communism

Adam Havlík - “I request issuing of an absolute ban.” Foreign Press Department of the Czechoslovak Federal Ministry of the Interior
Abstract

The paper deals with the topic of one particular department of the Czechoslovak Federal Ministry of Interior (FMV), which was in charge of the control over the foreign press in the 1970s and 1980s. This included foreign magazines, officially ordered by the Czechoslovak state but also individually imported press or books. The foreign press and the dissemination of the information contained in it posed a potential risk to the ruling Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ), and therefore its import was subject to a relatively strict control. As part of the State Security (StB), the so‑called Foreign Press Department (OZT) supervised printed matter imported into the country. Among other things, his employees worked undercover at post offices, where they inspected packages with foreign magazines and books and removed „suspicious“ titles from circulation. They thus participated in censoring and directing the flow of information so that it was in line with the Communist Party’s ideas. The study focuses on the mechanisms on which the everyday work of the department was based. At the same time, it follows the personnel and the social profile of those who participated in its operation.

Petra Loučová - Sinuhet Behind Bars. The fate of one translation and the life story of its translator, Marta Hellmuthová
Abstract

This study presents the professional and life story of translator Marta Hellmuthová (1917–1988), both in the context of cultural and political history and as a contribution to the so‑called translator studies. Hellmuthová, the educated and linguistically gifted wife of a diplomat, decided to learn Finnish in order to make Mika Waltari’s novel Sinuhet The Egyptian available to Czech readers. Thanks to archival research, it was discovered that the translation of one of the most popular books in the Czech Republic was partly done in the late 1950s behind the bars of the Pardubice correctional labour camp, where Hellmuthová had been wrongly imprisoned. While the 1950s and 1960s were a period in which she struggled to establish a position as a translator, the years of so‑called normalization, which brought significant progress in Czechoslovak‑Finnish relations, strengthened her position and allowed her to become Waltari’s “court translator” and at the same time an esteemed translator from Finnish; this thanks to her determination, hard work and high‑quality translations, and probably also years of good relations with the diplomatic corps of Finland.

Petra Loučová - Literature on Cigarette and Carbon Paper: A History of Czechoslovak Samizdat through the Example of Karel Pecka
Abstract

The life story of writer Karel Pecka (1928–1997) offers a unique glimpse into the history of unofficial literary and book culture in Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989 as well as into the life of a writer in a totalitarian regime. Pecka’s samizdat “Odyssey” started by printing the illegal leaflet magazine Za pravdu in 1949. Back then, he could hardly anticipate how much publishing in unofficial, “parallel” book circulation will define his work in the decades to follow. As a prisoner in the Jáchymov and Příbram labour camps in the 1950s, he continued secretly writing collections of poems, followed by short stories. He was a member of prison samizdat, the most beautiful items of which were reportedly written on cigarette paper. From the early 1960s on, some of his handwritten works were first distributed among selected readers in mimeographed copies due to delays in publication. His brief official writer career was cut short by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies to Czechoslovakia in August 1968. This opened the second twenty‑year period of Pecka’s life marked by the impossibility to publish and attempts at overcoming the barrier. His novel, Štěpení, delivered to Škvorecký in Toronto in handwritten form and subsequently issued by their ’68 Publishers publishing house, made Pecka a bona fide samizdat pioneer. The normalisation of 1970s and 1980s spent in the alternative culture environment brought several more publications in exile and samizdat editions (including Motáky nezvěstnému) and a series of texts in the Obsah periodical. Pecka’s samizdat life ended with the postsamizdat publication of his prison poems, Rekonstrukce, self‑released in 1995, two years before his death.

Eva Vybíralová - Revanchists or Pioneers of Reconciliation? Ackermann‑Gemeinde and its Support for the Roman Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia during the Communist Era
Abstract

The study discusses the various forms of material and other assistance that the members and friends of the Ackermann‑Gemeinde civic association extended to Czech Roman Catholics for decades. They would mostly send hundreds of parcels with targeted help (selected books, dried fruits, medications, money, etc.), cars for priests, finance for refurbishing church buildings in the borderland, gifts for ordinees, etc. The study also focuses on the attention that State Security (StB) paid to the organisation, in particular to its representatives, Adolf Kunzmann (operation “Revanš/ Revenge”) and Franz Olbert (operation “Náhradník/Substitute”). As part of the operation, StB interrogated dozens of priests and active laypeople in the 1970s. Among other sources, the study draws on documents from the Ackermann‑Gemeinde archive in Munich and selected StB files deposited in the Security Services Archive in Prague. In addition, several persons on both sides were interviewed for the study.