This Thesis is focused on the samizdat periodical called Information on Charter 77, which belonged to the important sources of spreading the informations within the dissent and publicizing the key thougts and concepts of Charter 77. The periodical was publishing the Charter documents, communiques of the Comittee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted, brief messages about represion of the normalisation regime, dissident's letters adressed to the state organs, critical reviews and annotations of other samizdat periodicals and books and rarely the reflections on the economy. Topic of the research are personality profiles of the protagonists, functioning of the "independent" editing, preparing and distribution of texts, forming of the distributional net, conspirative milieu (using codes, pseudonyms, conspirative apartments, konfidence etc.), financing and sending abroad.

The thesis "Czech music journalism focused on rock music during the period of normalization" reflects the position and importance of Czech rock music journalism within the structure and development of normalization of the media system. It is brought back through the oral historical research based on authentic evidence of their protagonists. It defines the initial prerequisites (ideological, political and socio-cultural) which are important to understand the circumstances under which rock music could be created and developed into an institution. It all depended on the confrontational attitude of communist power towards rock music generally. The next methodic element how to fulfill the defined goals is descriptive and comparative perspective. On this basis there is confronted official and samizdat's area of magazine production on the example of chosen periodicals. There also belong other qualitative aspects of music journalism (personalization, professionalization and every day editorial job). At the end the accepted conclusions are supported by the analysis and interpretation of chosen cultural and music events. They are divided by the method of their media coverage from official and samizdat periodicals.

Augustin Navrátil This thesis addresses the life and work of Augustin Navrátil (1928-2003), a Roman- -Catholic activist from the Moravian township of Lutopecny near Kroměříž. A. Navrátil has not been subject of a complex publication yet, although he is the author of the largest petition demanding religious - and with that going hand in hand also civic - liberties in socialist Czechoslovakia (1988, 600 000 signatures). Followingly, this is the first attempt to biographically outline the personality and motivations of this farmer, politician (member of the party Lidova strana), man who signed Charta 77 but also a husband and father of nine children. The aim is to cover his life from his birth, over his family background to the beginnings and heights of his social engagement. The text will mainly deal with 22 open letters in which he drew attention to various illegal practices and actions of the Communist power, as well as with the three petitions he authored (1978, 1985 a 1988) and the samizdat (self-published) journal Křesťanské obzory (Christian horizons), which he published with a group of others from June 1988 to July 1990. In contrast to most Czech dissidents, he was never sentenced to a prison term for his activities, but he had to involuntarily undergo repeated psychiatric treatment. He was...

Dissertation Abstract Paper Agora: The Samizdat Periodical Vokno and the Provincial Czech Underground in Historical and Social Perspective Martin Tharp, Department of Historical Sociology. The present work takes as its central subject a Czech samizdat publication, the magazine Vokno, primarily during its years of illegal operation, i.e. from 1979 until 1990, considered within the wider context of civil and cultural resistance to the oppressive social order of European state socialism. It treats Vokno as an instance of social action amid state forces inimical towards it, discussing the interplay and interaction of oppositional practice and the forces it opposes, both of state authority and more subtle ones of state cultural hegemony. It is argued that Vokno formed an attempt at a "counterculture" in the late 20th-century sense of an impulsive critique of a regimented modernity, yet within its immediate conditions was necessitated to assume three specific forms: as an aesthetic sub/counterculture, as a social network with differing levels of involvement and connections (whether to established intellectual dissent or to other social strata), and finally as a conscious oppositional social movement.

This thesis deals with the translations beyond official publishers during the era of Communism in Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989. More particularly, the thesis is focused on mapping Czech translations of German literature published in samisdat during the Communist era and on understanding a sociology of translation in the samisdat production. Taking into account the social changes and cultural politics, the author explores when, by whom, in what circumstances and for what reason were the German texts translated. Furthermore, the aim of this thesis is to determine whether the translation work in samisdat was coordinated, and if so, to find out by whom. Another aim is to find out whether there was a publishing strategy during the samisdat translations. A method of oral history is used in order to interview the contemporary witnesses. Findings based on these interviews are later grouped into a force field using Pierre Bourdieu's sociological model. The conclusion consists of findings about the process of translating German literature to Czech during the samisdat era. These data are then evaluated and analysed from several points of view.

