Impresarios of identity: How the leaders of Czechoslovakia's 'Candlelight Demonstration' enabled effective collective action in a context of repression.

This paper presents an analysis of identity leadership (Haslam et al., The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence and power, Routledge, 2020) in the 1988 'Candlelight Demonstration' in Bratislava which was a precursor to the 1989 Velvet Revolution. The analysis is based on interviews with the five remaining leaders of the demonstration and addresses three core issues. First, how leaders use performative means (identity impresarioship) as well as limited rhetorical means (identity entrepreneurship) to assemble protestors and create a sense of shared identity amongst them. Second, how these strategies of mobilization are linked to the highly repressive context in which the demonstration took place. Third, we analyse the extent to which these strategies are rooted in a psychological understanding of the processes of mobilization. We conclude by addressing the implications for our general understanding of leadership and the mobilization of collective action and the need for more research into these processes under conditions of repression.

Emigration of Scientists From Czechoslovakia During the Soviet Domination.

Czechoslovakia was created after the First World War in 1918 as a common state of Czechs, Moravians, and Slovaks. After several transformations, 2 separate republics were established from Czechoslovakia in 1993: the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The objective of this article was to analyze the Prague Spring (1968), the period after the invasion into Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact Troops (1968), the period of cruel normalization (1968-1989), and the influence of Soviet domination in the Czechoslovak Republic on people with higher education. The invasion of the Warsaw Pact Troops into Czechoslovakia and the period of normalization had a highly negative impact on the life and work of the Czechoslovak people. Many eminent scientists left the Republic. The reason for this was persecution for their attitude to the situation behind the Iron Curtain. Professor Jan Brod, a world-renowned nephrologist and cardiologist, one of the signatories of the Two Thousand Words Manifesto, emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1968. Professor William Ganz, a world-renowned cardiologist of Slovak origin, emigrated to the United States in 1966. With Jeremy Swan, he was a coinventor of the Swan-Ganz balloon flotation catheter. Primary reasons for the emigration of scientists from Czechoslovakia was the suppression of the nascent democracy (the Prague Spring in 1968 by the invasion of Warsaw Pact Troops and the continuation of Soviet rule).

Otakar Tardy, the founder of the ENT department in Litomysl - commemoration on the 45th anniversary of his death.

Otakar Tardy was born on June 14th 1907 in Kutná Hora. He graduated from the medical faculty of Masaryk university in Brno and trained at the local ENT clinic under the supervision of professor Frantisek Ninger. In 1938 he founded the ENT department in Litomysl, one of the largest in Czechoslovakia. He significantly contributed to the development of organized health care in the East Bohemian region and was very involved in social life. He headed the department until 1971 when he retired. He died in 1978.

Obedient mothers, healthy children: communication on the risks of reproduction in state-socialist Czechoslovakia.

The article analyses medical communication in popular media relating to the risks in reproduction in the state-socialist Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989 and shows how it used emotions as an instrument to control women's reproductive behaviour. In particular, we use an approach inspired by Donati's (1992) political discourse analysis and by Snow and Bedford's (1988) framing analysis to explore communication on the risk of infertility in the abortion debate, the risk of fetal abnormalities in the prenatal screening debate, and the risk of emotional deprivation and morbidity in infants in the debate on mothering practices. The analysis contributes to the knowledge on how the construction of risk in reproduction, including childcare, serves to create a moral order of motherhood by defining what constitutes 'irresponsible' reproductive behaviours and their associated risks, and in doing so may lead to the further marginalisation of already marginalised people. We explain how expert discourse on reproduction and care aimed at the general public worked by constructing risks, a fear of these risks, and women's responsibility for avoiding them in order to regulate women's behaviour through self-discipline, which worked alongside other disciplinary techniques. These techniques were applied unequally and mainly to marginalised groups of women, such as women of Roma ethnicity and single mothers.

Celebrating the Czechoslovak atom: from 'Atoms for Peace' to Expo 58.

The Czechoslovak-Soviet exhibition 'Atoms for Peace' was held in Prague and Bratislava in 1956. This exhibition became a symbol of Czechoslovak-Soviet 'friendship' and Soviet influence on the Czechoslovak nuclear programme. At the Brussels World's Fair in 1958 (Expo 58), one of the most popular Czechoslovak exhibits was the betatron, which would become a symbol of Czechoslovak nuclear pride. The article analyzes the planning, creation and reception of these two exhibitions, as well as the popular image of the Czechoslovak betatron in the Czechoslovak press and literature of that time. It shows how, in Czechoslovakia, the paradigm of Czechoslovak-Soviet friendship and Soviet dominance converged and became entangled with the effort to present Czechoslovakia as an industrially developed country capable of building the nation's nuclear industry (partly) on its own. One of the results of this entanglement was the betatron - a highly successful and celebrated Czechoslovak nuclear exhibit that captivated both domestic and international audiences.

