http://radio.cz/en/article/145518 A weekly look back at some of the unique recordings in Czech Radio's archives. en Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:01:00 +0100 Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:01:00 +0100 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Radio Prague CMS 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Radio Broadcasting cr@radio.cz (Cesky Rozhlas) webmaster@radio.cz (CRo Webmaster) http://radio.cz/en/article/145518 Nothing better symbolizes the political thaw in 1960s Czechoslovakia than the boom in jazz, which many saw as embodying the very idea of individual expression and freedom from constraint. It is not hard to imagine the excitement when Louis Armstrong came to Prague in March 1965. Many people felt that Czechoslovakia had at last come in from the cold, and his concert at Prague’s Lucerna Ballroom was a cultural milestone. It ended with Satchmo thanking his audience, commenting that the Czech passion for jazz had come as quite a surprise to him. Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:2cc9b10d-a01f-5e07-b3bb-7fe48ea15e94 http://radio.cz/en/article/145320 In last week’s From the Archives we featured Martin Luther King, interviewed by Czechoslovak Radio in 1963. But Dr King was not the first civil rights campaigner to address Czech and Slovak radio listeners. Four years earlier, in June 1959, Paul Robeson came to Prague, to take part in an international left-wing cultural congress. Robeson was a man of many talents – singer, actor, athlete, writer and civil rights activist. He never concealed his sympathies with the communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc, and his political views – combined with the colour of his skin – earned him virtual pariah status in many sections of the US political establishment. This culminated in 1950 when he was refused a passport. Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:43a99b67-ba7e-5077-916d-e16419fa3d63 http://radio.cz/en/article/145108 “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” The unforgettable words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., delivered on August 28 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The speech, addressed to a crowd of a quarter of a million, was a defining moment in the American civil rights movement, and its echoes reached as far as communist Eastern Europe. In Czechoslovakia the civil rights movement had already aroused considerable interest, and not just because of the pleasure that the regime took in pointing to America’s shortcomings; Czechoslovak Radio's correspondent in the United States, Karel Kyncl, had already interviewed Dr King in March of that same year. Here is a short extract from the interview, where Dr King has just been outlining the progress made so far in ending segregation: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:8a04154a-12b4-5a34-b026-94308adb6611 http://radio.cz/en/article/144963 The early 1960s saw dramatic developments in the Cold War, with the building of the Berlin Wall and then the brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But there were also signs of a greater pragmatism in East-West relations. One channel for dialogue was a series of international gatherings, where scholars and public figures discussed how to reduce the risk of armed conflict. These were known as the Pugwash Conferences, named after the town in Canada where the idea was first launched back in 1957. In September 1964, one such conference was held in the Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary. Sat, 21 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:81ab2747-ae08-55f3-92af-81ea1ea56b7e http://radio.cz/en/article/144790 Czechoslovakia played an active part in the Soviet Union’s propaganda war with the United States during the 1950s, a time of edginess and paranoia on both sides. There was no shortage of people trying to flee across the Iron Curtain to the West, but every now and then the flight would be in the other direction, and someone from the West would actively seek asylum in the Communist Bloc. For the communist regimes this was a propaganda opportunity not to be missed. Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:b11c24d5-7f21-5a86-9cc0-a6387d1fab37 http://radio.cz/en/article/144610 By the mid 1960s political control over many aspects of cultural and social life in Czechoslovakia had relaxed considerably. This was the height of the “New Wave” in Czechoslovak cinema, in theatre socialist realism had long gone out of fashion and in music the swinging sixties were well under way. But it wasn’t just through the music it was playing that Czechoslovak Radio tried to keep pace with the changes. One programme that broke the traditional mould was launched in 1966 and was called “The 33 Questions of Marcel Proust”. These were questions that the French novelist had compiled in the belief that by answering them you could better understand your inner self. In the programme, a well known personality would answer questions based on Proust’s list. Sat, 07 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:7e32a82f-c07d-5dd7-b9b3-589c836a5961 http://radio.cz/en/article/144101 With Christmas just round the corner, we break our chronological journey through the