Often considered to be apolitical playwrights, Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard each dedicated dramatic works to dissident Czech playwright (and later President) Václav Havel in the late 1970s and early 1980s—during his imprisonment for his role in writing and distributing the dissident document Charter 77. These dramatic works, with a few others, collectively mark simultaneous, parallel shifts in Beckett’s and Stoppard’s careers toward uncharacteristically explicit political engagement. This report examines these works—Beckett’s Catastrophe and What Where, and Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul—through the lens of Havel’s political philosophy, especially as expressed in his 1978 essay “The power of the powerless.” This report argues that Havel’s model of apolitical resistance to injustice, a model he calls “living in truth,” expresses humanist values that these playwrights had long affirmed in their art. Their shared moral vision, along with sympathy for Havel’s plight under a totalitarian regime that distorted language as a tool of oppression, was the catalyst for their new, direct involvement in political matters. The report establishes the historical context of the Soviet-dominated Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, along with relevant biographical and professional narratives for each figure. It then examines closely this selection of Beckett’s and Stoppard’s dramatic works and their shared thematic concerns, and demonstrates how they artistically embody and communicate Havel’s model of “living in truth.” / text

This thesis looks into the history of the town Hořovice in the years 1945-1989. The thesis attempts to cover the most important events that took place in the chosen time span in a rather small town located in Central Bohemia but also doesn't forget to mention the everyday life of the local citizens. The thesis selects not only the events crucial from today's perspective (see Expulsion of Germans, The August 1968, …) but also facts which could be for contemporary readers (for today's citizens of Hořovice in particular) very interesting and helpful. Even though some of the facts could be regarded as minor ones, they all equally contribute to the history of the town. The thesis places all the events to the historical context with the help of archive sources, secondary literature as well as printed material and memories from that time.

The velvet revolution in November of 1989 meant end of communistic domination and rediscovery of democracy. The turn of eighties and nineties belongs to important historical period of Czech society; it brought principal revolution changes - new political and economy system, new international station of our state, new political rights and freedom, but also new liability and responsibility. Changes were related to Czech media too. They became private. Focus of this diploma thesis is detailed analysis of the journal Pochodeň in the turn of eighties and nineties, especially the procedure of newspaper's transformation after the year 1989. Thesis describes the period before November 1989, when Pochodeň was the press authority of regional bureau of the Communistic Party. Next part of this diploma work is characterization of the velvet revolution in the redaction and resulting development after the year 1990. Thesis is set to context of the past. Part of this capitol is general view on transformation of the Czech society, economy and Czech media. This way of conception of my analyses describes recent history of the journal Pochodeň and uses memoirs of journalists, which worked in the newspapers in the turn of eighties and nineties.

False heroes. Removal of communist monuments in Prague after year 1989 This thesis will examine monuments, established to promote communist ideology, that were removed after the Velvet Revolution and in the next few years of the 1990s in an attempt to symbolically abolish former regime. Firstly it will outline the historical context. Based on contemporary periodicals and public politicians speeches it will show social discourse regarding relation towards communism and notions what the new regime should be like. After it will deal with the concept of historical memory, places of memory and their change and rewriting. It will also compare this momument removal with iconoclasm that accompanied other revolutions. In its main part the thesis will follow several cases of monument displacements of statues of heroes and leaders, constituting events and artifacts - symbols. It will attempt to demonstrate how the monuments disappeared from the public space and how these events and the removal itself helped construction of historical memory besides the creation of monuments that are supposed to commemorate communist totalitarianism. It will also mention existing monuments that were put up during years 1948 - 1989, that stir up discussion to this day and it will touch how other countries of the Eastern Bloc...

Thesis Alena Slezáková and her position in media. Biographical study deals with career of a journalist, who has witnessed during her activie years in media important events of Czech and Czechoslovakian history. Since the year 1964 she worked in Lidová demokracie, Lidové noviny, Mladá fronta DNES and magazines Naše rodina and Týden. In the year 1969 she was forbidden from entering parliament. She was allowed to return after Velvet Revolution, when she also started to work on education of young and beginning journalists. In the end of her career, right before she retired, she became a book reviewer. This biographical study uses method of oral history, which means that author of this thesis interviewed Alena Slezáková regularly. It also uses method of qualitative content analysis of her texts, that informed about events in politics and society in Czech Republic and Czechoslovakia. Thesis also mentions important historic affairs, so the life and work of Slezáková can me contextualized. Aim of this thesis was not only to describe life of Alena Slezáková but also to outline transformations in media she witnessed - censorship and its dissolution, new media law and transformation of party's press. Part of this thesis are also two hypotheses which were confirmed. During the research it was shown that events...

