Spartakiads: The Politics of Physical Culture in Communist Czechoslovakia

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