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Czechoslovakia

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When Secrets Bloom by Patricia Furstenberg

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Honoring Jews From All Over Europe

134 books — 91 voters

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski

The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš

Penguin Writers from the Other Europe

17 books — 11 voters

Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens by Lynn Hutchinson Lee

Twenty Romani Women You Should Be Reading

46 books — 12 voters

20th Century History of Central Europe

203 books — 58 voters

Cinderella Goes to Market by Barbara Einhorn

Post-Soviet Women Encountering Transition by Kathleen Kuehnast

Daughters of Revolution by Barbara Evans Clements

Economies of Violence by Jennifer Suchland

Women in (post)socialist Europe

18 books — 3 voters

Penguin Central European Classics

10 books — 11 voters

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It’s Literally Summer! 93 Topical Titles for Your Seasonal Reading List.

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Quotes Tagged “Czechoslovakia”

“ Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited suc Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity. ...more ”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

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“ Europeans the Poles or Balts coming in here … we brought here knowledge with us and our culture with us, but we assimilated … assimilated is not one way, it’s a two-way street. - Fred Ritzkowski, German ”
― Peter Brune, Suffering, Redemption and Triumph: The first wave of post-war Australian immigrants 1945-66

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The Gifted Ones Gabriela Herink Book Trailer

Today in History: Soviet Union intervenes in Czechoslovakia (5 min)

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Quotes Tagged “Czechoslovakia”

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