Thesis (M.S.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2002. / Thesis advisor(s):Mark E. Nissen, Kenneth R. Dombroski. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113). Also available online.

Life and Death in the Kingdom of Shoes is an exploration into the lives of the people of Zlín, Czechoslovakia from 1923 to 1941. During this period Zlín became the headquarters for one of the most successful commercial concerns in the world, the Bat’a Company. Alongside its explosive economic growth, the company attempted to transform its workforce and town into a highly rationalized operating system, which held strikingly new determinants for inclusion and exclusion within the body politic. From planners, architects, and executives to criminals, housewives, and students, Life and Death in the Kingdom of Shoes encompasses high and low to suggest that the conflicts and compromises of those living in Bat’a’s model industrial towns produced a distinct ideology with its own symbols, heroes, and discourse. The ideology, Bata-ism, was part of a transnational project to design, build, and control cities based on scientific principles of rationalism. The project transcended national, class, and religious boundaries to offer a new way of identification: the Bata-man or woman. Work, play, gender, loyalty to the company, and appearance became much more important in deciding one's place within Bat’a’s twenty four towns, and some 3,600 retail outlets, than nation, class, or religion. This dissertation challenges dominant historical narratives of Czechoslovakia and Bat’a in the interwar period, which have focused almost exclusively on national conflict and on the designs of the executives. By turning attention to the debates and implementation of something that radically changed people’s lives - the rationalization of everyday life – Life and Death in the Kingdom of Shoes adds a crucial chapter to our understanding of interwar Czechoslovakia The primary aim is to peel away the facade of the utopian company project to locate, in the words of the historian Richard Stites, “oceans of misery, disorder, chaos, corruption, and whimsicality that went with it.” With the stories of people like Marie Urbašková, a prostitute who led police on a fool’s errand, Life and Death in the Kingdom of Shoes allows disparate narratives to unravel tidy conceptions of Bat’a’s utopian project. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

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This thesis explores the circumstances behind the dissolution of the state of Czechoslovakia. Unlike previous works, this paper contends that the Velvet Divorce was not simply a result of the expulsion of Communism, but rather the end product of a multitude of forces, both interior and exterior to the state's boundaries. The transition from Communism was merely the catalyst. In examining the attitudinal and eventual physical division between the majority of Czechs and Slovaks, this paper extends the criteria for consensus articulated by George Schöpflin (1993) into the context of Czechoslovakia. Schöpflin contends that support for the state in the post-Communist period is based on three characteristics: faith in the nation, belief in economic reform, and hatred for all things Communist. This thesis contends that most Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia were divided on the basis of whether they believed that their nation's right to self-determination had been fulfilled, whether they advocated more socialist or capitalist policies, and whether they benefitted from the experience of Communism. These fundamental differences contributed to the failure to reach agreement in 1992 concerning the shape of the "new" or "revived" Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, this paper will show that the Velvet Divorce was not merely a product of internal disagreements. The creation, existence, and even dissolution of the state were influenced by global forces. Events such as the French Revolution, World War II, and even the Independence of Croatia had an impact in Czechoslovakia. The state was not born into a bubble; its borders were chronically permeable. / Master of Arts

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The thesis discusses Czechoslovak-Iranian relationships during 1953-1979. Several thematically organized chapters deal with policy and diplomatic relations after the fall of Mosaddeq in 1953, the support of Tudeh party, cultural relations and intelligence activities of above mentioned countries. Relationships between them had been cooled after the beginning of the communist era in Czechoslovakia and it got worse after the Mosaddeq overthrow - mostly due to Czechoslovakian support of persecuted Iranian Tudeh party. However, due to Czechoslovakian business opportunities in Iran, the relations from the 1960 improved and led to the state visits in the 1970. Nevertheless, as well as with other countries, nearly all dealings were interrupted after the Islamic revolution in 1979. The thesis is primarily based on archive sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The National Archive, and The Security Forces Archive as well as on a professional literature. This diploma thesis brings new historical evidence in the area of Czechoslovak-Iranian relationships through processing, for the time being, almost unexplored topic of Czechoslovakian diplomacy and relations with Iran.

This study investigates the conceptualizations of 'Talk-culture" from the late 19th century through to the 1930s. "Folk-culture" was broadly discussed in this period all over Europe (and Russia) and especially in science (Philologies, Folkloristics) and literature. More precisely, the thesis examines the debates held in the context of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (Vienna and Prague) around the turn of the century. During this period of accelerating industrialization, commodification and separation of cultural spheres, a significant number of intellectuals and writers were interested in alternative forms of cultural production. As the hitherto disregarded 'Talk-cultures" provide different notions of the artwork and the artist, their interest in 'Talk-culture" and 'Talk-art" is part of the broader discussion of the societal status and function of art and literature at the turn of the twentieth century. Representing a vehicle for the analysis and reflection of current cultural developments, the theorization of folklore and other forms of folk-art seeks responses to the aforementioned processes conceived as culturally problematic. Part Istudies the emergence of 'Volkskunde' as a scientific discipline in Austria. Part IIanalyses the relations between German Philology in Prague and the German-speaking Jews in the Prague Circle,namely Oskar Baum, Max Brad, Franz Kafka and Felix Weltsch. Part 11/ deals with the Russian linguists and folklorists Roman Jakobson and Petr Bogatyrev who came to Prague in the 1920s and sought to develop, in cambining Russian and Western European theories, a new model of 'Talk culture".