RFE and among dissidents but also in the international context. Upon greater scrutiny, the simple question of why and how RFE's environmental agenda emerged, and why certain environmental topics but not others were covered in RFE's broadcasts and reports, appears to be multi-layered, and, if we attempt to answer it, can reveal how and why environmental issues become socially and politically relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Years after February 1948 was a difficult period for the Czechoslovak Church. Although the ideologically divided church had a partially negative attitude towards the communist regime, another significant part of ordinary believers and priests (including church leadership) saw the communist state as an opportunity to fulfill the idea of Christian socialism. Czechoslovakia was to become a happy home for unbelievers and Christians alike. The paper is focused on the daily life of the religious communities of the Czechoslovak Church in Brno between 1948 and 1960. It seeks answers to the questions of how the vision of the coexistence of the communist state and the Czechoslovak Church was accepted among the believers themselves at the local level and how the relationship of believers to their new home developed during the dynamic 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia 396 is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Instituto de Historia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Securitas Imperii is the property of Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After the Communists took power in 1948, the school system and education in Czechoslovakia were indoctrinated by the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. A unified state system of education was created (Education Act No. 95/1948 and Higher Education Act No. 58/1950) with the aim of educating each young person as a "builder of Communism". The Church became the biggest internal enemy of the state, so-called church acts were passed, orders were abolished, and many bishops, monks, nuns and priests were sentenced to imprisonment. The government attempted to track and control representatives of the official Church. Therefore, in the period of political release in the 1960s (Prague Spring), when the first monks and priests were released from prison, the so -called Secret Church launched its activity in Slovakia. The paper is focused on an analysis of the model of work with university students which was historically the first form of spiritual and intellectual formation in the Secret Church in Slovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the period of so-called normalization in the former Czechoslovakia, the restrictive cultural policy ousted numerous oppositional artists, theoreticians, and writers from the public cultural sphere through bans on exhibitions and publications. As a consequence, the affected individuals developed their own means of enabling creative, scientific, and literary work beyond censorship. A key medium for the realization of officially banned texts, studies, and projects was illegal and clandestine self-publishing, also called "samizdat". This article discusses the phenomenon of samizdat using the example of the self-produced collections of the Surrealistická skupina v Československu. In the 1980s, the community created two (fictitious) exhibition catalogues, Sféra snu (1983) and Proměny humoru (1984), which presented the individual and collective surrealist activities with images, quotations, and written descriptions. However, the editions were not only a media of documentation to reconstruct surrealist practice. They were at the same time a creative way to exhibit their content in its own specific artistic forms and theories of art. In this paper, I explore the unacknowledged dual-function of the '70s and '80s Czech surrealist samizdat as both an archival technique and a work of art. I investigate the function of these volumes for group artistic praxis and how it reflects creative production under the social conditions of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces the papers published in the Summer 1990 issue of the 'Eastern European Economics' journal. Critique of Marxist economic thinking as practiced in Czechoslovakia; Foreign trade strategy needed to revive the Czechoslovak economy; Issue of the nature and timing of economic reform.

