Indoktrinácia pofebruárovej spoločnosti. Kult osobnosti ako nástroj sovietizácie československého občana
Indoctrination of Post-February Society. The Cult of Personality as a Tool of Sovietization of a Czechoslovak Citizen

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents one of the tools of indoctrination of Czechoslovak society after 1948 – the building of the cult of personality, namely Stalin's cult of personality. In the introduction, it discusses the starting points of the cult of personality of Stalin and briefly presents its manifestation in the Soviet Union. It maps the period from the turn of the 1920s and 1930s to the end of World War II. The text also deals with the form and methods of cult behavior, its aim and content. The article talks about the spread of popularity and respect for this native of Gori across Europe after 1945 and the causes that led to his cultivation in Czechoslovakia, too. It presents the regime, in which this behavior was embedded and in which it had been intensively promoted for several years. The core of the text maps one of the concrete manifestations of building a cult of personality – the celebration of the 70th birthday of ‘generalissimus’. It describes the origin, establishment and activities of the government commission that was in charge of preparing the celebrations. It presents the first plans for the realization of celebrations and reflections on the appropriate content of the feast. It includes the time and organizational problems that accompanied this mass-popularization event and analyzes the form and possible impacts of propaganda content disseminated through the celebrations. The text also deals in more detail with some of the main parts of the celebrations, such as the event of gifts that traveled from Czechoslovakia to the USSR. It talks about ‘zdravica’ – about the written congratulations of the Czechoslovak people to Stalin, but also about the network of lectures and discussions and also about the laying of the foundations of the monumental statue, which was later erected in the country's capital. The authoress also declares a tendency of the state party seeking to establish itself in the newly dominated territory, to transform the wide diapazon parts of the everyday life of a Czechoslovak citizen. The paper, by its timeframe, falls into the so-called founding period of the communist regime (1948 – 1953), with an accent on the end of 1949.

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