Academic literature on the topic 'Post-communism – Czechoslovakia'
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Journal articles on the topic "Post-communism – Czechoslovakia"
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Wingfield, Nancy M. "The Battle of Zborov and the Politics of Commemoration in Czechoslovakia." East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures 17, no. 4 (November 2003): 654–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0891242403258288.
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The Battle of Zborov was the main commemorative site of Czechoslovakia's heroic military cult during the interwar era. The shifting fortunes of its commemoration reveal political attempts to reframe national questions for ideological ends. Zborov was an important symbol, because it was the nexus of the military and diplomatic-political efforts to found the state. The festivities on 2 July provided members of the military with the opportunity to demonstrate their prowess in the name of Zborov and to reassert their role in the creation of Czechoslovakia. The communist coup d'état in February 1948 spelled the end of the Czechoslovak national-military tradition that included Zborov. After 1989, the Battle of Zborov, like other historic events that had been downplayed or ignored under communism, enjoyed renewed interest. The “spirit of Zborov” has not been, however, an important part of a “usable past” in the post-communist Czech Republic or Slovakia, perhaps because it was so intimately associated with the formation of the First Czechoslovak Republic.
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Hrabovec, Emilia. "The Holy See and Czechoslovakia 1945—1948 in the Context of the Nascent Cold War." ISTORIYA 12, no. 8 (106) (2021): 0. http://dx.doi.org/10.18254/s207987840016710-0.
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The spectre of Communist expansion as a result of the Second World War represented for Pope Pius XII one of the greatest concerns. The unambiguously pro-Soviet orientation of the Czechoslovak government in exile and the crucial influence of Communists in the inner architecture of the restored state convinced the Holy See that Czechoslovakia was already in 1945 fully absorbed into the Soviet sphere of influence. This fact strengthened the Pope’s conviction of the necessity to resume relations with Prague as soon as possible and to send a nuncio there who would provide reliable information and protect the interests of the Church threatened both by open persecution and by propaganda manoeuvres in favour of a “progressive Catholicism”. The importance of the relations with Czechoslovakia stood out also in the international perspective, in which Czechoslovakia, in contrast to Poland or Hungary, seemed to be the last observatory still accessible to the Vatican diplomacy in the whole East-Central Europe. The year 1947 represented a caesura in the relations between the Holy See and Czechoslovakia. In the international context, this year was generally perceived by the Vatican as a definitive reinforcement of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In the Czechoslovak framework, the greatest importance was ascribed to the political crisis in Slovakia in autumn 1947, during which the Communists definitively took over the political power in Slovakia. The lost struggle over the predominantly Catholic Slovakia, that for some time had been considered by the Vatican one of very few hopes for the defence of Christian interests in the Republic, was perceived by the Holy See as a dominant breakthrough on the way to the total Communist transformation of Czechoslovakia. While in the immediate post-war period the Holy See had tried to come to terms with Czechoslovakia also at the price of some compromises, in winter 1947/1948 the last hopes for a diplomatic solution vanished and were replaced by the conviction that in the confrontation with Communism not diplomatic, but spiritual weapons — prayer, testimony, martyrdom — were of crucial importance.
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SHORE, MARCI. "(The End of) Communism as a Generational History: Some Thoughts on Czechoslovakia and Poland." Contemporary European History 18, no. 3 (August 2009): 303–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0960777309005062.
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AbstractThis article explores communism – including its pre-history and aftermath – as a generational history. The structure is diachronic and largely biographical. Attention is paid to the roles of milieu, the Second World War, generational cleavages and a Hegelian sense of time. Nineteen sixty-eight is a turning point, the moment when Marxism as belief was decoupled from communism as practice. The arrival of Soviet tanks in Prague meant a certain kind of end of European Marxism. It also meant the coming of age of a new generation: those born in the post-war years who were to play a large role in the opposition. The anti-communist opposition was organically connected to Marxism itself: the generation(s) of dissidents active in the 1970s and 1980s should be understood as a further chapter in the generational history of communism. Nineteen eight-nine was another moment of sharp generational rupture. The new post-communist generation, Havel's great hope, possessed the virtue of openness. Openness, however, proved a double-edged sword: as eastern Europe opened to the West, it also opened a Pandora's box. Perhaps today the most poignant generational question brought about by 1989 is not who has the right to claim authorship of the revolution, but rather who was old enough to be held responsible for the choices they made under the communist regime. There remains a division between those who have to account for their actions, and those who do not, between those who proved themselves opportunists, or cowards or heroes – and those who have clean hands by virtue of not having been tested.