Communist Funeral Reform in Central Europe (1948-1989): From Religious to Civil Funerals in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

The authors examine funeral reform in the second half of the 20th century in Central and Eastern Europe via the historical comparative analysis approach. Examining the case studies of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the article argues that although the newly-developed civil (socialist) funeral ceremonies in the two countries followed a similar pattern, in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, civil funerals followed by cremation became the norm during the forty years of communist rule, whereas in Hungary they did not become the popularly accepted approach, in a similar way to the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia, where Roman Catholic funerals and inhumation remained dominant. The significant difference in the results of efforts toward reform was due principally to differing cultural histories, attitudes toward both religion and cremation and the availability of the infrastructure required for conducting civil funerals.

Revival of psychology in former Czechoslovakia and the contemporary Czech Republic after the fall of Totalitarian communist regimes.

After the general societal and political change in November 1989 in Czechoslovakia, the subject "History of Psychology" became the stable component of curriculum of studying psychology at the Department of Psychology of Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. The author of this paper has taught "History of Psychology" in Czech since 1998 for more than 20 years all students of psychology and he is teaching this subject the students of ERASMUS+ program from whole Europe, studying at Charles University in Prague, now. Indivisible part of the curriculum is represented by the history of Czechoslovak and Czech psychology. In References, the most important publications in the field of history of Czechoslovak and Czech psychology are presented.

Sound on the Quiet: Speaker Identification and Auditory Objectivity in Czechoslovak Fonoscopy, 1975-90.

Audio technologies that allowed eavesdropping on private conversations were a key tool in Cold War-era surveillance practices. In 1975, in the midst of the Cold War, a criminal police agency called the Fonoscopy Department was established in Czechoslovakia's capital, Prague, to explore the forensic potential of sound analysis for speaker identification. This article reveals for the first time that, aside from the well-known Czechoslovak secret police's wiretapping and eavesdropping activities, an independent government agency engaged in forensic fonoscopy, developing sound-based expertise. Examining the department's practices challenges the notion of mechanical and visually grounded objectivity to show how forensic science negotiated objective knowledge at the intersection of aural analysis and visualization technologies. More generally, the article contributes to debates on utilizing "sonic skills" to produce knowledge and evidence for security and legal purposes.

The Phenomenon of Social and Pastoral Service in Eastern Slovakia and Northwestern Czech Republic during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparison of Two Selected Units of Former Czechoslovakia in the Context of the Perspective of Positive Solutions.

This study seeks to explain the differences in the perception of social and pastoral service after the first and second wave pandemic in 2020 among the inhabitants of two neighbouring states, both parts of the former unified Czechoslovakia. Our research study compares subjective perception, needs, and participation among inhabitants of eastern Slovakia and north-western Czech Republic in social and pastoral service during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research sample consisted of a healthy population from the Czech Republic (n = 496) and Slovakia (n = 484) over 16 years of age, of which 63% (n = 617) were women and 37% (n = 363) men. The level of education ranged from primary to postgraduate. The research sample consisted of 623 (63.6%) participants with religious affiliation and 357 (36.4%) without religion. The level of perception, needs, and participation of the participants in social and pastoral service was obtained based on a non-standardised questionnaire. The results of our study confirmed several differences in the areas studied.

Within-family intergenerational trends in age at menarche relative to political changes in Czechoslovakia after World War II.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of the study was to examine a secular trend in age at menarche (AAM) in the former Czechoslovak (and descendant Slovak and Czech) population in relation to its large-scale political and social events taking place after World War II. METHODS: The study included 211 women aged 18-30 (born during 1984-1998), and their relatives: mothers, sisters, and grandmothers, yielding a total of 421 women. Changes in retrospectively recalled AAM between the three generations of women (oldest-grandmothers, middle-mothers, and youngest-daughters) were studied in pairwise comparisons. Relationships between AAM and the birth/conception date were analyzed relative to three events in the post-WWII Czechoslovakia (1948, 1968, and 1989). RESULTS: AAM was the highest in the oldest generation, slightly lower in the middle generation and the lowest in the youngest generation. Mixed-Effect Model showed statistically significant interaction between the date of conception, historical events, and the period before and after the event. CONCLUSIONS: The recorded decline in AAM is congruent with secular trends reported in the literature. However, the decreasing trend was not linear and included an increase in AAM in women conceived within the five-year period after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by communist armies in 1968.

