This is a chronicle of one of the many ethnic groups in Canada, a group of about 80,000 people of Czech and Slovak origin who now live in this country. In the authors' own words, "the book is addressed both to Canadian-Canadians and to Czech-and-Slovak Canadians (if there is such a distinction)." The latter will learn from it who their fellow citizens of similar origin are, where they came from, what they brought to this country, and how they succeeded here. The book provides the "Canadian-Canadian" with a straightforward history of the Czechs and Slovaks, their settlement and cultural organizations, and gives some account of the many Czechs and Slovaks who have made their mark in Canada. It is published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918.
During the Cold War, more than 36,000 individuals entering Canada claimed Czechoslovakia as their country of citizenship. A defining characteristic of this migration of predominantly political refugees was the prevalence of anti-communist and democratic values. Diplomats, industrialists, politicians, professionals, workers, and students fled to the West in search of freedom, security, and economic opportunity. Jan Raska’s Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada explores how these newcomers joined or formed ethnocultural organizations to help in their attempts to affect developments in Czechoslovakia and Canadian foreign policy towards their homeland. Canadian authorities further legitimized the Czech refugees’ anti-communist agenda and increased their influence in Czechoslovak institutions. In turn, these organizations supported Canada’s Cold War agenda of securing the state from communist infiltration. Ultimately, an adherence to anti-communism, the promotion of Canadian citizenship, and the cultivation of a Czechoslovak ethnocultural heritage accelerated Czech refugees’ socioeconomic and political integration in Cold War Canada. By analyzing oral histories, government files, ethnic newspapers, and community archival records, Raska reveals how Czech refugees secured admission as desirable immigrants and navigated existing social, cultural, and political norms in Cold War Canada.
During World War I, a specialized Russian battalion comprised of ethnic Czechs and Czech and Slovak prisoners of war--the Legion--became a pawn in an international game of power and deceit. The Legion's detour through Siberia became the greatest human interest story of the war, chronicled weekly in the New York Times and New York Herald. More than half of the Legion's troops lost their lives as the evacuation of Czech and Slovak POWs through Vladivostok precipitated the murder of the Russian royal family and forced the Legion to act as protectors of the Russian treasury and the Trans-Siberian Railway while the White and Red armies battled. For political purposes, tales of the Legion's odyssey have been buried or expunged. This volume offers the seminal account of this hidden yet epic journey, shedding light on a fascinating but forgotten facet of World War I.
Literature and historical writing among the Czechs, as among many other nations lacking a political state, played a vital role in promoting national consciousness. This volume, written to honour the seventieth birthday of the eminent Czech historian Otakar Odložík, contains essays by outstanding scholars from Canada, Czechoslovakia, Britain, and the United States which examine significant episodes in the development of modern Czech nationalism from its origins in the late eighteenth century to the birth of an independent nation after the First World War. The main emphasis is on the middle decades of the nineteenth century, which were crucial for mapping the direction Czech nationalism was to take during the subsequent hundred years. The stand of the Czech and Slovak peoples in the crisis of August 1968 reflected the deep roots of their patriotism which developed during the nineteenth-century national renascence. This volume contains essays on Dobrovský, the pioneer of Czech language studies, and on Palacký, the author of the first great national history, as well as on other facets of literary history which have influenced national feeling. A Prague scholar investigates the social structure of the early Czech patriotic intelligentsia and reaches conclusions which considerably modify hitherto existing views. Two contributions examine the role of the press in the emergence of Czech nationalism; the Matice Ceskà, a leading patriotic literary foundation, is the subject of one of the studies. Slovak and Lusatian Serb, German, and American reaction to the Czech national renascence is examined in a series of chapters. The political expression of Czech nationalism, first during the Year of Revolutions, 1848, and then from the late 1870s until the early years of the twentieth century, is subjected to analysis in several studies. Finally, there is a brief review of the problems associated with the Czech-Slovak background of Tomáš Masaryk, the creator of modern Czechoslovakia. A fitting tribute to an outstanding scholar, this volume makes an important contribution to the literature in English on nineteenth-century Czech lands.
OECD's 1994 Economic Survey of the Czech and Slovak Republics examines economic developments prior to the dissolution of the Federation, economic issues in the dissolution of the Federation, the economy of the Czech Republic, and the economy of the Slovak Republic.
The essays in the book compare the Czech Republic and Slovakia since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The papers deal with the causes of the divorce and discuss the political, economic and social developments in the new countries. This is the only English-language volume that presents the synoptic findings of leading Czech, Slovak, and North American scholars in the field.The authors include two former Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, eight leading scholars (four Czechs and four Slovaks), and eight knowledgeable commentators from North America. The most significant new insight is that in spite of predictions by various pundits in the Western World that Czechia would flourish after the breakup and Slovakia would languish, the opposite has happened. While the Czech Republic did well in its early years, it is now languishing while Slovakia, which had a rough start, is now doing very well. Anyone interested in the history of the Czech and Slovak Republics over the last twenty years will find gratification in reading this book.
The contribution to the development and culture of America by the immigrants from the territory of former Czechoslovakia, be they Czechs or Slovaks, or Bohemians, as they used to be called, has been enormous. Yet little has been written about the subject. This compendium is part of an effort to correct this glaring deficiency. In this compendium, the focus is on religion, law and jurisprudence, business and entrepreneurship and the notable people in the government, with the narration and assessment about the Czechoslovak American explorers, adventurers and pioneers who paved the way for the colonists and settlers who followed them. An important role among them played the social movement activists. some of whose ideas won the respect and ultimately acceptance by general population, to which subject an entire section has been devoted. Among other, you will find among them abolitionists, freethinkers. suffragists, civil & human rights activists, environmentalists and conservationists, climate change activists, philanthropists, inventors and even futurists or futurologists. Their innovative ideas, inevitably, led to the rise of the plethora of Czech and Slovak American leaders, encompassing, practically, every aspect of human endeavor. As stated in the Foreword, this reference will serve as a powerful research tool for many years to come for scholars and all Czechs and Slovaks on both sides of the Atlantic.
In September 1938, the Munich Agreement delivered the Sudetenland to Germany. Six months later, HitlerÕs troops marched unopposed into Prague and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and MoraviaÑthe first non-German territory to be occupied by Nazi Germany. Although Czechs outnumbered Germans thirty to one, Nazi leaders were determined to make the region entirely German. Chad Bryant explores the origins and implementation of these plans as part of a wider history of Nazi rule and its consequences for the region. To make the Protectorate German, half the Czech population (and all Jews) would be expelled or killed, with the other half assimilated into a German national community with the correct racial and cultural composition. With the arrival of Reinhard Heydrich, Germanization measures accelerated. People faced mounting pressure from all sides. The Nazis required their subjects to act (and speak) German, while Czech patriots, and exiled leaders, pressed their countrymen to act as Ògood Czechs.Ó By destroying democratic institutions, harnessing the economy, redefining citizenship, murdering the Jews, and creating a climate of terror, the Nazi occupation set the stage for the postwar expulsion of CzechoslovakiaÕs three million Germans and for the CommunistsÕ rise to power in 1948. The region, Bryant shows, became entirely Czech, but not before Nazi rulers and their postwar successors had changed forever what it meant to be Czech, or German.