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Šindelář, Jan. "Gottwaldovy pomníky ve Středočeském kraji." Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae – Historia 74, no. 1-2 (2022): 49–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.37520/amnph.2020.005.
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This text explores the construction of monuments in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, detailing the history of all four monuments to the first Czechoslovak communist president Klement Gottwald in the Central Bohemian Region. Based on archival research, this paper attempts to unveil the practices of post-1968 memory policy at regional level. In four main sections, the text traces, in succession, the construction of ideologically motivated works in the towns of Příbram, Pečky, Rakovník and Nymburk, bringing the decision-making processes of the communist party and state authorities at local and national level under scrutiny. Cumbersome bureaucracy combined with chronic supply difficulties and the excessive workload of approved artists caused several years of delays to projects endorsed by the regime. Owing to their close ties to the communist regime, all four sculptures were removed from public display shortly after November 1989, i.e. after the fall of communism, but they were not destroyed. Their different fates − from being a gallery exhibit to ending up in a technical services warehouse − open up questions about the meaningful use of similar artefacts.
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Nodia, Ghia. "Chasing the Meaning of ‘Post-communism’: a Transitional Phenomenon or Something to Stay?" Contemporary European History 9, no. 2 (July 2000): 269–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s096077730000206x.
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Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 743 pp., ISBN 0–521–57101–4Bruno Coppieters, Alexei Zverev and Dmitri Trenin, eds., Commonwealth and Independence in Post-Soviet Eurasia (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 232 pp., ISBN 0–714–64480–3Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: an Introduction (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997), 260 pp., ISBN 0–745–61311–xMichael Mandelbaum, ed., Post-Communism: Four Perspectives (US Council of Foreign Relations, 1996), 208 pp., ISBN 0–876–09186–9Ilya Prizel, National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 443 pp., ISBN 0–521–57157–xRichard Rose, William Mishler and Christian Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998), 270 pp., ISBN 0–745–61926–6Barnett R. Rubin and Jack Snyder, Post-Soviet Political Order (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 201 pp., ISBN 0–415–17068–0Graham Smith, Vivien Law, Andrew Wilson, Annette Bohr and Edward Allworth, Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 304 pp., ISBN 0–521–59045–0Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 217 pp., ISBN 0–691–04826–6Gordon Wightman, ed., Party Formation in East-Central Europe: Post-Communist Politics in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria (Vermont: Edward Elgar, 1995), 270 pp., ISBN 1–858–898132–8It is now about 10 years since the communist bloc ceased to exist (1989 is the year when communism was defeated in central-eastern Europe, and in 1991 its bastion – the Soviet Union – fell). What it left behind are a couple of die-hard communist survivor-states, an urge to ‘rethink’ or ‘re-define’ many fundamental concepts of political science, and a large swathe of land that is still to be properly categorised in registers of comparative political science. ‘Post-communism’ is the most popular term to cover this territory. But does it refer to something real today, or does it just express some kind of intellectual inertia? How much do the ‘post-communist countries’ still have in common with each other and to what extent are they different from any others?
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Syrný, Marek. "The Communist Party of Slovakia between the liberation and the gain of totalitarian power." Securitas Imperii: Journal for the Study of Modern Dictatorships 39, no. 2 (2021): 71–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.53096/vmfg6393.
