Lessons from the crisis development: the picture of the Prague spring in ''Normalisation prose''

Title:

Lessons from the crisis development: the picture of the Prague spring in ''Normalisation prose''

Creator:

Šporková, Alena

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:145c1cc5-15ba-4e7e-beee-d520c7c4779c
uuid:145c1cc5-15ba-4e7e-beee-d520c7c4779c

Subject:

historiography, normalisation, and socialism

Type:

model:article and TEXT

Format:

bez média and svazek

Description:

The article considers the picture of the year 1968 and what is popularly known as the ''Prague Spring'' as it appears in establishment prose fi ction from the ''Normalisation'' period (that is, the return to hard-line Communism with the defeat of the reform wing of the Party and the years of the Soviet occupation, 1970-89). Normalisation fi ction - in accord with the government publication Poučení z krizového vývoje ve straně a společnosti po XIII. sjezdu KSČ [Lessons from the Crisis Development in the Party and Society after the 13th Congress of the CommunistParty of Czechoslovakia] - tried to legitimise the policy of Normalisation as a new stage in the development of Socialism. The author analyses the plans and model solutions, which helped to form an ideologised interpretation of social development in Czechoslovakia from January to the Soviet-led intervention of Warsaw Pact troops in late August 1968. The article also considers how the authors of this fi ction (a total of sixteen novels, the best known of which is Alexej Pludek’s antiSemitic Vabank [Gamble] portray the broader historical context, how they explain the motivation and aims of the leaders of the reform movement and describe the participation of various social strata in the political events. Some of these works are instructive models of the future life of the main characters and their orientation in the new circumstances in the phase called ''real, existing Socialism'' in the 1970s and ‘80s. Apart from that, the article considers how established literary critics accepted attempts in belles-lettres to depict the recent ''crisis years,'' from which the new regime hoped to distance itself as clearly as possible.

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
policy:public

Coverage:

77-100

Source:

Czech journal of contemporary history | 2014 Volume:2 | Number:1

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false