Resources

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Books

As you probably have noticed, there's not too much of  information concerning the Czechoslovak revolution on the Web. The books I have listed here could help you. I put examples of both novels and scholarly work here -- current and historical.
 

Articles

Finally, finally! Long ago, I went to our college library and made photocopies of the microfiches with Philadelphia Inquirer's articles from November 1989 about Czechoslovakia. ALL OF THEM. Really.

Documents

How about a scan of one of the 1 million fliers that were hanging on the walls in Prague -- the official statement of the students on strike of my high-school condemning the 11/17 police action? If you're a non-fiction type, this section is for you.

 

"Alternative Culture"

There was a relatively strong cultural resistance to the regime. For you, most interesting would be the "Druhá Kultura" movement. This term stands for "Another Culture", or "The Second Culture". It's one of the names (together with "Underground", "Banned Culture", etc.) that are used to the name the alternative cultural movements that started to appear in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960's, even though originally the "Druha Cultura" referred to quite a narrow sphere of the underground cultural life.

These "subcultures" were in a total opposite to the official culture and the artists who participated in them had a real hard life. However, these "cultures" could provide an alternative to those who couldn't live in the official culture, and it was a strong source of power to survive in the regime. The people in it strived to create an alternate world, a space of personal freedom, a community of the "Invalid Siblings".

There was not only one alternative culture, sure. The preservationists or even athletes created them, too. But none of them was so willingly or unwillingly political as the "Druhá Kultura". That's why I'd like to explore it more here, as a background to the ultimate change in '89.

Literature. Well, I happened to have a few poetry pieces of the formerly banned writers on my hard disk and so this section came to life. It's mostly in Czech, but I've got some Havel's poems translated into English, too.

Music. Music was sooo important -- wasn't Charter 77 (one of the main dissident activities) initiated by the repressions against the psychedelic bands??? To find some essays, examples & lyrics, go here.

 

The Propaganda

The official communist propaganda was present all around us and functioned as a permanent brainwash. It was both tragic and comic... In this section, you'll find translated examples of the "best" pieces related to the site's topic. For the start, you can have a look at the description of life of one good super-loyal People's Militia trooper.

 

Other

Simply the resources that don't fit elsewhere are here. For example, there's a lof ot old anti-regime jokes (in English). Of course, many of them are applicable for today's situation... and not only in the Czech Republic. Highly recommended reading and, for some reason, the #1 visited section of this site.

 

Links

What a site would this be if it didn't feature links to related pages. They're mostly in English and although most of them are already outdated, they contain interesting additional information to what you can find here.