Spartakiads: The Politics of Physical Culture in Communist Czechoslovakia

Description

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