archives this week to go back to Christmas 1945. We’re in Kročehlavy, a suburb of the industrial town of Kladno near Prague. This was home to the survivors of one of the horrors of the wartime occupation, the murder in June 1942 of all the men and most of the children from the nearby village of Lidice. Only one Lidice family had survived the massacre intact: Josef Horák was one of two young pilots from the village who had fled at the beginning of the occupation, and he spent the war serving in Britain’s Royal Air Force. After the liberation he moved straight back to Czechoslovakia with his English wife Wynne and their two small children. The family was a symbol of a new life for Lidice, and over Christmas 1945 Czechoslovak Radio arranged a radio bridge to Britain from a Christmas party in the Horáks’ living room. Here is a slightly edited version of that broadcast. Sat, 17 Dec 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:e4d73b98-bb32-55b6-8130-6b0819b52dc8 http://radio.cz/en/article/143898 Even after the death of Stalin in the Soviet Union and Klement Gottwald in Czechoslovakia the 1950s remained a period of high political tension between East and West. The Cold War was at its height; with it came the arms race and the space race. Here is Czechoslovakia’s president Antonín Novotný, in a New Year radio address on January 1 1958: Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:497edf26-6c22-5436-88d2-2becd98eeabc http://radio.cz/en/article/143712 When Joseph Stalin died on March 5 1953, it sent shockwaves round the world. In Czechoslovakia his personality cult had been almost as overwhelming as in the Soviet Union itself. At the time of his death, work was already well under way to build the biggest statue of the Soviet dictator in the world – unveiled two years later in Letná Park. Stalin had a close ally and kindred spirit in the Czechoslovak President, Klement Gottwald, and Gottwald ignored warnings from his doctors in order to attend his friend and protector’s funeral. Before leading the Czechoslovak delegation to Moscow, he had a few words for his country’s citizens. Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:a6ae24c0-4674-550d-9e2b-d848282ee1c5 http://radio.cz/en/article/143532 The early 1950s in Czechoslovakia was a bleak period in the country’s history, but there was also some escape from politics. In 1952 the Summer Olympics were held in the Finnish capital Helsinki and the undisputed hero of the games was the greatest Czech runner of all time, Emil Zátopek. Despite his extraordinary style, with his face contorted, his head and torso swinging, and emitting sounds that earned him the nickname of “the Czech locomotive”, he went to Helsinki having already twice broken the world record over 20 kilometres. His dream at the Olympics was to win two gold medals: in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres. Czechoslovak Radio’s Bohuš Ujček and Vítězslav Mokroš were there to report on the event. Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:6af17a70-5e9c-5105-9cf6-ef6a24848ad5 http://radio.cz/en/article/143159 After the communist coup, Czechoslovak Radio was at the political vanguard and transformed into a tool of propaganda. One of the first big changes at Radio Prague was that our familiar call signal from Dvořák’s New World Symphony was replaced by a stirring socialist anthem – “Ku předu levá”. The words are simple: “Left foot forwards, left foot forwards, and never a backwards step.” All broadcasts acquired a political hue. Here, for example, is a factory worker, talking about his first love: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:f0064e31-15e4-5857-91b2-f2ba1c8c094a http://radio.cz/en/article/143025 Many people in Czechoslovakia greeted the communist coup of February 1948 with enthusiasm, in the belief that the horrors of the war should never be allowed to happen again. But following the model of Stalin’s Soviet Union, it was not long before a period of political terror began, with thousands of arrests and then a series of political show trials. The most horrific symbol of the period was the trial and execution of Milada Horáková. She had been one of the most enlightened politicians of the pre-war Czechoslovak Republic, a champion of democracy and women’s rights, and had spent most of the war in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. Sat, 05 Nov 2011 02:01:00 +0100 urn:uuid:e2a46257-2608-5354-a4d4-ee403274b386 http://radio.cz/en/article/142806 “We are a small country with a great tradition of freedom. We shall not give it up.” These are the words of Jan Masaryk, the son of Czechoslovakia’s first President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, addressing American servicemen in Plzeň in a tone of great optimism in November 1945. During the wartime occupation Masaryk had served as Czechoslovak foreign minister in exile in London, and he remained in the post after his return home, deciding to stay on even after the communist coup of February 1948. His immense popularity meant that the communists put up with his presence, although his pro-Western views, reinforced by the fact that his mother had been American, were totally at odds with the rest of the government. Sat, 29 Oct 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:78b3d3e7-b438-582c-a29a-cedc1062057c