During the Cold War, the West--especially in the popular media--tended to view communism as a monolithic phenomenon, with little variation throughout the Eastern Bloc. Yet culture and geography contributed to social diversity among and within communist systems. Drawing on interviews with approximately 100 Czechs and Slovaks, the author provides new perspectives on day-to-day life in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Their recollections paint a more complex picture of the life on the other side of the Iron Curtain, from the Sputnik era reforms of the early 1960s, through the tumult of the 1968 Prague Spring and the subsequent Soviet invasion, to the Velvet Revolution, the collapse of the communist regime and the formation of democratic Czechoslovakia in 1989.

How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc. Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.

Take a journey into the borderland of the red empire, during an ideological battle that saw the world ripped in half. Dare to step into communist Czechoslovakia, where the controlled 'east' and the free 'west' converged at their closest. This is a story of ordinary people caught up in the midst of the 20th century's greatest political experiment. Through tales only told in whispers, glimpse into the everyday reality of those whose entire universe was ruled by the hammer and sickle.

During the Cold War, the West--especially in the popular media--tended to view communism as a monolithic phenomenon, with little variation throughout the Eastern Bloc. Yet culture and geography contributed to social diversity among and within communist systems. Drawing on interviews with approximately 100 Czechs and Slovaks, the author provides new perspectives on day-to-day life in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Their recollections paint a more complex picture of the life on the other side of the Iron Curtain, from the Sputnik era reforms of the early 1960s, through the tumult of the 1968 Prague Spring and the subsequent Soviet invasion, to the Velvet Revolution, the collapse of the communist regime and the formation of democratic Czechoslovakia in 1989.

Every five years from 1955 to 1985, mass Czechoslovak gymnastic demonstrations and sporting parades called Spartakiads were held to mark the 1945 liberation of Czechoslovakia. Involving hundreds of thousands of male and female performers of all ages and held in the world’s largest stadium—a space built expressly for this purpose—the synchronized and unified movements of the Czech citizenry embodied, quite literally, the idealized Socialist people: a powerful yet pliant force directed by the regime. This book explores the political, social, and aesthetic dimensions of these mass physical demonstrations, with a particular focus on their roots in the völkisch nationalism of the German Turner movement and the Czech Sokol gymnastic tradition. Featuring an abundance of photographs, Spartakiads takes a new approach to Communist history by opening a window onto the mentality and mundanity behind the Iron Curtain.

Animation Behind the Iron Curtain is a journey of discovery into the world of Soviet era animation from Eastern Bloc countries. From Jerzy Kucia's brutally exquisite Reflections in Poland to the sci-fi adventure of Ott in Space by Estonian puppet master Elbert Tuganov to the endearing Gopo's little man by Ion Popescu-Gopo in Romania, this excursion into Soviet era animation brings to light magnificent art, ruminations on the human condition, and celebrations of innocence and joy. As art reveals the spirit of the times, animation art of Eastern Europe during the Cold War, funded by the Soviet states, allowed artists to create works illuminating to their experiences, hopes, and fears. The political ideology of the time ironically supported these artists while simultaneously suppressing more direct critiques of Soviet life. Politics shaped the world of these artists who then fashioned their realities into amazing works of animation. Their art is integral to the circumstances in which they lived, which is why this book combines the unlikely combination of world politics and animated cartoons. The phenomenal animated films shared in this book offer a glimpse into the culture and hearts of Soviet citizens who grew up with characters as familiar and beloved to them as Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny are to Americans. This book lays out the basic political dynamics of the Cold War and how those political tensions affected the animation industry in both the US and in the Eastern Bloc. And, for animation novices and enthusiasts alike, Animation Behind the Iron Curtain also offers breakout sections to explain many of the techniques and aesthetic considerations that go into this fascinating art form. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Cold War era and really cool animated films!

In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

A revisionist history, this volume sets out to debunk many of the myths about Czechoslovakia.

"In addition to revealing the events surrounding the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is the first book to document a Cold War crisis from both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is based on unprecedented access to the previously closed archives of each member of the Warsaw Pact, as well as once highly classified American documents from the National Security Council, CIA, and other intelligence agencies." "Presented in a highly readable volume, the book offers top-level documents from Kremlin Politburo meetings, multilateral sessions of the Warsaw Pact leading up to the decision to invade, transcripts of KGB-recorded telephone conversations between Leonid Brezhnev and Alexander Dubcek." "To provide a historical and political context, the editors have prepared essays to introduce each section of the volume. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information for the reader." "The editors have a unique perspective to offer to foreign audiences since they are members of the commission appointed by Vaclav Havel to investigate the events of 1967-1970."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Room Simon Mawer returns to Czechoslovakia, this time during the turbulent 1960s, with a suspenseful story that mixes sex, politics, and betrayal. In the summer of 1968--a year of love and hate, of Prague Spring and Cold War winter--Oxford students James Borthwick and Eleanor Pike set out to hitchhike across Europe, complicating a budding friendship that could be something more. Having reached southern Germany, they decide on a whim to visit Czechoslovakia, where Alexander Dubček's "socialism with a human face" is smiling on the world. Meanwhile, Sam Wareham, First Secretary at the British embassy in Prague, is observing developments in the country with both a diplomat's cynicism and a young man's passion. In the company of Czech student Lenka Konečková, he finds a way into the world of Czechoslovak youth, its hopes and its ideas. For the first time, nothing seems off limits behind the Iron Curtain. Yet the wheels of politics are grinding in the background. The Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev is making demands of Dubček, and the Red Army is amassed on the borders. How will the looming disaster affect those fragile lives caught up in the invasion? With this shrewd, engrossing, and sensual novel, Simon Mawer cements his status as one of the most talented writers of historical spy fiction today.