Post-WWII geopolitical changes in Indochina and Central & Eastern Europe drastically altered the international relationships of Czechoslovakia. Viet-nam became one of its partners. After the 1954 defeat of the French, the first Northern Vietnamese immigrants came to Czechoslovakia. However, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 political agreements on cultural cooperation ended, and a return migration began. Nevertheless, the reconsolidation of democracy in the successor states of Czechoslovakia did not bring to an end the long established connection, and spontaneous individual migration started. Since then thousands of persons have come, and the Czech Republic remains one of the most desirable destinations for Vietnamese migrants. This article is the result of a qualitative survey conducted among pre-1989 returnees that was carried out in Vietnam from July 2010 to February 2011. The main task of the study is to frame the migration in a broader historical and political context, and show how the consequences and organized features of pre-1989 migration have shaped the perception of Czecho-slovakia and the returnees’ relationship with it.
Women/girls are most often portrayed in Czech and Slovak folk ballads in connection with love. In ballads expressing love between feudal lords and common women/girls we can observe different portrayals of women. In these ballads we find women/girls in the position of the feudal lord’s victims as well as in the position of the feudal lord’s wifes to be. Especially in Slovak ballads we can also find women in the position of feudal ladies, which makes up a special category of ballads. These ballads have been divided into three main groups based on the relationship of the woman/girl to the feudal lord: i. Ballads with one-sided love, (where the woman/girl doesn’t return the feudal lord’s love) ii. Ballads with mutual love and iii. Ballads portraying the feudal lady. Generally, the majority of these ballads reflect a historical-social phenomenon: the lower social position of women.
This article draws upon the remarkable diaries of Vojtěch Berger
to offer an original perspective on left-wing politics and the transformative effects of war, occupation, and violence in early twentieth-century Central Europe. Berger, a trained carpenter from southern Bohemia, began writing a diary at the turn of the century when he was a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party in Vienna. He continued to write as he fought for the Habsburg monarchy during World War I; moved to Prague and joined the Communist Party; endured the Nazi occupation; and questioned the
Communist Party, and his place in it, after liberation in 1945. Berger’s diary speaks to two constituencies that deserve more attention from historians: Czech-speaking veterans of World War I and rank-and-file members of the interwar Communist Party. The article argues that Berger’s politics, while informed by his experiences and framed by party ideologies and structures,
obtained significance through relationships with like-minded “comrades”. Furthermore, the article examines how Berger used his diary to create political self-understanding, to fashion a political self. Each world war, the article concludes, threw this sense of self into disarray. Each world war also spurred Berger to reshape his political self, and with that to reconstitute his political beliefs, his public relationships, and his sense of belonging in the world. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou