Palach Press: Press and Literary Agency. The Exile Agency Study and the Comparation of the Presentation of the Affairs with the Official Mass Media in the Czechoslovakia. Abstract This thesis is a study about literary and press agency Palach Press. The agency was established by Jan Kavan and operated in London in 1970s and 1980s. Its main purpose was to provide information on Czechoslovakia to western journalists and Czech journalist in exile. There was a communication of the alternative public sphere because of a non-functional public sphere, where should be free exchange of opinions. There was a distribution channel of altered camping cars, attached to the Palach Press agency, used to smuggle literature and other materials to Czechoslovakia. Second part of the thesis is practical and focuses on the actual production of Palach Press agency and compares it with information provided by official media in Czechoslovakia, especially with the news published by Czechoslovak press agency. Content analysis is based on the criteria of objectivity.

The topic of the diploma thesis is the encoding of an ideological message in normalization series of Czechoslovak Television, specifically in the series Matka (Mother). This nine-part television saga was filmed in 1975 on the occasion of the XV Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, planned for April 1976. Most normalization series had one thing in common - through the story of ordinary people, with whom the viewers could easily identify - they passed to the viewers the attitudes, the system of rules or the interpretation of history seen through the prism of the ruling party. The series Matka also followed this practice, and using the story of a woman - a laundress - showed the development of the labour movement in Bohemia. The theoretical part of the thesis consists of clarifying the concepts - ideology, propaganda and normalization; at the same time, it reflects the history of Czechoslovak Television and its importance as one of the most powerful tools of propaganda in the period of normalization. In this respect, television series, due to the immense popularity with TV viewers, were very effective. Therefore, their essence and thematic focus in the context of the social climate are analyzed in the theoretical part, too. The used methodology, identifying and interpreting the...

The work is focused on the recent regional history of Karlovy Vary. Trying to briefly imitate life of the Scout group between 1968 - 1989. Based on interview made with the narrators it isndescribing the activities that were the Scout section devoted. It charts the parth of an individual from the first contact with Scouting from its acceptance to life itself in the section. This work is also trying to capture the changes that took place within varios sections during the transition from formal to illegality. It Illustrates one of the possible method in which the officiallybanned organization adjusted to the normalization age.

Prague Spring in Collective Memory of the Members 28th Fighter-Bomber Air Regiment in Čáslav Jiří Hlaváček The aim of essay is to analyse the course and the consequences of the Prague Spring at the 28th Fighter Bomber Wing in Čáslav based on oral recollections of the direct participants of the events and their comparison with accessible contemporary sources. The research is utilizes the method of oral history, focussing on the testimonies of six members of the 28th Fighter Bomber Wing, who were dismissed from the Army during the normalization purges between 1968 and 1974. The essay is concerned with the important events of Prague Spring, covering them chronologically from January 1968 until Apríl 1969 and with reflection of these events by the formal members of the Wing. The main part of the essay focusses on a detailed description of the events taking place at Čáslav airport during the entry of the Warsaw Pact troops on the territory of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The other part is devoted to the methods of the normalization purges in the Army and their impact on the witnesses lives inclusive of theme of collective memory of this group. Key words: Czechoslovak People's Army - Prague Spring - Air Force - the normalization - rehabilitation - oral history - collective memory - biography.

Besides the social survey data, texts have been an important source of sociological data since the beginning of the development of sociological methodology. Text analysis methods contain two main branches of development: Bernard Berelson's content analysis and Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic analysis. Both these methodological branches have been influenced by the development of information technologies in the last twenty years. The thesis presented here deals with one of the methods of computer text analysis (CATA), which stands on the border between these two methodological streams, a method of analyzing words' collocations in texts. The thesis presents the method in the context of other methods of text analysis, and mentions sources of inspiration for further development of these methods - corpus linguistics and text mining. The second part discusses the different steps of words' collocation analysis: building a text corpus, dictionary compilation, calculation of data matrix and visualisation of words' distances using multidimensional scaling (MDS). The method is also applied to a specific data, two text corpora compiled from transcripts of biographical interviews with actors of Czechoslovak normalization - with dissidents and Communist functionaries. Quality of the models is assessed, depending...

