front cover of Radio and the Performance of Government
Radio and the Performance of Government
Broadcasting by the Czechoslovaks in Exile in London, 1939–1945
Erica Harrison
Karolinum Press, 2023
An original study of radio propaganda in Czechoslovakia.

Between 1939 and 1945, Czechoslovakia disappeared from the maps, existing only as an imagined ‘free republic’ on the radio waves. Following the German invasion and annexation of Bohemia and Moravia and the declaration of independence by Slovakia on 15 March 1939, the Czechoslovak Republic was gone. From their position in exile in wartime London, former Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš and the government that formed around him depended on radio to communicate with the public they strove to represent. The broadcasts made by government figures in London enabled a performance of authority to impress their hosts, allies, occupying enemies, and claimed constituents.

This book examines this government program for the first time, making use of previously unstudied archival sources to examine how the exiles understood their mission and how their propaganda work was shaped by both British and Soviet influences. This study assesses the strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of the government’s radio propaganda as they navigated the complexities of exile, with chapters examining how they used the radio to establish their authority, how they understood the past and future of the Czechoslovak nation, and how they struggled to include Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia within it.
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front cover of Rambling On
Rambling On
An Apprentice's Guide to the Gift of the Gab
Bohumil Hrabal
Karolinum Press, 2016
Novelist Bohumil Hrabal was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and he spent decades working at a variety of laboring jobs before turning to writing in his late forties. From that point, he quickly made his mark on the Czech literary scene; by the time of his death he was ranked with Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Čapek, and Milan Kundera as among the nation’s greatest twentieth-century writers. Hrabal’s fiction blends tragedy with humor and explores the anguish of intellectuals and ordinary people alike from a slightly surreal perspective. His work ranges from novels and poems to film scripts and essays. Rambling On is a collection of stories set in Hrabal’s Kersko. Several of the stories were written before the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague but had to be reworked when they were rejected by Communist censorship during the 1970s. This edition features the original, uncensored versions of those stories.
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front cover of Rambling On
Rambling On
An Apprentice’s Guide to the Gift of the Gab
Bohumil Hrabal
Karolinum Press, 2014
Novelist Bohumil Hrabal was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and he spent decades working at a variety of laboring jobs before turning to writing in his late forties. From that point, he quickly made his mark on the Czech literary scene; by the time of his death he was ranked with Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Čapek, and Milan Kundera as among the nation’s greatest twentieth-century writers. Hrabal’s fiction blends tragedy with humor and explores the anguish of intellectuals and ordinary people alike from a slightly surreal perspective. His work ranges from novels and poems to film scripts and essays. Rambling On is a collection of stories set in Hrabal’s Kersko. Several of the stories were written before the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague but had to be reworked when they were rejected by Communist censorship during the 1970s. This edition features the original, uncensored versions of those stories.
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front cover of Rhetoric in European Culture and Beyond
Rhetoric in European Culture and Beyond
Jirí Kraus
Karolinum Press, 2014
Rhetoric in European and World Culture traces the position of rhetoric in cultural and educational systems from ancient times to the present. Here, Jirí Kraus examines rhetoric’s decline in importance in a period of rationalism and enlightenment, presents the causes of negative connotations of rhetoric, and explains why rhetoric in the twentieth century regained its prestige.
           
Kraus demonstrates that the reputation of rhetoric falls when it is reduced to a refined method for deceiving the public and increases when it is seen as a scientific discipline that is used throughout all of the fields of the humanities. In this sense, the author argues, rhetoric strives for universal recognition and the cultivation of rhetorical expression, spoken and written, including not only its production but also reception and interpretation.
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front cover of The Rise and Fall of the International Organization of Journalists Based in Prague 1946–2016
The Rise and Fall of the International Organization of Journalists Based in Prague 1946–2016
Useful Recollections Part III
Kaarle Nordenstreng
Karolinum Press, 2021
In this book, Finnish scholar Kaarle Nordenstreng provides a unique account of the Prague-based International Organization of Journalists, a group that was at one time the world’s largest media association. The IOJ expanded from a postwar fraternity of professional journalists in twenty countries to a truly global organization that had its hand in running journalism schools, a publishing house, a conference service, and a number of commercial enterprises in Czechoslovakia. Though the Cold War kept most Western journalists’ unions isolated from the organization, the IOJ was a major player in Communist Eastern Europe--at its peak in the late 1980s, the IOJ counted 300,000 journalists as members. Nordenstreng--who served as president of the IOJ for fourteen years--illuminates this exciting and little-explored chapter in the history of postwar Europe, from the rise of the Iron Curtain through the post-Soviet 1990s. He enlivens his firsthand account with personal testimonies from former IOJ members and a wealth of previously unpublished internal documents.
 
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Rusalka
A Lyrical Fairy-tale in Three Acts
Jaroslav Kvapil
Karolinum Press, 2020
Famous as the libretto for Antonín Dvorák’s opera of the same name, Jaroslav Kvapil’s poem Rusalka is an intriguing work of literature on its own. Directly inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s famous “The Little Mermaid,” Kvapil’s reinterpretation adds an array of nuanced poetic techniques, a more dramatic tempo, and dark undertones that echo the work of eminent Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben. All of these influences work in tandem to create a poetic work that is familiar yet innovative.
 
Transposed into the folkloric topos of a landlocked Bohemia, the mermaid is rendered here as a Slavic rusalka—a dangerous water nymph—who must choose between love and immortality. Thus, Rusalka, while certainly paying homage to the original story’s Scandinavian roots, is still a distinct work of modern Czech literature. Newly translated by Patrick Corness, Kvapil’s work will now find a fresh group of readers looking to get lost in one of Europe’s great lyrical fairy tale traditions.
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front cover of Rus–Ukraine–Russia
Rus–Ukraine–Russia
Scenes from the Cultural History of Russian Religiosity
Martin C. Putna
Karolinum Press, 2018
An outspoken opponent of pro-Russian, authoritarian, and far-right streams in contemporary Czech society, Martin C. Putna received a great deal of media attention when he ironically dedicated the Czech edition of Rus–Ukraine–Russia to Miloš Zeman—the pro-Russian president of the Czech Republic. This sense of irony, combined with an extraordinary breadth of scholarly knowledge, infuses Putna’s book.

Examining key points in Russian cultural and spiritual history, Rus–Ukraine–Russia is essential reading for those wishing to understand the current state of Russia and Ukraine—the so-called heir to an “alternative Russia.” Putna uses literary and artistic works to offer a rich analysis of Russia as a cultural and religious phenomenon: tracing its development from the arrival of the Greeks in prehistoric Crimea to its invasion by “little green men” in 2014; explaining the cultural importance in Russ of the Vikings as well as Pussy Riot; exploring central Russian figures from St. Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin.

Unique in its postcolonial perspective, this is not merely a history of Russia or of Russian religion. This book presents Russia as a complex mesh of national, religious, and cultural (especially countercultural) traditions—with strong German, Mongol, Jewish, Catholic, Polish, and Lithuanian influences—a force responsible for creating what we identify as Eastern Europe.
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