Vězeňská zkušenost padesátých let jako svébytný historický fenomén?
The prison experience of the 1950s as a specific historic phenomenon?

Summary/Abstract: Pinerová, Klára: Do konce života: Političtí vězni padesátých let – trauma, adaptace, identita. (Edition Po válce.) Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů and Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2017, 403 pp., ISBN 978-80-87912-87-4 and 978-80-7422-590-1. In her work titled "Until the end of life: Political prisoners of the 1950s – trauma, adaptation, identity", the authoress attempted to capture the prison experience of Czechoslovak male and female political prisoners of the 1950s as a complex sociopsychological phenomenon, from their arrest through their detention and interrogation, sentencing and subsequent internment until their release and long-term consequences the ex-prisoners had to put up with. According to the reviewer’s opinion, however, she has fulfilled her goal only partly. The reviewer admits that the authoress has long been interested in transformations of prison systems in many countries, that she is able to undertake thorough heuristics, and that she invested a lot of personal effort into interviews with contemporary witnesses, trying to mediate their tragic experience to others. In order to capture the social dynamism ingroups of prisoners, she describes in detail their relations and day-to-day culture, forms of adaptation to the prison environment, mechanisms of power, order and resistance, space and time behind bars, and also the gender aspect. The reviewer, however, brings into attention limitations of approaches taken over from individual and social psychology, which the authoress seems to prefer, questions the relevance of some comparative examples taken over from foreign research projects, the authoress’s intuitive use of historical terms, as well as some of her interpretations

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