Naděje a iluze - Čeští a slovenští spisovatelé v reformním hnutí šedesátých let – Mervart Jan (2011)

The book uncovers the complicated relationships between Czech and Slovak communist writers and the party establishment during the years 1963–1968. The author focuses on individual cases that can be considered neuralgic points of the then-official cultural policy as well as undeniable prerequisites for the reform process of the Prague Spring of 1968. Against this backdrop, he simultaneously traces the intellectual development of reform-minded writers. He records the changes in their attitudes towards the current politics of the party leadership of Antonín Novotný and Alexander Dubček, addresses the internal ideological differentiation within the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, and presents this organization as an important pressure group with considerable political and social influence. Jan Mervart's conception also transcends purely national definitions of the topic and focuses on the differences in the approaches of Slovak and Czech writers towards their own political elites. Thus, it offers an answer to the question of the causes of the differing nature of social processes in both parts of the republic at the end of the sixties. It is evident that although the reform process exhibited similar tendencies in the Czech lands and Slovakia, there is no clear temporal or thematic parallel between Prague and Bratislava...