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This study deals with the tactics, means and methods by which the Communist Party of Slovakia, as a regional branch of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, politically fought for a monopoly of power after the Second World War. First, it briefly describes the development of this party and its acceptance by the Slovak society in the interwar and war period. Then, it presents a picture, analyses and compares the ways in which the Slovak Communists tried to disqualify their insurgent partners and post‑war rivals for power in the political struggle – the Slovak Democrats. It notes the relations between the Slovak and Czech Communists, the transformation of communist propaganda and tactics, conditioned by a single goal – the gain of totalitarian power, the introduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the replacement of capitalism by communism. Until the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the Communists used a variety of democratic, semi‑democratic and outright violent and undemocratic practices to win – from hyperbolizing the party propaganda, via the abuse of mass social organizations and the secret police, to purposeful investigation and intimidation and the threat of using a forceful solution of the political struggle.
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Almond, Mark. "Romania since the Revolution." Government and Opposition 25, no. 4 (October 1, 1990): 484–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.1990.tb00399.x.
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THE VIOLENCE WHICH MARKED THE OVERTHROW OF Nicolae Ceaugescu's regime at Christmas 1989, and the recurrent disorders, especially in Bucharest, which have punctuated developments over the last nine months, have made Romania's experience of anti-Communist revolution strikingly different from that of its neighbours to the north and to the west. Whatever the political and social tensions emerging in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland (and whatever may be the GDR's legacy to a reunified Germany), it is unlikely that the charge of neo-communism will be central to their political debate. It is precisely that charge levelled against the government party (National Salvation Front/FSN) and against the person of Ion Ilescu by various opposition groups, and former prominent dissidents under Ceaugescu, which remains the most emotive issue in Romanian politics. The question of whether the revolution which overthrew Nicolae Ceauyescu and led to the dissolution of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) was the result of a popular uprising or a coup d'état planned by Party members has haunted Romanian politics through the first nine months of the post-Ceauqescu period.
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Włodek, Roman. "„Ulica Graniczna”. Film pod specjalnym nadzorem." Pleograf. Historyczno-Filmowy Kwartalnik Filmoteki Narodowej 27, no. 2 (June 20, 2022): 1–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.56351/pleograf.2022.2.06.
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The idea to pay tribute to the Jews murdered during the Holocaust probably arose in Aleksander Ford’s mind already in the summer of 1944, while he was recording Nazi crimes in his bleak documentary Majdanek: Cemetery of Europe. In 1946, he wrote the screenplay of Border Street together with Jan Fethke and Ludwik Starski, and then, when preparing the shooting script, he made several changes to it, significantly radicalizing its main message. Ford made the film in 1947 in Czechoslovakia, where it was more difficult to control him. Border Street was ready for distribution in the spring of 1948. In the summer of the same year, it received a major award at the Venice film festival, yet it did not find its way to Polish cinemas before June 1949. The leaders of the governing party were mostly afraid of the manner in which Polish-Jewish relations during the German occupation were presented in the film and of the possible reactions of those viewers who identified the post-war governing elite with “Judeo-Communism”. Hence, the attempt to exercise strict control over Border Street, visible already at the stage of drawing up the script and then strengthened during production and preparation for distribution.
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Kalvoda, Josef. "National Minorities Under Communism: The Case of Czechoslovakia." Nationalities Papers 16, no. 1 (1988): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905998808408065.
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After its establishment in 1918–1919, Czechoslovakia was a multinational state and some of its minorities protested against their being included into it. The nationality problem was related to the collapse of the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1938 and the loss of some of its territories to Germany, Poland, and Hungary. It may be pointed out that the 1920 Constitution did not recognize a separate Slovak national identity and that the Czechs and Slovaks were termed “Czechoslovaks.” The post-Munich Second Republic recognized a separate Slovak nationality; however, the state came to its end in March 1939. In 1945, after its reestablishment as a national state of the Czechs and Slovaks, the country's government attempted to liquidate the national minorities' problem in a drastic manner by transfer (expulsion) of Germans and Hungarians.
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Minárik, Pavol. "The Economics of Religion in a Globalizing World: Communist China and Post-Communist Central Europe." SHS Web of Conferences 92 (2021): 07041. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20219207041.