Coping Strategies and Academic Motivation: The Mediating Effect of Achievement Emotions

The current study seeks to determine whether different achievement emotions (positive and negative) mediate the relationship between coping strategies (proactive and preventive coping) and academic motivation in a representative sample of the Czech adult population (N= 1,025). A cross-sectional research design featuring path analysis was used to explore the mediated effects of theoretical models. The results revealed that positive achievement emotions (i.e. enjoyment, hope, and pride) work well as moderators between positively future-oriented coping behavior and motivation to study. However, model fit, including mediating role of negative achievement emotions (i.e. anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, and boredom) as moderators, was very poor. Moreover, the measurement invariance of the data-fitting model of positive emotions indicated that the same construct was being measured across gender and age groups. Finally, implications of the findings regarding mental health promotion, limitations of the study, and future research are discussed (AU)

Blastocystis in the faeces of children from six distant countries: prevalence, quantity, subtypes and the relation to the gut bacteriome.

BACKGROUND: Blastocystis is a human gut symbiont of yet undefined clinical significance. In a set of faecal samples collected from asymptomatic children of six distant populations, we first assessed the community profiles of protist 18S rDNA and then characterized Blastocystis subtypes and tested Blastocystis association with the faecal bacteriome community. METHODS: Stool samples were collected from 244 children and young persons (mean age 11.3 years, interquartile range 8.1-13.7) of six countries (Azerbaijan 51 subjects, Czechia 52, Jordan 40, Nigeria 27, Sudan 59 and Tanzania 15). The subjects showed no symptoms of infection. Amplicon profiling of the 18S rDNA was used for verification that Blastocystis was the most frequent protist, whereas specific real-time PCR showed its prevalence and quantity, and massive parallel amplicon sequencing defined the Blastocystis subtypes. The relation between Blastocystis and the stool bacteriome community was characterized using 16S rDNA profiling. RESULTS: Blastocystis was detected by specific PCR in 36% (88/244) stool samples and was the most often observed faecal protist. Children from Czechia and Jordan had significantly lower prevalence than children from the remaining countries. The most frequent subtype was ST3 (49%, 40/81 sequenced samples), followed by ST1 (36%) and ST2 (25%). Co-infection with two different subtypes was noted in 12% samples. The faecal bacteriome had higher richness in Blastocystis-positive samples, and Blastocystis was associated with significantly different community composition regardless of the country (p < 0.001 in constrained redundancy analysis). Several taxa differed with Blastocystis positivity or quantity: two genera of Ruminococcaceae were more abundant, while Bifidobacterium, Veillonella, Lactobacillus and several other genera were undrerrepresented. CONCLUSIONS: Asymptomatic children frequently carry Blastocystis, and co-infection with multiple distinct subtypes is not exceptional. Prevalence and quantity of the organism clearly differ among populations. Blastocystis is linked to both faecal bacteriome diversity and its composition.

Sex and gender norms in marriage: Comparing expert advice in socialist Czechoslovakia and Hungary between the 1950s and 1980s.

First, we argue that sexuality was central to socialist modernization: Sex and gender were reformulated whenever the socialist project was being revised. Expertise was crucial in these reformulations, which harnessed people's support for the changing regimes. Moreover, the role of the expert in society grew over time, leading to ever expanding and diversified fields of expertise. Second, gender and sexuality stood disjointed in these changes. Whereas in the early 1950s sex was a taboo subject in Hungary, in the last three decades of socialism it was gradually acknowledged and emancipated, along with a discursive push to alter gender roles within marriage. Conversely, Czechoslovak experts paid close attention to sexuality and particularly to female pleasure from the outset of the regime, highlighting the benefits of gender equality for conjugal satisfaction; yet, they changed course with Normalization (1969-1989) when they embraced gender hierarchy as the structure for a good marriage and a fulfilling sex life. It follows that gender and sexuality can develop independently: Change in one is not necessarily bound to similar progress in the other. Thus, third, whereas there was a shared initial push for gender equality, there was no unified socialist drive for the liberalization of sexuality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Sensory studies, or when physics was psychophysics: Ernst Mach and physics between physiology and psychology, 1860-71.

This paper highlights the significance of sensory studies and psychophysical investigations of the relations between psychic and physical phenomena for our understanding of the development of the physics discipline, by examining aspects of research on sense perception, physiology, esthetics, and psychology in the work of Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach between 1860 and 1871. It complements previous approaches oriented around research on vision, Fechner's psychophysics, or the founding of experimental psychology, by charting Mach's engagement with psychophysical experiments in particular. Examining Mach's study of the senses and esthetics, his changing attitudes toward the mechanical worldview and atomism, and his articulation of comparative understandings of sensual, geometrical, and physical spaces helps set Mach's emerging epistemological views in the context of his teaching and research. Mach complemented an analytic strategy focused on parallel psychic and physical dimensions of sensation, with a synthetic comparative approach - building analogies between the retina, the individual, and social life, and moving between abstract and sensual spaces. An examination of the broadly based critique that Mach articulated in his 1871 lecture on the conservation of work shows how his historical approach helped Mach cast what he now saw as a narrowly limiting emphasis on mechanics as a phase yet to be overcome.

