Book reviews
Book reviews

Summary/Abstract: This paper contains book reviews listed bellow with shor summeries: Book Reviews 1. SMETANA, Vít: Ani vojna, ani mír: Velmoci, Československo a střední Evropa v sedmi dramatech na prahu druhé světové a studené války [Neither war, nor peace: The Great Powers, Czechoslovakia and Central Europe in seven dramatic stories on the eve of the Second World War and the Cold War]. Prague, Lidové noviny Publishing House 2016, 664 pages, 33 photographs, bibliography, index of names, ISBN 978-80-7422-358-7. Using selected topics, the monograph describes the relationship of the powers to Czechoslovakia during the dramatic decade between 1938 and 1948. The reviewer comments on how these topics are dealt with in each chapter, appreciating the author’s erudition, ample use of sources, as well as a broad contextualization and convincing power of interpretation. He concludes that Smetana’s work deviates from traditional Czech and Slovak approaches to the themes in that it assigns priority to attitudes and motives of foreign political players and takes into account the international context in all its complexity the analysis of which leads the author to conclusions open for further discussion rather than to categorical judgments. The author’s approach does not make the personality of President Edvard Beneš (1884–1948) stand out as much as is usually the case; instead, the author views President Beneš rather critically. According to the reviewer, Smetana’s monograph, which he characterizes as a colourful canvas of historical plots stretched in a solid frame, should become a classical work for historians studying the period of the Second World War and beginnings of the Cold War. 2. Swing Music and Its Fans during the Protectorate KOURA, Petr: Swingaři a potápky v protektorátní noci: Česká swingová mládež a její hořkej svět (Šťastné zítřky, vol. 23.) [Swing fans and “zoot suiters” in the Protectorate night: Czech swing kids and their bitter world (Happy tomorrows, Vol. 23)]. Praha, Academia 2016, 922 pages, ISBN 978-80-200-2634-7. The reviewer presents the monograph as the outcome of long-term, comprehensive, and almost exhaustive research of sources, impressive in both its content and its scope. The author concentrates on the Czech youth subculture associated with jazz (swing) music at the time of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939–1945), their lifestyle, habits, fashion, speech, and attitude to the occupation regime, as well as the attitude of Nazi and Protectorate authorities to them and the music they professed. He sets the topic into a broad historical, social, political, and cultural context, for example when describing in an erudite and gripping manner the evolution and propagation of jazz dances, formation and existence of similar youth subcultures in Western Europe and United States, or the survival of jazz and its fans in the Nazi Third Reich. The author covers in depth the criticism aimed at jazz and its fans in the Protectorate and repressions against them, analyzes the relationship between jazz music and freedom in an inspiring manner, and his interpretations and explanations abound with facts. The reviewer would personally welcome only a better arrangement of some parts and more attention paid to jazz music as such. Czechoslovak Leviathan 3. ROUBAL, Petr: Československé spartakiády (Šťastné zítřky, Vol. 22) [Czechoslovak Spartakiads (Happy Tomorrows, Vol. 22)]. Praha, Academia 2016, 405 pages, ISBN 978-80-200-2537-1. In his four-part book, the author deals with the genealogy of Czechoslovak spartakiads in the German Turner and Czech Sokol (Falcon) movements, different visual symbolisms of the spartakiads in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, the organization of spartakiads, and the relation of the society to them. The extensive review presents the content and leading principles of the book, as well as its sources and theoretical foundations, and formulates some polemic arguments. The key of the author’s interpretation of the phenomemon of the mass gymnastics events of different age, social and professional, gender-differentiated groups of population in arenas in the Czech Lands and Czechoslovakia since the second half of the 19th century until the 1990s is a multifaceted analysis of the political symbolism of the body and its movements as a representation of ideals of the unity of the nation and the socialist society. In the reviewer’s opinion, the book’s meticulously documented factography, erudite use of different theoretical concepts, convincing argumentation and clear style have resulted in a compact, comprehensive, inspiring and attractive monograph. The reviewer only regrets that the author did not refl ect a broad context of similar mass rituals in other countries of the Soviet Bloc and elsewhere to show the globally unique character of the Czechoslovak spartakiads. The reviewer also argues against the author s conviction that the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia was not totalitarian, presenting arguments for an opposite opinion in a different view of the role and effect of political rituals such as the spartakiads in relation to the society. 4. A Family Colonized by the State? On a Book about Family Policy in the Czech Lands in the Previous Century RÁKOSNÍK, Jakub – ŠUSTROVÁ, Radka: Rodina v zájmu státu: Populační růst a instituce manželství v českých zemích 1918–1989 [Family in the interest of the state: Population growth and marriage in the Czech Lands 1918–1989]. Praha, Lidové noviny Publishing House 2016, 283 pages, ISBN 978-80-7422-378-5. According to the reviewer, the two authors of the book under review convincingly demonstrate the massive growth in state intervention in the private sphere in Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia in the seventy years from the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic to the collapse of the Communist regime in late 1989. She does, however, have some doubts about their periodization, which ignores great political dividing lines in favour of continuities, and she is also disappointed in the authors’ intentionally refusing to pass judgement on the topics they discuss. The reviewer would have liked to have read an assessment of interwar Czechoslovakia, which had sought to be a democratic and socially just state, and she would have welcomed discussion of the Nazis’ intentions to eradicate the Czechs during the German occupation from mid-March 1939 to early May 1945. The reviewer remarks on some aspects of family policy in socialist Czechoslovakia, and concludes that the book under review is useful for the general public as a call for discussion about the social values and traditions and the purpose and operation of the State.

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