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Research background: Religion is often neglected by economists despite the existing studies of its importance for the economy. Religion and culture shape the development of informal and formal institutions and hence impact economic development. Considering the economic importance of China, the religious situation in that country deserves attention; at the same time, due to the peculiar conditions of religion under Communism, the future of religion in China seems rather unclear. Purpose of the article: The paper proposes that the economics of religion may be useful in the analysis of the religious situation in China. It shows the possibilities of applying the economic approach even where markets are suppressed, such as under Communist rule. In light of economic theory, it shows that the experience of Central European countries under Communist rule, particularly Czechoslovakia, may provide clues about the future of religion in China. Methods: The paper builds on previous findings in the economics of religion. It reviews the theories concerning the regulation of the religious markets and the effects of deregulation, as well as the theories specifically developed to analyze religion under heavy regelation and the strategies for its survival. The history of Communist China and Czechoslovakia are compared with regard to those theories. Findings & Value added: The paper shows the similarities between Communist China and Czechoslovakia. The parallels seem useful to predict the further development of religion in China, including the effect of the possible tightening of anti-religious policies as well as those of deregulation upon the liberalization of the Chinese political regime.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Post-communism – Czechoslovakia"
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Horackova, Clare Frances. "Traumatic histories : representations of (post-)Communist Czechoslovakia in Sylvie Germain, Daniela Hodrová, and Jean-Gaspard Páleníček." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/17945.
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Through a study of the work of three important writers, this thesis engages with the traumatic memories of the second half of the twentieth century in Czechoslovakia in order to highlight the value of literature in widening critical understandings of the continuing legacy of this complex era, which was dominated by totalitarian regimes under the Communist governments which gained control after the upheaval of the Second World War. Whilst these years were not unilaterally traumatic, many lives were dramatically affected by border closures and by the experience of living under a regime that maintained control through methods including confiscation of property, surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment, show trials, and executions. Many of the stories of this era could not be published openly because of censorship, and the persecution of intellectuals led to a wave of emigration, during which a number of writers moved to France. Using theories of trauma, exile, illness, and of self and other, this thesis opens up a dialogue between the work of three writers who engage, albeit from very different perspectives, with this little-explored intersection between Czech and French. The first chapter explores Daniela Hodrová's translated Prague trilogy as a first-hand witness to her nation's dispossession and as a form of resistance to the deletion of memory. The second chapter considers the painful transgenerational legacy of the era as it plays out in the work of bilingual writer Jean-Gaspard Páleníček. Chapter Three considers the ways in which the Prague novels of established French author Sylvie Germain negotiate the fine line between an appropriation of the stories of the other and a moral responsibility to bear witness. By bringing these authors together for the first time and locating their work within French Studies, my work foregrounds the need for Western criticism to pay attention to other valuable voices who can contribute to our understandings of the traumatic experience that has shaped modern history.
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PYKEL, Piotr. "The final stage : a comparative study of the transition from communist rule to democratic government in Poland and Czechoslovakia." Doctoral thesis, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5949.
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Defence date: 5 November 2004Examining board: Prof. Arfon Rees (European University Institute) - supervisor ; Prof. Laszlo Brustz (European University Institute) ; Prof. George Kolankiewicz (School of Slavonic and East Europen Studies, London) ; Prof. Geoffrey Robert Swain (University of the West England, Bristol)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
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TYSZKA, Stanisław. "Property restitution and collective memories in the Czech Republic and Poland after 1989." Doctoral thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/16065.
