Life and Culture in a Totalitarian Regime Professor: Barbara Day

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1 CERGE-EI and the Faculty of Humanities (FHS) at Charles University Life and Culture in a Totalitarian Regime Professor: Barbara Day Course Description: How was it possible to live freely under a totalitarian regime? How could an independent spirit survive when every part of life education, work, leisure, travel, even one s innermost self, was subject to control by the Party? This course will explore some of the ways in which the Czechs preserved their independent (alternative, unofficial, underground) culture through the years of Communism. It will start by tracing the historical patterns which shaped the Czechs resistance to ideology, and follow with a look at everyday life under really existing Socialism (including the activities of the StB, or secret police). It will continue by examining some of the various Czech ways of resistance, such as a close (but exclusive) family life; the rejection of career ambitions; religious faith; refuge in the countryside; curiosity about Western cultural fashions; jazz, rock n roll and beat (including the Jazz Section); theatre (including amateur theatre); unofficial concerts, exhibitions and festivals; home seminars (the underground university ); samizdat publication and distribution; Charter 77 and classic dissidence. Guest speakers will talk about their own life during different periods of totalitarianism. Assignments: There will be a set task each week which may or may not be written. Mid-term paper ( words) Final paper ( words) Grading scheme: 50% on-going work during semester (including participation in class) 15% mid-term paper (subject will be given two weeks in advance) 35% final paper (subject will be given four weeks in advance) Please note: i) there may be changes in the programme, to allow for guest speakers availability. ii) the following books can be found in multiple copies in the library: The Velvet Philosophers by Barbara Day Voices from the Inside, edited by Martin Machovec The Pope Smoked Dope, edited by Zdeněk Primus All the other readings are in the Course Reader

2 Topics: Week 1: Orientation Lecture Series Contextual lectures and site visits on the subject of the history, culture, politics, and economies of the Czech Republic and Central Europe in order to establish a common interdisciplinary background and vocabulary for all courses. Reading for Week 2: 2. Timeline Week 2: Czechoslovakia between East and West Introduction to the course, materials, readings and activities Where does the Czech Republic fit into Europe? How do the Czechs see themselves? Lead up to the years how the Czechs lived under the Austrian Empire, the First Republic, the Nazi occupation, and after World War II The rise of Communism in Czechoslovakia and the putsch of February 1948 Readings for Week 3: 2. Women of Prague: Wilma A. Iggers 3. Sentenced and Tried: Eugene Loebl Week 3: Victorious February Communism and how it consolidated power Rooting out the enemy resistance fighters, RAF pilots, the bourgeoisie, businessmen, tradesmen, kulaks, politicians, lawyers, priests, monks Show trials: Milada Horáková, Rudolf Slánsky. Readings for Week 4: 4. Freedom at a Price: Rosemary Kavan 5. The Miracle Game: Josef Škvorecký Views from the Inside pp Week 4: 1950s Life under Stalinism How Communism controlled everyday life: education; employment; the cadre files; home and family; living accommodation; lifestyle; religion; travel; recreation Guest speaker: being young in the 1950s Readings for Week 5: 6. Red Music: Josef Škvorecký 7.The Incredible Rise of Alfred Uruk: Ivan Vyskočil Week 5: A new generation the early 1960s Popular music and the discovery of rock n roll; the beginning of the small stages The early work of Hrabal, Kundera, Klima, Škvorecký, Vaculík, Havel The importance of literature, art, music and the theatre in Czech society

3 Readings for Week 6: 8. Writers Against Rulers: Dušan Hamšík Words: Ludvík Vaculík 10. Prayer for Marta 11. Little Brother, Close the Gate Week 6: 1968: The Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion Changing politics, changing leaders becoming an open society The hot summer of 1968 Principles versus tanks: the invasion of the fraternal armies Readings for Week Letter to Dr. Husák: Václav Havel 13. Slib (Promise) 14. Entrance Exam to the Arts Faculty of the Charles University Views from the Inside pp The Pope Smoked Dope pp Week 7: Husak s Normalisation How normalisation affected everyday life & personal relationships Coming to terms with normalisation : the double life, the chata culture Guest speaker: being young in the 1970s Readings for Week 8: 15. Banned in Bohemia 16. Charter Anti-Charter 18. What Charter 77 Is and What It Is Not: Jan Patočka Views from the Inside pp Week 8: The trial of the rock musicians and Charter 77 The ghetto, the grey zone, and the silent majority; resistance to normalisation The creation and signatories of Charter 77; the Anti-Charter Readings for Week 9: 19. Audience: Václav Havel 20. My Table at the Belvedere, A Cup of Coffee with my Interrogator & A Padlock for Castle Schwarzenberg: Ludvík Vaculík 21. ACTIONS for which at least some documentation remains, : Milan Knížák 22. Silencing the Jazz Section The Velvet Philosophers pp , Views from the Inside pp Week 9: Ways of Resistance: independent activities Independent activities, the parallel culture and the unofficial networks Young people, the Jazz Section, and the theatres Public demonstrations and the growth of independent initiatives Readings for Week 10: 23. Total Fears: Bohumil Hrabal 24. The Opening of the Files 25. Attestation Form (National Theatre, 1988) The Velvet Philosophers pp Views from the Inside pp

