Book Reviews
Book Reviews

Summary/Abstract: This article contains following book reviews with shor summaries: Book Reviews 1. On the Waves of RFE: The First Historical Synthesis of the Czechoslovak Service of Radio Free Europe Tomek, Prokop. Československá redakce Radio Free Europe: Historie a vliv na československé dějiny. [The Czechoslovak service of Radio Free Europe: Its development and impact on Czechoslovak history]. Prague: Academia, 2015, 422 pp. + 32 pp. of illus., ISBN 978-80-200-2490-9. The book under review is considered here in the context of current research on the history of Radio Free Europe and Tomek’s own work in which he presents a synthesis of his long-standing interest in the topic. The reviewer sees the contribution of the book chiefl y in its bringing together and clearly sorting out a wide range of facts, and, to a lesser extent, its preliminary analyses. The author chronologically traces the development of Radio Free Europe, especially the Czechoslovak Service, and also determines the effects of its broadcasts and the interaction with its audience at home behind the Iron Curtain as well as amongst the top-level Czechoslovak politicians of the time. With this work, he has fi lled a palpable gap in the Czech historiography of mass media in exile, and has established an important basis for further research. 2. Southern Hospitality? Czechoslovak Relations with Africa until 1989 Dvořáček, Jan – Piknerová, Linda – Záhořík, Jan. A History of Czechoslovak Involvement in Africa: Studies from the Colonial through the Soviet Eras. Lewiston, NY & Lampeter, The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014, 208 pp. Muehlenbeck, Philip: Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945 – 1968. London, Palgrave MacMillan, 2016, 271 pp. Two recent volumes on Cold War Czechoslovak involvement in Africa challenge the notion of Czechoslovak powerlessness during the socialist period. On the scale of Czechoslovak autonomy from Moscow, however, the works in question diverge. Philip Muehlenbeck goes furthest in emphasizing the self-interest underpinning Prague’s Africa policy. Dvořáček, Piknerová and Záhořík’s volume, meanwhile, shows how Prague’s levels of autonomy from Moscow varied from decade to decade and state to state. While Muehlenbeck refl ects on the racism experienced by African exchange students in Prague, A History of Czechoslovak Involvement in Africa suggests that racism was a problem above all in Moscow: in Russifying the negative aspects of African involvement in this way, the authors miss an opportunity to analyze a broader Czechoslovak ambivalence toward socialist-era Africa policy. Both books make a convincing case for the particular importance of the African continent to Czechoslovak diplomacy during the Cold War. This review asks whether, conversely, relative unimportance on the global scale might provide a useful framework for future analyses of Czechoslovakia’s room to maneuver in the global south during the period. 3. An Arduous Road of the Exile toward the Fall of the Iron Curtain Raška, Francis D. Dlouhá cesta k vítězství: Československá exilová hnutí po roce 1968. Trans. from the English by Vojtěch Pacner. Prague: Academia, 2015, 272 pp., ISBN 978-80-200-2472-5. The book under review is a Czech translation of The Long Road to Victory: A History of Czechoslovak Exile Organizations after 1968 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia UP, 2012). Raška’s work is, according to the reviewer, the result of careful research using personal papers and other archival documents in the Czech Republic, Great Britain, the United States, and Italy. It is a unique comprehensive work that offers much that is new and of interest, concerning a little known chapter in the history of Czechs and Slovaks in exile. In nine chapters, the author acquaints us with Czechoslovak life in exile, that is, clubs, organizations, and individuals, after they had caught their second wind, and were listened to by other exiles after 1968, once the West had received the large wave of Czechoslovak refugees driven out of their country by the Warsaw Pact military intervention. Although the book under review does not, in that sense, cover the full range of exiles and their activities, it remains an extraordinarily useful work of reference. 4. On Science in the Service of People Olšáková, Doubravka. Věda jde k lidu! Československá společnost pro šíření politických a vědeckých znalostí a popularizace věd v Československu ve 20. století. [Science meets the people! The Czechoslovak society for the dissemination of political and scientifi c knowledge and popularization of science in Czechoslovakia in the 20th century]. (Šťastné zítřky, vol. 10.) Prague: Academia, 2014, 678 pp., ISBN 978-80-200-2318-6. The two reviewers praise this volume, “Science meets the people! The Czechoslovak society for the dissemination of political and scientifi c knowledge and popularization of science in Czechoslovakia in the 20th century” as a work on a hitherto neglected topic of Communist adult education in which a fundamental role was played by the Czechoslovak Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientifi c Knowledge, which was founded in 1952, and was, from the mid-1960s, operating under the name of the Socialist Academy. In addition to the reviewers’ acknowledgement of the wealth of facts presented here and the compelling interpretations of particular topics, they also fi nd conceptual and methodological shortcomings in the work, which, in their opinion, have made it impossible to get more out of the topic. The author has thus failed, they argue, to give a more well-rounded account of the relations between centralized decision-making and the practical application of adult education at the regional level, and does not provide an answer to the important questions of how Communist adult education was special, and in what respect it was merely following more universal modern efforts to educate the masses. 5. Supervision against Artistic Freedom: The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra after February 1948 Iblová, Michaela. Česká fi lharmonie pod tlakem stalinské kulturní politiky v padesátých letech. [The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under the pressure of Stalinist cultural policy in the 1950s]. Prague: Karolinum, 2014, 247 pp., ISBN 978-80-246-2332-0. The reviewer fi rst offers an overview of scholarly research on music (primarily classical music) and music culture in relation to politics and institutions in Czechoslovakia under the Communist régime. The author of the book under review, he claims, is one of the fi rst Czechs to ask how and why a leading music ensemble could operate in totalitarianism and even in opposition to it. The core of book comprises the author’s discussion of the Czech Philharmonic during the fi rst decade after the Communist takeover in late February 1948, in the face of continuous efforts by the régime to keep an eye on the orchestra by means of Party institutions and, particularly, the secret police. The author uses excursions into Czechoslovak life from the 1960s to the 1980s, and writers that the efforts to enlist Czech Philharmonic musicians to collaborate with the secret police were practically continuous throughout the period. She discusses the programme and production plans of the orchestra, in which the musicians had to accept comprises with the demands to perform ideologically engagé works. Despite some minor criticisms, the reviewer, on the whole, judges the book positively, particularly concerning the factual information it presents. 6. All the Things Film History Is Skopal, Pavel. Filmová kultura severního trojúhelníku: Filmy, kina a diváci českých zemí, NDR a Polska 1945–1970. [Film culture of the Northern Triangle: Films, cinemas and audiences of the Czech Lands, the GDR and Poland 1945–1970] (Filmová knihovna, vol. 3.). Brno: Host, 2014, 308 pp., ISBN 978-80-7294-971-7. The author of the book under review uses the approaches of the ‘new fi lm history’, which frees him from writing about fi lm using traditional categories and periodizations, and allows him to turn his attention to economic aspects of the fi lm industry or to distribution mechanisms and audiences. That approach entails overlaps with other disciplines and work with a wide range of material. The author has undertaken extensive research in the archives of six countries, and has critically and organically linked this research together with information from other sources, including eyewitness accounts. The fi rst part of this methodologically exemplary publication is devoted to cultural transfers in the “Northern Triangle” (Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Poland) with other Soviet bloc countries and also with capitalist states. In the second part, in the context of Stalinism and the subsequent Thaw, the author looks at the role of fi lm distribution which the régime sought use to integrate its citizens into society. An exceptional contribution of the publication, according to the reviewer, is the third part, which focuses on fi lm-audience reception, supported by local case studies on the behaviour and attitudes of Brno, Leipzig and Poznan audiences after the Second World War.

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