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Defence Date: 28 January 2011Examining Board: Prof. Jay Winter (Yale University) – Supervisor; Prof. Pavel Kolár (EUI); Prof. Jirí Pribán (Cardiff University); Prof. Wojciech Roszkowski (Collegium Civitas)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis examines the politics of memory in the Czech Republic and Poland after 1989 in relation to restitution of nationalized property as a measure of post-communist transitional justice. The dominant historical discourses in both countriees are analyzed on the basis of restitution legislation and procedures and public debates. The latter saw the emergence of various historical narratives of victimhood, constructed around memories of different historical injustices, and justifying or opposing claims for restitution or compensation for lost property. The thesis compares restitution claims made by various groups of former owners expropriated during several waves of property revolutions in the twentieth century: property issues related to the post-war forced population transfers, property issues related to the Holocaust, the claims of the former aristocracy and the landed gentry, and, finally, those of the Catholic Church. The analysis shows that the dynamics of restitution and memory were for the most part determined by the general processes of coming to terms with the communist past, and demonstrates that memories of communism have influenced the processes of dealing with World War II. In both national cases it is possible to identify dominant memory discourses that shaped the dynamics of restitution debates. In the Czech Republic, there was a condemnation of communist crimes presupposing the principle of compensation for past wrongdoing, while in Poland the idea of property restitution was rejected on the basis of arguments relating to universal victimhood and the impossibility of universal compensation. In both countries the different narratives were legitimized by law. In the Czech case this came in the form of the adoption of restitution laws at the beginning of the 1990s, while in Poland the situation was marked by legislative silence and far-reaching legal continuity with the communist legal order.
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POPIC, Tamara. "Policy learning, fast and slow : market-oriented reforms of Czech and Polish healthcare policy, 1989-2009." Doctoral thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/33886.
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Defence date: 24 November 2014Examining Board: Professor Sven Steinmo, EUI (Supervisor); Professor László Bruszt, EUI; Professor Ana Marta Guillén Rodríguez, University of Oviedo; Professor Ellen Immergut, Humboldt University Berlin.
What determines the pace of policy innovation and change? Why, in other words, do policy makers in some countries innovate faster than in others? This thesis challenges conventional explanations, according to which policy change occurs in response to class conflict, partisan preferences, power of professional groups, or institutional and policy legacies. The thesis instead argues that different paths of policy change can be best explained by the different learning processes by which policy makers develop ideas for new policies in reaction to old policies. The thesis draws upon both ideational and institutional streams of literature on policy change, and develops its argument that policy change, understood as a learning process, is a result of interactions between three different, yet interdependent factors – ideas, interests and institutions. The thesis explores this argument by investigating in detail two radical cases of policy innovation – the introduction of market-oriented elements in Czech and Polish healthcare policy during the first two post-communist decades. The selection of the two cases is based on the methodological rationale of the 'most similar system design', given that the healthcare systems of the two countries were both state-dominated under communism, while in the post-communist period the governments of the two countries introduced market-oriented reforms that followed rather divergent policy paths. While Czech reforms were relatively consistent and comprehensive, those in Poland were fragmented, delayed and beset with reversals. The thesis looks at these two cases of healthcare reforms from a long-term historical perspective, covering the inter-war, the communist and, most thoroughly, the post-communist period. It draws upon the official documents, secondary literature and more than 40 interviews with policy making elites, and compares the two policy paths using small-N research design, causal analysis and process tracing techniques. The main finding of the thesis is that the market-oriented ideas that occurred in healthcare policy circles during the 1970s and 1980s were crucial drivers of the post-communist reforms in the two countries. However, the capacity of these ideas to serve as a basis of policy change was dependent on two factors – on the existence of political actors who were willing to promote these ideas, and on the interaction of institutional veto points with the electoral and partisan dynamic. The findings of this thesis contribute to the better integration of the literatures on the role of ideational and institutional factors in policy change, and to the research on the causes and consequences of marketization in healthcare and, more broadly, in social policy.
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Rameš, Václav. "Spory o podobu vlastnické transformace v Československu v 90. letech." Doctoral thesis, 2020. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-411065.
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The presented dissertation focuses on the large-scale privatization in Czechoslovakia in the early 1990's, on how it was pushed through and why. It analyses the political conflicts over its eventual form and means of realization, and reconstructs the contemporary expectations concerning the future development. It also pays attention to the roots of the 1990's conflicts in the relevant economic disputes of the previous decades. The dissertation identifies an establishment of a new type of liberal political language as a key moment for the implementation of a large-scale privatization. For the new political language, which can be labelled as "market without adjectives" (or "attributes"), the privatization was a flagship policy and it encompassed its key ideas. The language of market without adjectives was defined in a strong opposition to the principles of the so-called "economic democracy", which had been popular among the members of the Czechoslovak dissent, the numerous supporters of workers' self- governing bodies and some economic experts. The attempts to implement the principles of market without adjectives occurred during several political conflicts the dissertation tries to analyse. The delimitation of space for democratic decision making was one of them, with the liberal economists arguing...
