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Book Cover
E-book
Author ROUBAL, PETR

Title SPARTAKIAD : the politics and aesthetics of physical culture in communist
Published [Place of publication not identified] KAROLINUM Press, 2018

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Description 1 online resource
Series Edice Václava Havla Ser
Edice Václava Havla Ser
Contents Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- A Genealogy of the Spartakiads -- Ideology of the Organicism and Beginnings of the Mass Gymnastic Performances -- A Physical Sonderweg and the Post-1848 Turner Movement -- The Turners and the Third Reich -- The Political Aesthetics of Tyrš's Project -- Sokol Slets Prior to the First World War -- Segregation as Emancipation -- The Mystery of Democracy -- Slets during the First Republic -- Strahov Stadium -- Transformations in Slet Symbolism -- The Left and Mass Gymnastics
The Communist Party and Sokol after the Second World War: the Search for a Common Denominator -- The All-Sokol Slet of 1948 -- "Can the People Betray?" -- Symbolism of the First Spartakiad in 1955 -- Stalinism without Stalin -- "Socialism Is a Child." School and Junior Days -- A New Shift Begins -- The Unbearable Heaviness of Folklore: Folk Dance and Spartakiads -- Sokol Members from the Factories and Offices -- Performances of the Armed Forces -- Spartakiad Symbolism During the "Normalization" Era -- Spartakiads with a Human Face -- "Normalization" Spartakiads as an Image of Social Cohesion
Parents and Children Performing Exercises -- An Amiable Background: Female Performances at Spartakiads during the "Normalization" Era -- Junior Women and "Buds" -- Soldiers and the Crisis of Masculinity -- A Return to Sokol -- The Organization of Spartakiads -- Professional Discourse -- The "Call to Arms" for the 1st All-State Spartakiad in 1955 -- A Return to a Tried-and-True Practice -- Spartakiad Five-Year Plans -- Physical and Ideological Training for the Spartakiad -- Spartakiad Participants in Prague: Transportation, Accommodation and Food -- The Disciplinary Space of Strahov Stadium
The Budget of Spartakiads in the Moral Economy of State Socialism -- Society and Spartakiads -- Open Resistance -- Weapons of the Weak -- Spartakiad Potlatch -- An Enthusiastic Reception -- Conclusion -- Apendix -- Bibliography -- List of Illustrations -- Index
Summary Every five years from 1955 to 1985, mass Czechoslovak gymnastic demonstrations and sporting parades called Spartakiads were held to mark the 1945 liberation of Czechoslovakia. Involving hundreds of thousands of male and female performers of all ages and held in the world's largest stadium-a space built expressly for this purpose-the synchronized and unified movements of the Czech citizenry embodied, quite literally, the idealized Socialist people: a powerful yet pliant force directed by the regime. This book explores the political, social, and aesthetic dimensions of these mass physical demonstrations, with a particular focus on their roots in the völkisch nationalism of the German Turner movement and the Czech Sokol gymnastic tradition. Featuring an abundance of photographs, Spartakiads takes a new approach to Communist history by opening a window onto the mentality and mundanity behind the Iron Curtainches
Subject Gymnastics -- Czechoslovakia
Gymnastics.
Czechoslovakia.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9788024643663
8024643669