Voices from Silence? Reflections on 'Coming out' in Socialist Czechoslovakia.

The region of Central and Eastern Europe and oppressive social conditions in former socialist society often became symbols of the impossibility to articulate non-heterosexual identities under the conditions of a totalitarian regime. This study analyzes data from 19 in-depth interviews with people older than 50 living in the Czech Republic who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. It focuses on the ways in which their forced silence and inability to speak about their sexual desires resonated throughout their biographical narratives. The first part of this paper focuses on themes surrounding the absence of representations of non-heterosexual identities in socialist Czechoslovakia's public sphere and the impact of this absence on participants' perceptions of their own life experiences. The second part of the paper analyzes the ways in which participants relate to their own coming out and their reflections on their previous lives in relation to newfound opportunities to live outside of heterosexual norms. The paper strives to problematize the concept of "silence" as one of the defining features of this generation, in contrast with the concept of coming out as a sign of emancipation in younger generations.

Carl von Rokitansky, el Linneo de la anatomía patológica / Carl von Rokitansky, the Linné of pathological anatomy

Resumen Carl von Rokitansky fue una de las figuras más importantes en la anatomía patológica y el responsable, en parte, del renacimiento de Viena como centro de la medicina a mediados del siglo XIX. Nació en la actual Hradec Králové, estudió medicina en Praga y Viena y se graduó en 1828. Tuvo gran influencia de los estudios de anatomía, embriología y patología de Andral, Lobstein y Meckel. En la escuela de Viena fue asistente de anatomía patológica de Johann Wagner y se convirtió en profesor de anatomía patológica, donde permaneció hasta cuatro años antes de su muerte. Rokitansky hizo énfasis en correlacionar la sintomatología del enfermo con los cambios post mortem. Es posible que haya tenido acceso a entre 1500 y 1800 cadáveres al año para que pudiera realizar 30 000 necropsias; además, revisó varios miles más de autopsias. En Handbuch der Pathologischen Anatomie, publicado entre 1842 y 1846, realizó numerosas descripciones: de la neumonía lobular y lobular, endocarditis, enfermedades de las arterias, quistes en varias vísceras, diversas neoplasias y de la atrofia aguda amarilla del hígado. Con su brillante labor de patología macroscópica, Rokitansky estableció la clasificación nosológica de las enfermedades, por lo cual Virchow lo llamó “el Linneo de la anatomía patológica”.

Abstract Carl von Rokitansky was one of the most important figures in pathological anatomy, and was largely responsible for the resurgence of Vienna as the great medical center of the world in the mid-19th century. He was born in current Hradec Králové, studied medicine in Prague and Vienna and was graduated in 1828. He was greatly influenced by the anatomy, embryology and pathology studies of Andral, Lobstein and Meckel. At the Vienna School, he was Johann Wagner pathological anatomy assistant and became a pathology professor, where he remained until four years before his death. Rokitansky emphasized the importance of correlating patient symptoms with postmortem changes. It is possible that he had access to between 1,500 and 1,800 cadavers annually to be able to perform 30,000 necropsies; in addition, he reviewed several thousand more autopsies. In Handbuch der pathologischen Anatomie, published between 1842 and 1846, he made numerous descriptions: lobar and lobular pneumonia, endocarditis, diseases of the arteries, cysts in several viscera, various neoplasms and acute yellow atrophy of the liver. With his brilliant work on gross pathology, Rokitansky established the nosological classification of diseases, for which Virchow named him “the Linné of pathological anatomy”.

Psychology in the Czech lands: Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, and the Czech Republic.

The article provides a comprehensive review of Czech psychology-its history and its current state. It enumerates significant psychologists who were Czech, born in Bohemia or who were instrumental for the development of psychology in the region. The article also enumerates Czech psychological associations along with their main representatives, journals, and academic facilities involved in education and research in psychology. It is pointed out that the origins of psychology as a science are in the Central Europe-the first laboratory of W. Wundt was in Leipzig, Germany; S. Freud was born in Bohemia, in the Moravian city of Príbor and he practiced in Vienna, Austria. The Czech capital Prague will also become the capital of the psychological science in 2020 when it will be hosting the 32nd International Congress of Psychology (ICP 2020).