Books on the topic "Post-communism – Czechoslovakia"
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(Japan), Sekai Heiwa Kenkyūjo, ed. Market economy transformations: A comparative study of Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Tokyo: International Institute for Global Peace, 1991.
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Piotr, Głogowski, ed. 1989 the final curtain: Poland, Hungary, GDR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania. Warszawa: Ośrodek Karta, 2009.
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Piotr, Głogowski, ed. 1989 the final curtain: Poland, Hungary, GDR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania. Warszawa: Ośrodek Karta, 2009.
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1970-, Smith Simon, ed. Local communities and post-communist transformation: Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
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University of Huddersfield. School of Music and Humanities., ed. The New European seminar papers.: Contributions on the political dimension to systemtransformation in Russia, Latvia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the former German Democratic Republic. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield, School of Music and Humanities, 1993.
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Gordon, Wightman, ed. Party formation in East--Central Europe: Post-communist politics in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria. Aldershot, Hants, England: Brookfield, Vt., USA, 1995.
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The origins of postcommunist elites: From Prague Spring to the breakup of Czechoslovakia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
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The Czech and Slovak republics: Nation versus state. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1998.
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Cultural landscapes of post-socialist cities: Representation of powers and needs. Ashgate: Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT, 2008.
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Reconstructing the regional economy: Industrial transformation and regional development in Slovakia. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Pub., 1998.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Post-communism – Czechoslovakia"
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Pucci, Molly. "The Secret Police: History and Legacy." In Security Empire, 283–94. Yale University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300242577.003.0008.
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The conclusion revisits some of the wider themes of the book, such as the diverse backgrounds and motivations of secret police agents; the entangled histories of Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Russia; and the post-Stalinist commissions convened by local communist parties to understand the crimes of Stalinism. It details the institutional legacy of the foundational years covered in the book, which left behind secret police schools, training materials, policing methods, card catalogues, and personnel, much of which remained in place until the fall of communism. It briefly describes the histories of these institutions in the years following the death of Stalin.
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Williams, Bruce. "Geographies of Carnality: Slippery Sexuality in Wiktor Grodecki’s Gay Hustler Trilogy." In The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia. Edinburgh University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474405140.003.0008.
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In the years following the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and the Velvet Divorce between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Polish-born director Wiktor Grodecki explored the world of teenage males in Prague’s burgeoning sex trade in a trilogy comprised of two documentaries and one feature. While Not Angels but Angels (1994) documents the underworld of young hustlers, Body without Soul (1996) focuses on under-aged boys in the porn industry. The feature film, Mandragora, combines the two themes. Grodecki ties these sexual dynamics to both the socio-economic dynamics of post-communism and the unique geographical positioning of the Czech Republic on the divide between East and West. All the while lying further west than Vienna, Prague is viewed by the international sex-trade clients as an exotic realm where there are less restrictions on sexual pleasure than in Western Europe.
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Casal Bértoa, Fernando, and Zsolt Enyedi. "Introduction." In Party System Closure, 1–7. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198823605.003.0001.
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On New Year’s Day 1993 Czechoslovakia was dissolved, giving place to two new European countries, Czechia and Slovakia. Czechs and Slovaks lived under Habsburg rule for centuries, then, between 1918 and 1938 and between 1945 and 1993, under a common state. Their coexistence, their shared culture and their common experience of Communism provided them with a similar background for the development of democratic party politics. Their new political institutions (parliamentarism, proportional electoral system, etc.) and their membership in the European Union (EU) after 2004 enhanced the forces of convergence. Yet, in the mid-2000s the Czechs were considered to have one of the most stable party systems in post-Communist Europe, while the Slovaks had a rather chaotic party landscape....