''Příruční slovník naučný'' (PSN) was a four-volume

encyclopedia An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article (publishing), articles or entries that are arranged Alp ...

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

published in

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

between 1962 and 1966. The encyclopedia was published by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. The aim was to displace the older '' Otto's encyclopedia'' by a new work, fitting the political views of the

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 Com ...

. Apart from traditional items it contains a large amount of (very flattering) information about the worldwide communist movement and its leaders, and about countries of the

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...

. The main editor was academician Vladimír Procházka. The volumes have around 800 to 900 pages of dense print each. The encyclopedia was mandatorily bought by all organisations in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia; tens of thousands were printed.

References

Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Communist books Czech encyclopedias 1962 non-fiction books 20th-century encyclopedias {{Czech-stub