Abstract The Master thesis Czechoslovakia in 1960s from the point of view of theory non- democratic regimes deals with the analysis of political, economic and social development, especially with the so-called Prague Spring of 1968. The 1968 reform was an attempt to transform the Czechoslovak communist regime. The aim was to transform Czechoslovakia into a modern industrial society, break free from the total subordination to the Soviet Union, yet with the leading role of the Communist Party. For this reason, the year 1968 holds an important position in our post-war history. The thesis is divided into two main parts and seven chapters. The first part is devoted to non-democratic theories, particularly to totalitarianism and authoritarianism. The second part describes the events in the communist Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1960. And subsequently, the remaining part is devoted to the main topic of the thesis, to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. The aim of my thesis was to describe the situation in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, identify the causes and consequences of the so-called Prague Spring of 1968 and try to match Czechoslovakia to a certain type of non-democratic regime in the 1960s and thus determine where Czechoslovakia was on the imaginary scale from totalitarianism to democracy in this period.

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the themes and motives that have been obtained on the basis of the analysis and interpretation of the biographical narrative with the members of the Czechoslovak People's Army. Acquired Themes do not only provide a basic insight into everyday life of the soldiers before 1989, but it partly introduces even some negotiation and interpretation of narrators, the possible directions of further questioning, the soldiers used abbreviations and slang words captured in the interviews. In the future most of the topics could be supplemented separately or together , with other sources, to help initiate independent studies related to the force components of the Czech society in the period of normalization and transformation, so in this way the work also represents a kind of elementary "catalogue" that can be used by other students or researchers interested in the issue of the monitored period and profession.

This thesis based on an archive research as well as interviews with eleven interviewees describes aspects of every day routine in the lives of western foreigners in Czechoslovakia during the nineteen-seventies and eighties. Testimonies of the interviewees are set in context where a special emphasis is placed on legislation and internal regulations mostly of bodies of the Ministry of Interior concerning Czechoslovak visa policy, the status of foreigner in relation to Czechoslovakian citizens (marriages) and the police apparatus (observing, tailing and monitoring). Based on the testimonies and the archive material it can be concluded that the Czechoslovakian regime did not see the western foreigners as a priori ideological enemies and tolerated their presence in Czechoslovakia. Bureaucratic procedures, however, were set in such a fashion that the foreigners could be closely observed. A fear of not having their stay extended, resp. being expelled, often led those interviewees who wanted to live in Czechoslovakia permanently to subconsciously avoid conflicts with the regime. All interviewees are critical of the former regime and are able to accurately characterize its nature and its main negative aspects, but at the same time they perceived positively certain aspects of life in the brought-into-line...

The diploma thesis Economic and social interaction during Normalization era is is based on qualitative research. It deals with issues of system of return services and barter exchange in non - cash market in 1970's and 1980's in Czechoslovakia. The centrally planned economy was not able to produce enough consumer goods and meet the demand of the population. Employees, who worked in department stores, took easier approach to consumer goods than others. They excercised power over distribution and they traded some commodities for another services. As a research method applied is oral history. The primary sources used are narrative interview and secondary history literature.

A professional life of secondary school teachers of Czech gymnasiums (rough equivalent of British grammar schools) in so called normalization period is presented in this thesis using autobiographical recounting, contemporary documents and archival materials. The author mentions the choosing of their careers, their studies and ensuing start of their teaching practice that took place in late sixties. Author puts emphasis on mapping of the leading role of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in the workplace during the so called normalization period and how it was perceived by the teachers themselves. Author shows the role of the communist party using teacher's reviews, entrance examinations and complex assessments. Later on, author elaborates the mechanisms used to keep school "socialistic" up to the year 1989: controls, deliberations and meetings, schoolings, school phraseology, material provision, anniversary celebrations, voluntary works, skiing and defense courses, sister trips and teacher's role in society. In the end, the thesis maps a downfall of communist party's leading role at schools and the transition to a democratic education after the year 1989.