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Otta Bednářová
Otta Bednářová (née Šmirousová; 18 June 1927 – 5 September 2023) was a Czech journalist, writer, screenwriter, television producer and dissident during Czechoslovakia's communist era. She was an early Charter 77 signatory in 1976 and co-founded the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS) in 1978. She was imprisoned for more than one year for her opposition to communist rule. Biography Bednářová was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on 18 June 1927, the eldest of three daughters of Otylie and Karel Šmirous. She was raised in the village of Všenory near Prague. The family moved to the Kobylisy district of Prague when she was ten years old. During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, her father secretly listened to foreign radio broadcasts, despite fear of arrest. Bednářová lived close to the 1942 Kobylisy Shooting Range massacre and her family helped to extinguish a house fire following the killing of twelve members of a neighboring family. De ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its Prague metropolitan area, metropolitan area is home to approximately 2.3 million people. Prague is a historical city with Romanesque architecture, Romanesque, Czech Gothic architecture, Gothic, Czech Renaissance architecture, Renaissance and Czech Baroque architecture, Baroque architecture. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors, most notably Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV (r. 1346–1378) and Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II (r. 1575–1611). It was an important city to the Habsburg monarchy and Austria-Hungary. The city played major roles in the Bohemian Reformation, Bohemian and the Protestant Reformations, the Thirty Years' War and in 20th-century history a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Czech Radio
Czech Radio (, ČRo) is the public radio broadcaster of the Czech Republic operating continuously since 1923. It is the oldest national radio broadcaster in continental Europe and the second-oldest in Europe after the BBC. Czech Radio was established in 1992 by the Czech Radio Act, which sets out the framework for its operation and finance. It acts as the successor to the previous state-owned Czechoslovak Radio which ceased to exist by 1992. The service broadcasts throughout the Czech Republic nationally and locally. Its four national services are Radiožurnál, Dvojka, Vltava and Plus. Czech Radio operates twelve nationwide stations and another fourteen regional stations. All ČRo stations broadcast via internet stream, digital via DAB+ and DVB, and part analog via terrestrial transmitters. It is based in Prague in a building in Vinohradská třída. History Czechoslovak era ', then ', was established on 18 May 1923, making its first broadcast from a scout tent in the K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Probation
Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offence (law), offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incarceration), such as suspended sentences. In others, probation also includes supervision of those conditionally released from prison on parole. An offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer. During the period of probation, an offender faces the threat of being incarcerated if found breaking the rules set by the court or probation officer. Offenders are ordinarily required to maintain law-abiding behavior, and may be ordered to refrain from possession of firearms, remain employed, participate in an educational program, abide by a curfew, live at a directed place, obey the orders of the probation officer, or not leave the jurisdiction. The probationer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pankrác Prison
Pankrác Prison, officially Prague Pankrác Remand Prison (), is a prison in Prague, Czech Republic. A part of the Czech Prison Service, it is located southeast of Prague city centre in Pankrác, not far from Pražského povstání metro station on Line C. It is used in part for persons awaiting trial and partly for convicted prisoners. Since 2008, women have also been incarcerated here. History 1885–1938 The prison was built in 1885–1889 in order to replace the obsolete St Wenceslas Prison (''Svatováclavská trestnice''), which used to stand between Charles Square and the Vltava River. At the time of its construction, the site for the new prison was out of city limits, amidst fields above Nusle suburb. Nevertheless, the expanding Prague encompassed the prison within several decades. At the time of its opening, the prison was a fairly modern institution with hot air central heating; solitary confinement cells had hot water heating. The prison had gas lighting and i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secret Police
image:Putin-Stasi-Ausweis.png, 300px, Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 1985 to 1989. Both organizations used similar forms of repression. Secret police (or political police) are police, Intelligence agency, intelligence, or Security agency, security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of Authoritarianism, authoritarian and Totalitarianism, totalitarian regimes. They protect the political power of a dictator or regime and often operate outside the law to repress dissidents and weaken political opposition, frequently using violence. They may enjoy legal sanction to hold and charge suspects without ever identifying their organization. History Africa Egypt Egypt is home to Africa and the Middle East's first internal security service: The Stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist Czechoslovakia
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, (Czech and Slovak: ''Československá socialistická republika'', ČSSR) known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic (''Československá republika)'', Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, or simply Czechoslovakia, was the Czechoslovak state from 1948 until 1989, when the country was under communist rule, and was regarded as a satellite state in the Soviet sphere of interest. Following the coup d'état of February 1948, when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia seized power with the support of the Soviet Union, the country was declared a " people's democratic state" when the Ninth-of-May Constitution became effective. The traditional name (''Czechoslovak Republic''), along with several other state symbols, were changed on 11 July 1960 following the implementation of the 1960 Constitution of Czechoslovakia as a symbol of the "final victory of socialism" in the country. In April 1990, shortly after the Velvet Revolution, the Czechos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jiří Pelikán (politician)
