The study focuses on Marxist critique of Soviet systems in Czech oppositional thought during the period of so-called normalization (1970s–1980s). This analytical discourse was characterized by efforts to re-establish the critical debates that started as a part of Czechoslovak social-scientific critique in the 1960s and intended to provide a detailed analysis of the nature of the so-called Soviet-type systems (STS, i.e. the political systems of the Warsaw Pact countries). Thus, the STS theory was geopolitically defined and did not deal with analyzes of other communist regimes (for example, Yugoslavia or China). On the example of selected Czechoslovak thinkers (e.g. Pelikán, Mlynář, Strmiska, Hájek) the first part of the study addresses attempts to evaluate Czechoslovak development in the 1960s as a specific case of democratization of the Soviet-type system; in the second part I focus on interpretations of these discussions from the perspective of East-European totalitarian paradigm. Finally, the third part describes how these analyzes contributed to the formulation of possible political changes in the Eastern Bloc.
Jan Blažek, a correspondent of the Czech Ethnological Society, wrote in 1982 a text that described representatives of selected socio-professional groups in the Czech countryside before World War I. He paid attention to beggars, vagrants, wanderers, and barrel organ players. Even though those people usually were on the margin of society, the author identifies peculiar features of each of the mentioned groups and he differentiates between them (he creates a particular characteristics for each of them). He deals with their social and material situation, majority ́s relationship to them (including possible stereotypes and expressions of solidarity), their life conditions (diet, accommodation, clothing etc.) and other features (way of earning livelihood, typical behaviour, or verbal expressions).
The study concerns provisional dwellings of poor village inhabitants, particularly a dwelling of a smallholder from Kostelec na Hané, which was continually inhabited for more than one hundred years. It was partly built under the road in the western part of the residential area. The entrance part of the basement that has for unknown reasons not been used for many years was modified. From the basement there is a system of tunnels under the town. Their use as a permanent dwelling was unique in central Moravia. The appearance of this house - its construction, space division, hearth, etc., is reconstructed in the study.
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The paper focuses on the intellectual aspects of Bohumil Hrabal’s work and also on the concept of worldview. The starting point is Josef Zumr’s article “The Intellectual Inspiration of Bohumil Hrabal” (1989); the approaches of Jan Patočka (1942) and Jan Mukařovský (1947) are also mentioned. In his article Zumr presents Hrabal’s worldview as a mosaic of constitutive and affirmative influences. He formulates a thesis on the post-war continuity of the avant-garde, of which Hrabal’s work is a part. In this paper, Zumr’s interpretation is subjected to partial revision: it is not only about ideological influences, but also about their individual creative transformation. Hrabal has lost the optimism of the avant-garde, his work testifies to the turn of an epoch and combines humour with melancholy and historical scepticism. and Příspěvek se zaměřuje na ideové aspekty díla Bohumila Hrabala a také na pojem světového názoru. Referenčním textem je studie Josefa Zumra „Ideová inspirace Bohumila Hrabala“ (1989). Zmíněny jsou rovněž přístupy Jana Patočky (1942) a Jana Mukařovského (1947). Zumr ve své studii představuje Hrabalův světový názor jako mozaiku konstitutivních a konfirmativních vlivů. Formuluje tezi o poválečné kontinuitě avantgardy, které je Hrabalovo dílo součástí. V tomto příspěvku je Zumrova interpretace podrobena dílčí revizi: nejde jen o ideové vlivy, nýbrž také o jejich individuální tvůrčí transformaci. Hrabal ztratil optimismus avantgard. Jeho dílo je svědectvím o přelomu epoch a spojuje humor s melancholií a dějinnou skepsí.