4 Week 10: How Communism controlled the nation through the secret police Structure and operations of the StB (secret police) Strategy of fear methods of control; the files and the photographs Readings for Week 11: 26. A Few Sentences 27. Civic Forum, Day One, transcript of recording 19 Nov 1989 Week 11: The Velvet Revolution The Velvet Revolution the days after 17 November How did Civic Forum triumph over the Communists? Visit to Libri Prohibiti Readings for Week 12: TBA Week 12: How does the totalitarian past influence the democratic present? Is it over? What still haunts the present? Why are the Communists again so popular? How do young people assess their parents and grandparents generations? Week 13: Final exam Required Reading: Course Reader The Velvet Philosophers by Barbara Day Voices from the Inside, edited by Martin Machovec The Pope Smoked Dope, edited by Zdeněk Primus Recommended Reading: Books excerpted in the Reader Hamšík, Dušan: Writers Against Rulers, Hutchinson, London, 1971 Hrabal, Bohumil: Total Fears, Twisted Spoon Press, Prague 1998 Iggers, Wilma A.: Women of Prague, Berghahn Books, Providence & Oxford, 1995 Kavan, Rosemary: Freedom at a Price, Verso, London 1985 Loebl, Eugene: Sentenced and Tried, Elek, London, 1969 Knížák, Milan: Actions, Gallery, Prague 2000 Mňačko, Ladislav: The Seventh Night, J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1969 Škvorecký, Josef: The Miracle Game, Faber & Faber, London & Boston, 1991 Theiner, George (ed): New Writing in Czechoslovakia, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969 Vaculík, Ludvík: A Cup of Coffee with my Interrogator, Readers International, London 1973 Vladislav, Jan (ed): Václav Havel or, Living in Truth, Faber & Faber, London & Boston, 1986 Life under Communism: Monographs Bolton, Jonathan: Worlds of Dissent, Harvard University Press, 2012 Bren, Paulina: The Greengrocer and his TV, Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London, 2010 Goetz-Stankiewicz, Marketa: Good-Bye, Samizdat, Northwestern University Press, 1992 Hamšík, Dušan: Writers Against Rulers, Hutchinson, London 1971 Skilling, H. Gordon: Charter 77 & Human Rights in Czechoslovakia, Allen & Unwin London 1981 Skilling, H. Gordon: Samizdat and an Independent Society, Macmillan Press, London 1989

5 Life under Communism: Memoirs, letters and essays Dery, Dominika: The Twelve Little Cakes (A Memoir), Riverhead Books, New York, 2004 Havel, Václav: Letters to Olga, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1988 Havel, Václav: Disturbing the Peace, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1990 Margolius Kovaly, Heda: Under a Cruel Star, Holmes & Meier, New York, 1997 Margolius, Ivan: Reflections of Prague, John Wiley & Sons, London, 2006 Škvorecký, Josef: Talkin Moscow Blues, Lester & Orpen Dennys Ltd, Toronto 1988 Slánská, Josefa: Report on My Husband, Hutchinson, London, 1968 Life under Communism: Czech fiction in translation Hrabal, Bohumil: I Served the King of England, Chatto & Windus, London 1989 Hrabal, Bohumil: Too Loud a Solitude, Andre Deutsch, London 1991 Kantůrková, Eva: My Companions in the Bleak House, Overlook Press, New York 1987 Klíma, Ivan: Love and Garbage, Chatto & Windus, London 1990 Klíma, Ivan: Judge on Trial, Chatto & Windus, London 1991 Kundera, Milan: The Joke, Macdonald, London 1969 Kundera, Milan: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Faber & Faber, London 1982 Pekárková, Iva: Truck Stop Rainbows, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1992 Škvorecký, Josef: The Cowards, Victor Gollancz, London, 1958 Škvorecký, Josef: The Engineer of Human Souls, Chatto & Windus-Hogarth Press, London, 1985 Tomin, Zdena: The Coast of Bohemia, Hutchinson, London 1987 Topol, Jáchym: City Sister Silver, Catbird Press, New Haven CT, 1994 Vaculík, Ludvík: The Axe, Andre Deutsch, London 1973 Life under Communism: Czech plays in translation Day, Barbara (ed): Czech Plays (Daniela Fischerová, Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma, Josef Topol), Nick Hern Books, London 1994 Goetz-Stankiewicz, Marketa (ed): The Vaněk Plays (Jiří Dienstbier, Václav Havel, Pavel Kohout, Pavel Landovský), University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 1987 Havel, Václav: The Garden Party and other plays, Grove Press, New York 1993

Memory of the World International Register. The collection of Czech and Slovak samizdat periodicals from the years 1948 to 1989 (Czech Republic)

Memory of the World International Register The collection of Czech and Slovak samizdat periodicals from the years 1948 to 1989 (Czech Republic) 2012-58 1.0 Summary (max 200 words) The collection of unique