The topic of this thesis borders librarianship, archival science and literary history - it is a synthesis of several interests and views of the subject. Censorship was a powerful regime tool in the ČSR or the ČSSR and many writers were prevented of publishing any of their work. The thesis deals not only with books, which have been labeled in dictionaries as destroyed despite of their existence. It describes how the turning point between the 1960s and 1970s was manifested in libraries, book shops and secondhand bookstores; what the publishing practice of that time was like, or how the contemporaries that worked in the industry comment on the mentioned time period. Furthermore, the thesis explains what happened to the books that had been banned overnight, what the Editorial Board's practice was like, and finally, what working with banned books involved. A part of the thesis consists of outlining the political background including presentation of the list of books that were not allowed to be published, had to be withdrawn, or the whole edition "dissapeared". How many of such books can readers today actually hold in their hands? The described books (and thousands more) had been locked in libraries' bookcases; special divisions managing the entire organisation had been created; and departments with restricted...

The period after the February 1948 posed great changes for the cultural sphere, the groups and clubs were dissolved, artists who did not want to squeeze into the limits of socialist realism had no choice than to close themselves in the privacy of their homes and studios. After 1950, however, a group of friends around Jiří Kolář formed in Prague, who shared the same views on political and cultural development and, despite various artistic orientations, captured everyday experiences in pictures or texts. The thesis focuses on the friendship of Jiří Kolář, Vladimír Fuka, Eva Fuka, Zdeněk Urbánek, Jan Rychlík, Kamil LhoJan Hanč, Josef Schwarz-Červinka, Emanuel Frynta and others, and tries to portray this period of time, their mutual inspirations and relationships, and especially the extremely creative atmosphere, which was originated in this friendly circle. The thesis is based on diary entries, drawings, collages, poems and literary texts, which they created together and for each other in this unique, free and inspiring environment.

This thesis deals with the course of literary career and with the forms of work of Lenka Procházková, an author, whose literary career started in the turn of late seventies and early eighties in the unofficial literature. As a signee of Charta 77 and a daughter of Jan Procházka - highly acclaimed, yet unpopular for the regime after 1968 - she became a banned author, whose work could not be published within an official structure of Czech literature in the seventies and eighties. Her literary career continues until these days. In the Introduction part the reasons why our interest is aimed at Lenka Procházková in the first place are being described. The basis goals of our work are also stipulated within the Introduction section. In section Fundaments of Research hypotheses for the approach to the following analyses are introduced. In Sources of Information part all used sources are being introduced - already published literary works as well as sources unpublished or materials which have not been compiled yet (archive materials, letters, reminiscences of observers, family and friend eyewitnesses etc.) In the chapter called Life Circumstances accompanying and determining the literary career of Lenka Procházková we present a comprehensive and detailed biography of the author which cannot be found...

The dissertation thesis Collected Works of Jan Patočka as an Editorial Problem deals with both the samizdat and the printed versions of the collected works of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka (1907 - 1977) and other domestic as well as foreign editions of his work. The Archival Collection of Jan Patočka's Work emerged as the side product, to some extent uncoordinated and intuitive, of the sorting of the author's legacy in the years 1977 - 1989. Nevertheless, the 27 volumes of this unpublished edition represent a fully-fledged attempt to organize a critical edition of Patočka's collected works. At the end of the 1980's, an exile edition was intended, as the outcome of the cooperation of domestic, exiled and foreign community of researchers. The post-revolution Collected Works of Jan Patočka have been published since 1996 and, contrary to the previous series, represent a re-arranged and amended edition. The paper follows the process of scientific reflection, which has accompanied the edition of Patočka's works (both edition series were assembled by the same editorial team of Patočka's disciples.) We describe the use of thematic, chronological and other criteria in the course of the organization of the collected works, the transformation and scope of editorial commentaries, especially when dealing with the areas...