This diploma thesis studies the life story of czech journalist Jan Štern and analyzes his articles in the magazine "Listy", which was illegal in the former Czechoslovakia until the end of 1989. The main goal is, in addition to the description of Štern's life when he went through the concentration camp, the Prague Uprising and the revolution against the communist regime, to find answers of research questions: "Do the texts encourage the reader to do something specific, if so, to what?", "What is the nature of the texts: descriptive, entertaining, contemplative, reviewing or dictating?" and "What is the focus of the texts, are they of a purely political nature?". The evaluation was based on a combined content analysis of 62 articles from the 70s and 90s of the 20th century and the results show that 74 % of the texts do not contain a direct call or persuasion, 79 % of articles can be described as a contemplation or combination of contemplation and description and every arcticle responds to a political issue. The whole work ends with a conclusion, a list of used sources, theses, a list of appendices, bibliography of used articles from the magazine "Listy" and transcription of interview with Anna Šabatová.

This thesis deals with the problem of the Velvet revolution in a small provincial town called Náchod. My purpose is to describe the political situation before the revolution, during it and after the revolution ended. I used two methods for my research. First of them was regular text analysis of documents in archives and the second source I used was the method of Oral history. Oral history enriches us with knowledge of living witnesses who help us understand reasons, motivations and feelings of people who took part in an important part of our history, which Velvet revolution surely is. To understand them even better I shortly described their life stories and their position during the revolution. I made life story interviews with 4 members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and with 5 members of the Civic Forum. So we can hear opinions of both considered sides. At the end of the thesis I compared my conclusions with the conclusion doc. PhDr. Lukáš Valeš, Ph.D. made in his dissertation describing Velvet revolution in a small provincial town Klatovy. At the end I came to a conclusion that Velvet revolution changed political status of Czechoslovakia and its economy but the same people remained powerful.

The work examines and compares personal values, behavioural patterns, personal motivation and career choices of six individuals from the Velvet Revolution period using interviews obtained by the oral-historical method. The main aim is to answer the question where people who helped transform one regime into another had come from and how they coped with tasks they could not have been prepared for in advance. In late 1989, the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia collapsed. One way of running the society was quickly replaced by another, but the society did not collapse, and life went pretty smoothly on. All of a sudden, many opportunities opened up as well as many responsibilities to generations of people who could not have been prepared to take either of them. Yet at least some of them did so. How did they manage? Keywords Czechoslovak society 1989-1992, career decision-making, Velvet revolution of 1989, network of social acquaintances, transformation of society

This thesis deals with history, evolution and the activity of the cultural club of kindred spirits: Jonas club. Deeper attention is laid upon the question of mechanisms by which the so-called islands of freedom were constituted in the 1970s and 1980s. As it seems, Jonas club worked as this kind of free platform, therefore the aim of this thesis is to trace the phenomena which lead to the formation of these islands of freedom. From the methodological perspective the thesis is a qualitative work, which collects the data using the method of oral history. The work is time-framed by the years 1967-1989, therefore from the era of the establishment of the club until the Velvet revolution. The chosen witnesses usually remember most of the so-called normalization period. And the apriori given topics are followed with the aim to comprehend their subjective emic perspective. When it comes to the sources, the work draws upon the magazines which the club publishes from the very beginning of its existence until nowadays. As for the structure of the work, the text is divided into three larger sections, outside of the introduction and conclusion. The first theoretical section presents to the reader the theoretical-historical context. It is followed by the methodological section which not only provides methodology,...

This study aims to investigate how two forms of non-violent campaigns, one run by unionsand one without, have arisen. It is investigated by analyzing the mobilization processes of the two campaigns. The materials used in this study is the theoretical framework of Resource Mobilization Theory’s five resource mobilization categories. It was used as an alternative way to examine how and understand why the two movements turned out to be so different, where one was a labor movement and the other were not. The method used was a qualitative comparative case study. Through the comparison the study could identify some differences between the two movements campaigns. Through the comparison, the study was able to identify certain differences between the two movement campaigns. On the one hand, the scope and network of the campaigns were important for their emergence, and on the otherhand, the temporal context was important for the mobilizations of the cases.