Jiří Pelikán (7 February 1923 – 26 June 1999) was a Czechs, Czech journalist and politician. Born in Olomouc, he was a member of the National Assembly (Communist Czechoslovakia), National Assembly in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and later a member of the European Parliament for the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). In 1939, Pelikán joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in exile and took part in the Resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Czech resistance to Nazi Germany occupation during World War II. From 1953 to 1963, he assumed leading functions in the KSČ-led International Union of Students. Until 1968, he was the director of the Czechoslovak Television and a member of the parliament from 1964 to 1969. Pelikán fully supported the Prague Spring and organized the first live debate in common with the Austrian television ORF (broadcaster), ORF. When the troops of the Warsaw Pact entered Prague on 20 August 1968, he organized the resistance a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karel Kaplan
Karel Kaplan (28 August 1928 – 12 March 2023) was a Czech historian. He specialized in the World War II and post-World War II periods in Czechoslovakia. He wrote books about Czech political trials during the 1950s, the situation of Jews in Central Europe during World War II, and the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia. Biography Kaplan was born in Horní Jelení in 1928. During the Prague Spring in 1968, he worked for the Committee of Rehabilitation where he was able to access classified documents of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. After the end of Prague Spring, Kaplan fell into disfavor. He worked in a factory from 1972 to 1976, and in 1976 asked for political asylum in Munich. After his exile he published documents on secret Soviet activities, which were serialised in the Italian magazine ''Panorama''.'Stalin ‘decided on third world war’', ''The Times'' (6 May 1977), p. 1. Kaplan claimed he had discovered files that described a secret meeting in the Kremlin in January ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samizdat
Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because printed texts could be traced back to the source. This was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet censorship. Name origin and variations Etymologically, the word ''samizdat'' derives from ''sam'' ( 'self, by oneself') and ''izdat'' (, an abbreviation of , 'publishing house'), and thus means 'self-published'. Ukrainian has a similar term: ''samvydav'' (самвидав), from ''sam'' 'self' and ''vydavnytstvo'' 'publishing house'. The Russian poet Nikolay Glazkov coined a version of the term as a pun in the 1940s when he typed copies of his poems and included the note ''Samsebyaizdat'' (Самсебяиздат, "Myself by Myself Publishers") on the front page. ''Tamizdat'' refers to lit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist Party Of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ( Czech and Slovak: ''Komunistická strana Československa'', KSČ) was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Comintern. Between 1929 and 1953, it was led by Klement Gottwald. The KSČ was the sole governing party in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic though it was a leading party along with the Slovak branch and four other legally permitted non-communist parties. After its election victory in 1946, it seized power in the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état and established a one-party state allied with the Soviet Union. Nationalization of virtually all private enterprises followed, and a command economy was implemented. The KSČ was committed to the pursuit of communism, and after Joseph Stalin's rise to power Marxism–Leninism became formalized as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so throughout the rest of its existence. Consequen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warsaw Pact Invasion Of Czechoslovakia
On 20–21 August 1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four fellow Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and the Hungarian People's Republic. The invasion stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authoritarian wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). About 250,000 Warsaw Pact troops (afterwards rising to about 500,000), supported by thousands of tanks and hundreds of aircraft, participated in the overnight operation, which was code-named Operation Danube. The Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania refused to participate. East German forces, except for a small number of specialists, were ordered by Moscow not to cross the Czechoslovak border just hours before the invasion, because of fears of greater resistance if German troops were involved, due to public perception of the previous German oc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Czechoslovak Television
Czech Television ( ; abbreviation: ČT) is a public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic, broadcasting six channels. Established after breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1992, it is the successor to Czechoslovak Television founded in 1953. History 1953–1992: Czechoslovak Television Founded on 1 May 1953, Czechoslovak Television (ČST) was the state television broadcaster of Czechoslovakia used as a Propaganda, state propaganda medium of the then Socialism, socialist state. It was known by three names over its lifetime: , (until 1990), and (from 1990 until 1992). ČST originally consisted of a single channel and limited experimental broadcasting in 1953. Regular broadcasts began on 25 February 1954 and on 10 May 1970, a second channel was launched. The broadcast language of ČST was predominantly Czech in the first channel, Slovak for selected programming, and both for news. The second channel was split into two, broadcasting various "national" language programming in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
