CZECH SOCIOLOGY BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER CZECHOSLOVAKIA. A SHORT INCURSION INTO THE FORMATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF A PROMINENT NATIONAL TRADITION.

The history of Czech sociology is inevitably connected with the political history of the Czech nation. The national awakening and the national affirmation of the Czech people at the end of the 19th century coincides with the genesis of the Czech sociology, promoted by its first master, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who viewed sociology as the key scientific tool in the formation of Czech nation and state. The peculiar philosophical and moralist approach to sociology promoted by no less than the state president stimulated and in the same time hindered the development of the interwar Czech sociology, which established its basic institutional layout before WWII. The German occupation and the short transitory of "popular democracy" was followed by years of abolishment, until the gradual restoration and powerful revival of sociology in the second half of the sixties, which designated sociology as the motor of the Prague Spring of 1968. During the neo-Stalinist normalization era the institutional settings were largely maintained, but emptied, unless the Velvet Revolution of 1989 opened up a new era for the discipline. The third institutionalization started with a welcome upgrade and institutional renewal, after the EU-integration ending up in a highly pluralized, fragmented and professional domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]