Download or read book The Czech and Slovak Republics written by M. Mark Stolarik and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in the book compare the Czech Republic and Slovakia since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The papers deal with the causes of the divorce and discuss the political, economic and social developments in the new countries. This is the only English-language volume that presents the synoptic findings of leading Czech, Slovak, and North American scholars in the field. The authors include two former Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, eight leading scholars (four Czechs and four Slovaks), and eight knowledgeable commentators from North America. The most significant new insight is that in spite of predictions by various pundits in the Western World that Czechia would flourish after the breakup and Slovakia would languish, the opposite has happened. While the Czech Republic did well in its early years, it is now languishing while Slovakia, which had a rough start, is now doing very well. Anyone interested in the history of the Czech and Slovak Republics over the last twenty years will find gratification in reading this book.
Download or read book Czechoslovakia written by Mary Heimann and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revisionist history, this volume sets out to debunk many of the myths about Czechoslovakia.
Download or read book Dreams of a Great Small Nation written by Kevin J McNamara and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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."
Download or read book The Czechs in Oklahoma written by Karel D. Bicha and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book There is No Czech Culture in Upper Hungary written by Lajos Steier and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Worlds of Dissent written by Jonathan Bolton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-13 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Worlds of Dissent analyzes the myths of Central European resistance popularized by Western journalists and historians, and replaces them with a picture of the struggle against state repression as the dissidents themselves understood, debated, and lived it. In the late 1970s, when Czech intellectuals, writers, and artists drafted Charter 77 and called on their government to respect human rights, they hesitated to name themselves "dissidents." Their personal and political experiences--diverse, uncertain, nameless--have been obscured by victory narratives that portray them as larger-than-life heroes who defeated Communism in Czechoslovakia. Jonathan Bolton draws on diaries, letters, personal essays, and other first-person texts to analyze Czech dissent less as a political philosophy than as an everyday experience. Bolton considers not only Václav Havel but also a range of men and women writers who have received less attention in the West--including Ludvík Vaculík, whose 1980 diary The Czech Dream Book is a compelling portrait of dissident life. Bolton recovers the stories that dissidents told about themselves, and brings their dilemmas and decisions to life for contemporary readers. Dissidents often debated, and even doubted, their own influence as they confronted incommensurable choices and the messiness of real life. Portraying dissent as a human, imperfect phenomenon, Bolton frees the dissidents from the suffocating confines of moral absolutes. Worlds of Dissent offers a rare opportunity tounderstand the texture of dissent in a closed society.
Download or read book Prague in Danger written by Peter Demetz and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia's great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short years—a tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague then—a "first-degree half-Jew," according to the Nazis' terrible categories—and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain. Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities' diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague's evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex, continually surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.
Download or read book Czechslovkia Before Munich written by J. W. Bruegel and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1973-06-21 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of Czech-German relations from 1918 until Munich from the standpoint of internal as well as international politics. Dr Bruegel describes the difficulties created by the existence of a 3 million strong German minority in Czechoslovakia after 1918 and, in this context, British foreign policy, British appeasement of Hitler and the Munich Crisis. After investigating the liability of the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of the First World War the author describes the birth of Czechoslovakia- a democratic state in the heart of Europe- whose rulers attempted to establish a regime of justice and equality towards the various nationalities in the country; by 1933 an ideal situation had not been reached but the great majority of the German population was loyal to the state and was far from any irrendentist leanings. Dr Brugel then examines British diplomacy and attitudes towards Czechoslovakia with the rise of Hitler and traces in detail British support of Konrad Henlein. He outlines the ways in which Britain ignored the German democratic element, the development of the policy of appeasement, and the eventual sacrifice of Czechoslovakia and its implications. The German edition of this book, published in 1967, was based on a wide range of German, Czechoslovak, British and French archival and published material as well as on the author's personal knowledge of pre-war Czechoslovakia. For this English edition Dr Bruegel has deleted some material of mainly German interest and incorporated much newly available material: Foreign Office files and the personal correspondence and memoirs of those involved. These stress how the British government persisted in its appeasement policy, despite contrary evidence of Hitler's intentions and often despite her allies' inclinations. This book sheds new light on the Munich Crisis, on the part played in British policy by Chamberlain and members of the diplomatic staff, the degree to which the Czechoslovak government and the German democrats were completely ignored and the results for Britain herself and for the whole of Europe.
Download or read book From Praha to Prague written by Philip D. Smith and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of Czechs left their homelands in Bohemia and Moravia and came to the United States. While many settled in major American cities, others headed to rural areas out west where they could claim their own land for farming. In From Praha to Prague, Philip D. Smith examines how the Czechs who founded and settled in Prague, Oklahoma, embraced the economic and cultural activities of their American hometown while maintaining their ethnic identity. According to Smith, the Czechs of Prague began as a clannish group of farmers who participated in the 1891 land run and settled in east-central Oklahoma. After the town’s incorporation in 1902, settlers from other ethnic backgrounds swiftly joined the fledgling community, and soon the original Czech immigrants found themselves in the minority. By 1930, the Prague Czechs had reached a unique cultural, social, and economic duality in their community. They strove to become reliable, patriotic citizens of their adopted country—joining churches, playing sports, and supporting the Allied effort in World War II—but they also maintained their identity as Czechs through local traditions such as participating in the Bohemian Hall society, burying their dead in the town’s Czech National Cemetery, and holding the annual Kolache Festival, a lively celebration that still draws visitors from around the world. As a result, Smith notes, succeeding generations of Prague Czechs have proudly considered themselves Czech Americans: firmly assimilated to mainstream American culture but holding to an equally strong sense of belonging to a singular ethnic group. As he analyzes the Czech experience in farm-town Oklahoma, Smith explores several intriguing questions: Was it easier or more difficult for Czechs living in a rural town to sustain their ethnic identity and culture than for Czechs living in large urban areas such as Chicago? How did the tactics used by Prague Czechs to preserve their group identity differ from those used in rural areas where immigrant populations were the majority? In addressing these and other questions, From Praha to Prague reveals the unique path that Prague Czechs took toward Americanization.