The general character of the memory of the contemporary witnesses and the fact that nearly no Christian samizdat of the 1960s has been preserved do not allow to offer a closer look to the topics discussed by the priests released from prison with their friends. We can only offer it through the witness of one of them, Antonín Mandl (1917-1972). His work from 1965 to 1967 is only a voice of an individual, but we can suppose that it echoes a broader debate, in which the experience of the earlier years has been confronted both with the contemporary form of the Czechoslovak society ruled by the Communist totalitarian regime and with the results of the Vatican Council II. The paper focuses on Mandl's answer to the following three questions: In the relation to the Communism, is it proper to choose opposition, or collaboration? How should the priesthood in the contemporary society look like? What are the major axioms of Christian life, pastoral work and evangelisation? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the problem of communist power in so called totalitarian regimes. Inspired by strategies of explanation in contemporary science studies and by the ethnomethodological conception of social order, we suggest that the power of communists is not to be taken as an unproblematic source of explanation; rather, we take this power as something that is itself in need of being explained. We study personal narratives on political screenings that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1970 and analyze how the power of communists obtained its strength from ordinary and “unremarkable” interactions between participants. The screenings are interpreted, in the terms of Bruno Latour, as “trials of strength.” We show that it was crucial for all the participants that associations, translations or mobilizations involved in making the regime real, remained partial and multiple, and not exclusive and “total” as is often assumed within dominant discourses on totalitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (CPBM) with special attention given to its identity and programmatic and policy positions in the 1990s. It argues that the CPBM represents a special type of a post-communist "radical socialist" party with neo-communist leanings. It is neither a "social-democra-tized" ex-communist party, nor an ultra-orthodox communist or genuine neo-communist party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Literatura: Teoría, Historia, Crítica is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Fotocinema is the property of Revista Fotocinema and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite the context of contemporary post-heroic indifference, our intention is to re-analyze the concept of heroism, not in the modernist (totalizing and iconic), or in the post-modernist (de-heroizing and ironic) way, but in the optics of hermeneutic re-reading of the specific teachers' stories from the Stalinist years of the totalitarian regime. In the contribution we bring a conceptual identification of features of the ethical-characterial understanding of "hero without a halo", by which we want to break the simplistic dichotomy between heroic and everyday - we introduce a third concept - "a hero of everyday life". We point out how the mythical-idealistic idea of heroism perverted to a collective ideology and how the reality of the communist totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia demanded heroes - heroes of everyday life. The aim of the research is to find the occurrence of the identifying features of the "everyday hero" in particular stories of three teachers from the times of socialist Czechoslovakia, with the help of narrative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with a dissent discourse against celebrations of October 28th in the era of the First Czechoslovak republic found in court records. Primarily, is researched a discourse of members of the German and Polish community in the Czech lands. Besides ways of shaping a negative image of the celebrations there are researched also attempts to create alternative festivities which could connect the citizens with certain political movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The survey shows the results of post-war historiography focused on social problems. Having overcome the dogmatic Marxism era, the historical science of the 1960s noted the expansion of objective and non-ideologized efforts to research social classes and strata including their standard of life. Features of that effort and important papers and works are mentioned herein. The text presented touches briefly a new wave of interest in knowing the so-called "state socialism" social face. At the end, the authors draw attention to new works on social history of the post-Communist time period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to analyse the international scientific policy of the countries of the Socialist Bloc in relation to the establishment of the International Biological Program. It focuses mainly on Czechoslovakia as one of the main active members of the IBP and as a close ally of the USSR when it entered the realm of international science policy after years of targeted isolation forced upon it during Stalinism. The study examines Soviet international science policy strategy and coordination from the reinstatement of Central and Eastern European countries as members of UNESCO and the ICSU to the occupation of the highest positions within IUBS and the contribution to establishing the definitive shape of the International Biological Program. The influence that socialist countries gained thanks to their international coordination efforts allowed them to modify the focus of the IBP to best meet their interests. As a result, they also ended up influencing the development and direction of the biological sciences in the 1970s and 1980s. From the perspective of institutional history, the specific infrastructure of the IBP led to the creation of not just new types of research groups and institutes but also scientific committees, which, thanks to their official status and inclusion in the IBP, and later MaB, gained political clout. New ecological paradigms and the open dialogue between scientists across the Iron Curtain within the IBP was the first serious crack in the monolithic approach of the Socialist Bloc towards the environment, through which the road to environmental initiatives - which were very frequently linked to anti-regime attitudes - led. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the effects of communist industrial pollution in Eastern Europe. A nightmarish panorama spreads out from the hillock near Bilina, Czechoslovakia. A gigantic black pit, the Gorky strip coal mine, runs on the left all the way to the horizon. Faced with such economic uncertainties, leaders intensely debate how to balance economic reforms with environmental cleanup and protection. Whether the revolutions in Central Europe ultimately succeed or fail is a matter of global concern. Regional stability depends on these governments establishing their legitimacy, says Frank Loy, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and for eight years president of the Environmental Defense Fund -- and that legitimacy depends on solving environmental problems. Loy speaks of success as "clinching the Cold War." INSET: From dissident to deputy.

