Julius Fučík – Egon Erwin Kisch – Franz Carl Weiskopf – Jiří Weil
Julius Fučík – Egon Erwin Kisch – Franz Carl Weiskopf – Jiří Weil

Edition of texts (1927–1937)

Summary/Abstract: The edition brings a commented selection of texts from reportage publications and travelogues of four Czechoslovak writers, which reflect their experiences gathered during their trips to and stays in “exotic” non-European regions of the Soviet Union between the two world wars. They are: Julius Fučík (1903–1943), a journalist, literary critic and columnist, Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948), a Czech-German journalist, reporter and writer from Prague, the Czech-German writer and diplomat Franz Carl Weiskopf (1900–1955), also born in Prague, and the Czech-Jewish writer, newsman and translator Jiří Weil (1900–1959). All of them were organized Communists (Weil was expelled from the Communist Party in 1935), travelling at an invitation of Soviet authorities, and their texts, which were published in Czechoslovakia and Germany between 1927 and 1937, presented a more or less idealized picture of the Soviet reality with a propagandistic air. The selected texts capture the authors’ impressions mainly from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but also from other regions of Soviet Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Altai Mountains. Julius Fučík and Jiří Weil were specifically interested in the Czechoslovak cooperative of emigrant workers and farmers, Interhelpo, established in 1925 and operating until the late 1930s off the town of Frunze (now Bishkek).

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