This thesis, The Media Image of Czech Presidents during the Normalisation Period and Today looks at the visual component of the media image of Normalisation-era president Gustáv Husák and democratic president Václav Havel. The study looks at their visual representations in the newspapers Rudé právo, Mladá fronta and Mladá fronta DNES. The theoretical part of the study focuses on defining the role of President in the Czech political system, and outlines the historical context. The research part comprises a quantitative and qualitative analysis of photographs published in the determined newspapers. The study also details the characteristic activities of official presidential photographers and gives an assessment of information acquired during in-depth interviews with official presidential photographers. An interview with a former Czech News Agency (ČTK) photographer deals with the taking of photographs of President Gustáv Husák. An interview with Tomki Němec, Karel Cudlín and Jaroslav Hejzlar focuses on the taking of photographs of Václav Havel. The study seeks to find an answer to the question of whether the president interfered in the activities of his official photographer, and how the work of the presidential photographer differed during the Normalisation period and during democracy. The...

The diploma thesis is devoted to the topic of the presidential libraries and its aim is to analyze services of these libraries in Czech Republic. The theoretical part provides a comprehensive summary of presidential libraries, which have in the United States a long tradition. Gradually they are described from view of their character, history, law, administration, content, funding, criticism and future. The following is a presentation of two chosen foreign presidential libraries and Czech presidential Václav Havel Library. In the practical part there is made the comparison at first and its aim is to detect the principles of services of presidential libraries. The following is a presentation of the exploratory survey which discover, how are used the services of Václav Havel Library. The survey was focused on user evaluation of selected service, i.e. digital archive. This research helped map out the current situation and brought a lot of interesting information about attitudes from Czech and foreign users. Keywords digital archive - presidential libraries - presidential libraries in the United States - services of presidential libraries - Václav Havel Library

Izabela Laiblová Urban Dissertation "Václav Havel and Sławomir Mrożek - Theater of the Absurd behind the Iron Curtain" Abstract: Dissertation is devoted to the analysis of dramatic works of Václav Havel and Sławomir Mrożek in the context of the Theater of the Absurd, trying to answer the question whether it is possible to include plays of these East European writers into this literary movement. Dissertation discusses the impact of political, social and cultural situation on the entry of the Theater of the Absurd behind the Iron Curtain reflecting the perception of the trend in Czechoslovakia and Poland. It describes the key thematic areas of both authors' dramatic plays, such as the relationship between humans and the system, the individual and the group as well as type of dramatic characters. It focuses also on the language of Havel's and Mrożek's plays with its several characteristics, such as phraseology taken from the language of communist propaganda as well as combining different styles - official, administrative and others. The dissertation discusses the composition Havel's and Mrożek's with their significant differences, outlined by comparing the relationship "circle - funnel", respectively "circle - spiral". The research is focused mainly on early plays of both authors. In the case of Havel's plays...

This thesis addresses the topic of the breakup of Czechoslovakia into two independent Czech and Slovak republics at the beginning of the year 1993. With the help of secondary literature, the first section is dedicated to chronologically interpreting the history of the relationship between Czechs and Slovaks. The section also discusses the accounts of leading Czech, Slovak and other international historians relating to the end of Czechoslovakia. In the second section, the author of this thesis firstly focuses on the analysis of selected printed media, including the Czech newspapers 'Rudé právo' and 'Mladá fronta/Mladá fronta DNES', and Slovakian 'Pravda' from the months around the time of the so-called Hyphen War at the beginning of 1990. The final chapters focus on the analysis of the above-mentioned newspapers from the time of the elections to the Federal Assembly in 1992 and examine reference methods relating to the issue of the Czech- Slovak misunderstanding.