The article discusses Italian political emigration to Czechoslovakia from 1948 through the mid-1950s. It particularly comments on the emigration of Italian communists and the role of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The author reflects on the relationship between this emigration and the Italian Resistance in World War II. Other topics include relations between Italian political refugees and Czech workers, the experiences of Italian emigrants in Czech collectives, and the return of the emigrants to Italy due to amnesty policies.

An essay on the Czech experimental theater project called Bílé Divadlo, or White Theatre, is presented, focusing on the period 1970 to 1976. It examines the actors' resistance to the Soviet communist regime, exploring rhetorical and inventional practices and the construction of reality. The author examines the effects of the Prague Spring movement and the role of Czech leader Alexander Dubček. He also comments on project members František Hrdlička and Zdena Bratršovská.

A case study is presented that examines press and media censorship in Czechoslovakia prior to 1968 and discusses the changes that emerged as a result of the period of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring. The study examines articles written in the journal "Literárni Listy," in order to highlight the nature of journalism prior to and after the Prague Spring.

The article presents an examination of Romania's decision to not become involved with the Soviet Union-led military intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. The article argues that during the period of 1964 to 1968 the Romanian communist government undertook a variety of actions that were largely reflective of the attitudes held by Romanian society. Additionally, the article shows that in 1968 the country began a nation-building project aimed at establishing the county as an ethnically homogeneous socialist nation.

The article discusses Czechoslovakian history, examining the "Prague Spring" of 1968 as a function of a crisis that occurred in the Czechoslovak society in the years 1967-1970. The author also traces the roots of the crisis back to the origins of communist rule in Czechoslovakia during the 1940's. Other topics include events occurring during the week of 19-25 February 1948, themes of political pluralism and political democracy appearing in Czechoslovakian history, and the student strike of 17 November 1968.

The historical background of former eastern block countries including Bulgaria, Poland, and the former Czechoslovakia is discussed. It is considered necessary to examine their political backgrounds specially the review of their socialist legacies prior to their inclusion to the European Union. According to scholars, the socialist background of the countries mentioned can only be best understood through the examination of their individual national narratives rather than their common socialist legacies. This is due to the fact that their individual experiences in socialism varies which therefore requires a separate decollectivizing process on each country.

This article focuses on ethnic cleansing, communism and environmental devastation in Czechoslovakia's borderlands during 1945 to 1989. The thread of postwar materialist identity in North Bohemia from the 1940s to through the reform years of the 1960s is traced. The environmental destruction of North Bohemia during the 1980s was also discussed.

Why did Czechoslovakia break up peacefully into the Czech and Slovak republics on January 1, 1993? Despite the fact that clear majorities of both ethnic populations favored living in some kind of common state, Czech and Slovak political elites ignored such preferences and reached a mutual decision to split the state in two. A number of factors interacted during the past communist period to bring about a sharp decline in Czech and Slovak elite commitment to a shared state, thus making compromise on constitutional and other important issues virtually impossible to achieve. Divergent values, perceived interests, and self-identities contributed to interethnic elite disunity that, in turn, was compounded by the simultaneous political and economic transformations initiated after the fall of the communist regime. Furthermore, electoral and governmental arrangements that, theoretically, should have facilitated compromise between ethnic elites actually contributed to the deadlock that accelerated the decision to dissolve the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the breakup of Czechoslovakia from an institutionalist perspective. The federal state adopted after World War I failed to accommodate tensions in society and heightened ethnic conflict. After World War II, an "asymmetrical" federation was created that, while designed to provide a degree of home rule to Slovakia, further alienated Slovaks from national politics. Each effort to reform the federal order unintentionally prompted new concerns over the balance of political power. The inability to construct an enduring federal state helps explain why the transition from communism proved fatal for the union that was Czechoslovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]