FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W1999437333> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W1999437333 endingPage "854" @default.
• W1999437333 startingPage "831" @default.
• W1999437333 abstract "Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall … Is the West the Fairest of Them All? Czechoslovak Normalization and Its (Dis)Contents Paulina Bren (bio) Against the backdrop of Stalinist show trials, intellectual censorship, and sealed-off borders, Czechs and Slovaks during the 1950s watched as the “West” was transformed from the once familiar to the imagined. This shift was a particularly heavy blow for the Czechs who, until then, had considered themselves to sit squarely within the tradition of West European culture and thought, sharing in the positive attributes that came with it. Yet Western Europe and its concomitant values had seemingly slipped from their hands and moved irreversibly to the other side of the Iron Curtain. When they looked into their collective mirror, it was the “East” and the Soviet bloc that they now saw. But the Soviet Union, embraced immediately after World War II when it was briefly seen as a centrifuge of progress and political liberation, was increasingly viewed by many in Czechoslovakia as a non-European, and indeed decidedly alien, political and social entity. If asked, most Czechs no longer considered the Soviet Union and Stalin to be “the fairest of them all.” Differences between East and West, both imagined and real, were emphatically symbolized by the existence and impermeability of the Iron Curtain. Not only did citizens assign symbolic significance to this “other Europe,” now out of their reach, but so too did the newly installed communist governments anxious to deflect sympathies for the West. Within the state media, the West sometimes became imagined in the most vivid sense, as, for example, in the early 1950s when a genuine agricultural crisis coincided with the Slánský Stalinist show trial. In the press, the presumed guilt of the trial’s defendants was reified as potato beetle plagues let loose on the Eastern bloc by the West. These ruinous “American beetles,” as they were known, were said to have been swept in with the “help of the clouds and winds of the Western [End Page 831] imperialists, as well as with the help of their terrorist agents sent over.”1 More commonly, any knowledge of the West was simply expunged from everyday life. As Heda Kovály writes in her memoir: “Once I was listening to the news on the radio and caught the word ‘Netherlands.’ I pricked up my ears but the news item was only that the Soviet Folk Dance Collective had enjoyed a great success in Amsterdam. That was the only bit of news from the West that we had had for months.”2 Both the silence and the caricatures began to dissolve in the 1960s as the West was permitted finally to permeate the Iron Curtain. Simultaneously, intense feelings emerged over what that Cold War barrier—both its physical incarnation and its intellectual, political, and economic fallout—had meant to postwar Czechoslovakia. Famously, at the 1967 Writers’ Congress in a castle outside Prague, Czechoslovakia’s best-known writers and intellectuals publicly expressed for the first time their deep disappointment over postwar socialism and bore witness to this collective bitterness over Czechoslovakia’s ejection from the “West.” Here the writer Ludvík Vaculík took to the podium to lament: “in 20 years not one social question [lidská otázka] has been solved—from people’s primary needs … to more subtle needs.… And I fear that neither did we rise on the world scene; I feel that our republic has lost its good name.”3 What he meant was that the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic had lost its place in the West—both geographically and culturally. As political and social liberalization now crept into Czechoslovakia, culminating in the Prague Spring, the “West,” like a long-censured monument to the dear and departed, was slowly unveiled again and opened to the viewing public. My purpose here is to trace how the “West,” once resuscitated from the censure of the Stalinist 1950s, was re-imagined in various forms and incorporated into the project of communism in quite surprising ways.4 My focus is [End Page 832] on two periods; first, the 1960s and the Prague Spring; and second, the 1970s and 1980s, known as normalization. During the Prague Spring..." @default.
• W1999437333 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W1999437333 creator A5090458128 @default.
• W1999437333 date "2008-01-01" @default.
• W1999437333 modified "2023-10-13" @default.
• W1999437333 title "Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall … Is the West the Fairest of Them All?: Czechoslovak Normalization and Its (Dis)Contents" @default.
• W1999437333 cites W1862352631 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W1965051717 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W2037195512 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W2045020387 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W2062717010 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W2200414321 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W2613500688 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W592131209 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W611331901 @default.
• W1999437333 cites W640508608 @default.
• W1999437333 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.0.0038" @default.
• W1999437333 hasPublicationYear "2008" @default.
• W1999437333 type Work @default.
• W1999437333 sameAs 1999437333 @default.
• W1999437333 citedByCount "5" @default.
• W1999437333 countsByYear W19994373332013 @default.
• W1999437333 countsByYear W19994373332015 @default.
• W1999437333 countsByYear W19994373332022 @default.
• W1999437333 countsByYear W19994373332023 @default.
• W1999437333 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W1999437333 hasAuthorship W1999437333A5090458128 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C11413529 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C136886441 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C144024400 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C206261972 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C2776233202 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C2779530609 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C2986359222 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C36289849 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C41008148 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C48103436 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C52930066 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C542948173 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C6303427 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C11413529 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C136886441 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C144024400 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C17744445 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C199539241 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C206261972 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C2776233202 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C2779530609 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C2986359222 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C36289849 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C41008148 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C48103436 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C52930066 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C542948173 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C6303427 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C94625758 @default.
• W1999437333 hasConceptScore W1999437333C95457728 @default.
• W1999437333 hasIssue "4" @default.
• W1999437333 hasLocation W19994373331 @default.
• W1999437333 hasOpenAccess W1999437333 @default.
• W1999437333 hasPrimaryLocation W19994373331 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W1541225862 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W1588308107 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W1999437333 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W2007508387 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W2108602788 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W2555349646 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W4302340202 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W619429888 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W2528108083 @default.
• W1999437333 hasRelatedWork W51919056 @default.
• W1999437333 hasVolume "9" @default.
• W1999437333 isParatext "false" @default.
• W1999437333 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W1999437333 magId "1999437333" @default.
• W1999437333 workType "article" @default.