This thesis examines the concept of active citizenship in conception of Vaclav Havel. It further focuses on the possibilities of the legacy of such distinguished personality of modern history in the area of youth education. The theoretical part of the thesis describes the concepts of active citizenship and totalitarianism, and connects them to the example of communist era in Czechoslovakia. Using qualitative research methods, the empirical section of the thesis analyzes the perception of the concept of active citizenship and how Havel's legacy is perceived by students and the employees of Vaclav Havel Library. The analysis also deals with development of civic approach within the scope of Vaclav Havel Library efforts aiming at citizenship education. Using the method of document analysis, the thesis also deals with Havel's essay The Power of the Powerless, which is by Vaclav Havel Library presented as one of his key works serving as a basis for citizenship education. Key words Citizenship, Active Citizenship, Totalitarianism, Communism, Vaclav Havel, Legacy of Vaclav Havel, Vaclav Havel Library, The Power of the Powerless

Trying to overcome the traditional analytic nihilism of papers dealing with Czechoslovakia in 1968, which arises from the military occupation, the author puts the fact of freedom of speech into his work's central interest. In a comparative study this work studies the different interpretations of its role and meaning, including: the dogmatic point of view concerning the freedom of speech being a source of organized counterrevolution; the effort of the reformers to include the freedom of speech into their reform and meanwhile to make it an instrument of it and the way it instead became an autonomous control of their politics; the realistic criticism concentrated on the manifestations of irresponsibility in the press endangering the reform on the one side and not being able to exit the temporary system imagination on the other; it equally pays attention to the 'unnamed', non-members of the Party, who process their self- establishment as an opposing political current, who however rest being no less than a source of interesting subversion; and finally examines the radical democrat approach understanding the freedom of speech as an obligatory condition of their politics together projecting the reconstitution of the society as an autonomous political subject. The work uses contemporary documents and texts...

The paper deals with the current form of civil society in the Czech Republic on the basis of classic and contemporary concepts. The importance, conditions and other aspects of the civil society are explained, which can help in describing these problems. A description of history of the Czech civil society should show on which its present form is based since the beginnings of civil society in Europe via its origin in the Czech Lands up to characteristics of the civil society after the revolution. The main part of the paper includes opinions of Václav Havel and Václav Klaus as principal participants in the discussion on civil society in the Czech Republic and comparison of their concepts. The analysis of the contemporary Czech civil society should define the form of civil society in the Czech Republic and its characteristics and circumstances even in comparison with both the leading personalities´ views. Both strong and weak points of the Czech civil society are described as well as its future potential dangers and prospects.

This thesis explores literary code-switching, i.e. multilingual aspects within a single speech, as a key polyphonic structural element in the selected works. First, it analyzes Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera (1987) as a work, where the author seeks to establish a literary tradition that would reflect the life in borderlands and the given community through a new language. Secondly, the language of photography and multilingual speech patterns in W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants (1992) are considered as vital elements of the authenticity play. The following chapter deals with Franz Kafka's short stories, where gestures form an essential part of, if not the whole stories, and determine the fragmentary nature of such writing. Finally, the importance of language of power, the discourse of social realism altogether with their emergence into private and intimate discussions through repetitions and variations is commented upon in Václav Havel's play The Garden Party (1963).

This thesis describes a two of newly introduced types of aircraft (Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Boeing 737 MAX) and compares the operating characteristics of the operational aspects of the airports of the Central European region.

Czechoslovak society underwent a fundamental change in 1989, in which a certain portion of society, previously restricted from official intervention in politics, took crucial part. Even though this part of society (the dissent) was before 1989 restricted from participation in politics, it had been doing so. However, in illegal ways at that time, for which had been the involved often persecuted. This group of dissidents later contributed to the revolutionary changes, which is the source of certain mythology that began to appear in connection with them. During 1990s their influence decreased, and the dissent's political elite was gradually replaced by a new right- wing elite, promising economic reform and rapid transformation. The idealistic conception of politics was replaced by the pragmatic one and completely different and ambitious personalities came to the foreground. The new characters did not come from the background of fight against totalitarianism, yet they quickly gained political skills. This transformation of elites in Czech society can be expressed via comparison of Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, as both of them were among the main initiators of domestic politics. Therefore, this diploma thesis is focused on them and their media portrayal. The media reflect everyday reality and pose as...