http://radio.cz/en/article/142661 In the immediate aftermath of the political coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the communists were keen to give the world the impression that it was business as usual and that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. In this respect Radio Prague as the international service of Czechoslovak Radio was expected to play its part, and so the communists asked the handful of British nationals working for one of Czechoslovakia’s biggest companies to make a statement in English for the radio. As a result one of the British staff of the shoe-making giant Baťa, which had already been nationalized more than two years earlier, addressed Radio Prague’s listeners on March 1 1948, exactly a week after the communist coup: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:840e3385-8e17-5108-bad9-969f6849c285 http://radio.cz/en/article/142460 In last week’s programme we heard about the Communist-led government that emerged from Czechoslovakia’s elections in May 1946. Although the number of parties allowed to take part had been limited, Czechoslovakia was still a multi-party democracy. But the governing coalition was an uneasy one, with the non-communist parties pushed into ever greater isolation, while the communists, with the weight of the Soviet Union behind them, gained an ever stronger foothold. Sat, 15 Oct 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:18a56224-1f06-58fe-a865-20d5de9fe902 http://radio.cz/en/article/142282 A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) was one of the best-known and most influential British historians of the 20th century. He is remembered in particular for his provocative left-wing political views and his conviction that German history made the country uniquely inclined towards aggression and expansionism. This made him an ardent opponent of attempts to rebuild Germany’s economy after the war, and a strong supporter of Czechoslovakia’s growing alliance with the Soviet Union. In July 1946, just after elections which saw the Communists emerge as the strongest single party, Taylor visited Czechoslovakia. Sat, 08 Oct 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:1ce6a16a-3f49-519a-9970-29531b254f22 http://radio.cz/en/article/142088 During World War II, the political left in Britain and the United States had come to identify itself strongly with the fate of the Czech nation. This was partly a reaction to the shame of Munich in 1938, when Czechoslovakia had been abandoned by her allies, and it was reinforced by the role played by the British miners in launching the Lidice Shall Live movement. This had followed the Nazis’ destruction of the Czech mining village of Lidice in June 1942. In this spirit the president of the British Miners’ Federation Will Lawther, came at the end of 1945 to lay a wreath at the grave of the men of Lidice. Sat, 01 Oct 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:e8c204c0-1684-5301-8b83-183479bd7681 http://radio.cz/en/article/141906 In From the Archives this week we carry on where we left off at the end of August in our chronological journey through the Czech Radio archives. We had reached the point just after the end of World War Two; after the initial euphoria, the hard work of rebuilding the country began: not least at the Czechoslovak Radio building itself, which had been shot to pieces in the Prague Uprising and received a direct hit from a German aerial torpedo. Sat, 24 Sep 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:4709f20b-f561-5c49-9c37-7bc6182ba693 http://radio.cz/en/article/141726 Because August 21 is the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the radio played such a central role in the events of those dramatic days, in this edition of From the Archives we shall be hearing the memories of one of the key journalists involved in those dramatic events. The late Jiří Dienstbier was one of Czechoslovak Radio’s star reporters at the time. Later he was to become one of the best-known dissidents of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and after the Velvet Revolution he was the country’s first post-communist foreign minister. On the morning of August 21 1968, he was one of several radio journalists, playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet occupiers, as the Soviets tried to silence the radio station. In some of the recordings that survive, you can hear quite distinctly tanks and machine-gun fire in the background. Sat, 17 Sep 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:20ae64b9-f983-515d-95a4-ecd647df98b0 http://radio.cz/en/article/141578 It was eight years ago this week that our much-loved colleague, Olga Szántová, died at the age of 71. As a child she had spent most of World War II in New York, which was where she picked up her perfect East-Side English. Olga became one of the most familiar voices of Radio Prague’s English broadcasts during the political thaw of the 1960s, and she was also among the radio journalists who managed to carry on broadcasting secretly during the Soviet invasion of 1968, as several recordings from the time still bear witness. Sat, 10 Sep 2011 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:5fb90f5d-5039-5737-8665-3774702f0c9f