Tibet - a Country Where People Have Leapt a Thousand Years Forward
Tibet - a Country Where People Have Leapt a Thousand Years Forward

Author(s): Jan Vinař
Contributor(s): Luboš Bělka (Editor), Kamila Hladíková (Editor)
Subject(s): History, Social Sciences, Media studies, Communication studies, Political history, Recent History (1900 till today), Special Historiographies:, Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism
Published by: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci
Keywords: Tibet; Tibetan 1959 uprising; democratic reforms in Tibet; historical reportage; modern Tibetan history; Jan Vinař; Czechoslovaks in Tibet
Summary/Abstract: The core of the book is a critical edition of an unpublished reportage of Jan Vinař from his 1959 trip to Tibet called Tibet - A Country where People Have Leaped a Thousand Years Forward. Vinař’s text was never published officially (there are only fifteen copies of a samizdat edition printed in 1983 in Zurich) and today it can be considered an important documentary material of the given historical period. The reportage written in 1960 echoes the official Chinese narrative of Tibetan history and social development and his views reflect the Chinese interpretation of the March 1959 uprising. The book is accompanied by so far unpublished photographic material from the 1959 journalist expedition to Tibet and scholarly commentary by editors to the original text in the form of footnotes and several studies clarifying certain aspects of the topic and the historical and political context. Kamila Hladíková describes the clash of Chinese and Tibetan narratives explaining recent Tibetan history, mainly regarding the occupation of Tibetan-inhabited territories by the PLA in 1950-1951 and the legitimization of the regime after 1959. Luboš Bělka provides detailed biography of Jan Vinař and explains the historical background of the decade between 1950 and 1959 in Tibet, analyzes the texts published by other visitors to Tibet in that time and introduces the phenomenon known in Tibetan language as thamzing, or struggle sessions.

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