Download or read book The Break up of Czechoslovakia written by Oldřich Dědek and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The emphasis is on the economic side of the process, and the economic history which preceded the split is analyzed. The original policy measures adopted to minimize the dissolution shocks are described, as are the recent post-split trends in both the successor economies. This work aims to provide a detailed insight into the process of the split and to serve as a source of knowledge in today's world of growing nationalism.
Download or read book Gottland written by Mariusz Szczygiel and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Europe Book Prize One of Europe’s most preeminent investigative journalists travels to the Czech Republic—the Czech half of the former Czechoslovakia, the land that brought us Kafka—to explore the surreal fictions and the extraordinary reality of its twentieth century. For example, there’s the story of the small businessman who adopted Henry Ford’s ideas on productivity to create the world’s largest shoe company—and hired modernist giants such as Le Corbusier to design his company towns (which were also the birthplaces of Ivana Trump and Tom Stoppard). Or the story of Kafka’s niece, who loaned her name to writers blacklisted under the Communist regime so they could keep publishing. Or the story of the singer Karel Gott, winner of the country’s Best Male Vocalist Award thirty-six years in a row, whose summer home, Gottland, is the Czech Dollywood. Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews with everyone from filmmakers to writers to pop stars to ordinary citizens, Gottland is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a resilient people living through difficult and often bizarre times—equally funny, disturbing, stirring and absurd . . . in a word, Kafkaesque. From the Hardcover edition.
Download or read book A Czech Dreambook written by Ludvík Vaculík and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s 1979 in Czechoslovakia, ten years into the crushing restoration of repressive communism known as normalization, and Ludvík Vaculík has writer’s block. It has been nearly a decade since he wrote his last novel, and even longer since he wrote the 1968 manifesto, "Two Thousand Words,” which the Soviet Union used as one of the pretexts for invading Czechoslovakia. On the advice of a friend, Vaculík begins to keep a diary: "a book about things, people and events.” Fifty-four weeks later, what Vaculík has written is a unique mixture of diary, dream journal, and outright fiction – an inverted roman à clef in which the author, his family, his mistresses, the secret police and leading figures of the Czech underground play major roles.
Download or read book The Xenophobe s Guide to the Czechs written by Petr Berka and published by Xenophobe's Guides. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All roads lead to Czechia The Czechs seem to believe that the Earth is the center of the Universe, Europe is the centre of the Earth, and Czechia is at the centre of Europe. Reality Czechs The ability to put up with a situation adjusting as needs must has been elevated to an art form. Chuckling Czechs Czech humor is distinguished by mad screams, breast and thigh slapping, and uncontrollable braying. Top of the Czech list The Czechs would like to be seen as the cauldron in which all that's good from West and East melts; and if not the best, then at least one of the top nations in the world.
Download or read book Modernism Representations of National Culture written by Ahmet Ersoy and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presentations of National Cultures. Fifty-one texts illustrate the evolution of modernism in the east-European region. Essays, articles, poems, or excerpts from longer works offer new opportunities of possible comparisons of the respective national cultures, from the different ideological approaches and finessing projects of how to create the modern state liberal, conservative, socialist and others to the literary and scientific attempts at squaring the circle of individual and collective identities.
Download or read book Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada written by Jan Raska and published by Univ. of Manitoba Press. This book was released on 2018-08-24 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Cold War, more than 36,000 individuals entering Canada claimed Czechoslovakia as their country of citizenship. A defining characteristic of this migration of predominantly political refugees was the prevalence of anti-communist and democratic values. Diplomats, industrialists, politicians, professionals, workers, and students fled to the West in search of freedom, security, and economic opportunity. Jan Raska’s Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada explores how these newcomers joined or formed ethnocultural organizations to help in their attempts to affect developments in Czechoslovakia and Canadian foreign policy towards their homeland. Canadian authorities further legitimized the Czech refugees’ anti-communist agenda and increased their influence in Czechoslovak institutions. In turn, these organizations supported Canada’s Cold War agenda of securing the state from communist infiltration. Ultimately, an adherence to anti-communism, the promotion of Canadian citizenship, and the cultivation of a Czechoslovak ethnocultural heritage accelerated Czech refugees’ socioeconomic and political integration in Cold War Canada. By analyzing oral histories, government files, ethnic newspapers, and community archival records, Raska reveals how Czech refugees secured admission as desirable immigrants and navigated existing social, cultural, and political norms in Cold War Canada.
Download or read book Battle for the Castle written by Andrea Orzoff and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2009-07-21 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battle for Castle examines the conscious creation and dissemination of Czechoslovakia's reputation as Eastern Europe's "native democracy" by its country's leaders.
Download or read book Czechoslovakia written by Zuzana Palovic and published by Hybrid Global Publishing. This book was released on 2020-01-11 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
