COURAGE

connecting collections

Czech Television is a public service broadcasting company covering a vast majority of the Czech territory, the successor organisation of the Czechoslovak Television and a member of the European Broadcasting Union. As a public service medium, it has an obligation to provide all citizens access to information, culture, education and entertainment. The broadcasting is continuous and on six television channels CT1, CT2, CT24, CT sport, CT :D and CT art. The organisation is established by the Act on Czech Television from 1991, which sets the framework for its operation, including a fulfillment of public service tasks as a television broadcasting company and a form of financing. The budget of the institution is primarily provided from the income the television charges and as a complementary source of financing serves legally defined business activities (advertising, sponsorship, etc.).

Czech Television is liable to the Czech Television Council that represents the public's right to control CT activities. Among others, it is the responsibility of the Council to: nominate and remove the General Director, approve the budget of Czech Television and control its compliance or supervise the fulfillment of public service tasks as a television broadcasting company. The council has fifteen members that are elected and removed by the Chamber of Deputies in order to represent significant regional, political, social and cultural bodies of opinions. Members of the Council are elected for six years and there are strict demands on their impartiality and objectivity.

The Czechoslovak Documentation Centre for Independent Literature (CSDS) was founded in March 1986 in the Federal Republic of Germany. Its founding members were significant personalities of the then Czechoslovak exile: Jiří Gruša, František Janouch, Josef Jelínek, Ivo Kunstýř, Ivan Medek, Jiří Pelikán, Vilém Prečan, Karel Jan Schwarzenberg, Pavel Tigrid, Jan Vladislav and Ľubomír Ďurovič. Since November 1986, the center of Schwarzenberg, Bavarian Scheinfeld, has been home to work and study facilities. Historian Vilém Prečan has been the director and curator of the Documentation Center since its foundation. After his emigration in 1976, he sought to build an archive of independent Czech and Slovak literature and a research center to stimulate and organize studies on independent activities in Czechoslovakia after 1968.

Since its inception, the Documentation Center has combined the functions of a literary archive, a specialized library and research, study, information and publishing facilities. The centerpiece of the center's activities was the effort for all-round effective aid for domestic dissent and civic initiatives in Czechoslovakia.

Prečan systematically collected testimony of independent thinking and creation in Czechoslovakia after 1948, related to independent cultural, political and religious activities. First to be developed were collections of Czech and Slovak samizdat literature, which was constantly threatened at home with seizure by the State Security. These original samizdat texts and periodicals of ČSDS were copied and regularly distributed to large libraries, especially university libraries, editions of exile magazines, radio stations and human rights organizations. In this way, the center assisted in ensuring that works of independent Czech and Slovak literature and information on home dissent flowed smoothly into the information system of the free world.

ČSDS also produced its own publications. The most important was the magazine Acta, which was published both in Czech and English, and along with articles of a literary nature, bibliographic catalogs of samizdat editions also appeared.

In addition, ČSDS helped to smuggle books, magazines, documents and technical equipment for producing samizdat literature, such as copiers and, later, computers.

This archive, which was unique in the history of European exiles, received the Friedrich Bauer Literature Award in October 1993 from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

After 1989 there was a gradual transformation of ČSDS into a non-state research institute for the history of anti-totalitarian resistance in the Communist era. In September 2000 its collections moved to the Czech Republic and in 2003 they were transferred to the National Museum.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was established in January 1969 in connection with the adoption of the Constitutional Act on the Czechoslovak Federation. At the same time, two republican ministries - the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Socialist Republic and the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Socialist Republic - were established. The authority of the Federal Ministry of the Interior (FMV) was stipulated by Act No. 166/1968 Coll., through which the FMV was responsible for coordinating the activities of the bodies of both republics in heading the security services and components of the armed security services which were to fulfil special tasks in the protection of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and its federal bodies and institutions. It was also responsible for implementing state administration in regard to issues concerning both republics, for the protection of state and economic secrets, for the legal regulations concerning the borders of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and its state symbols, and for the legal regulation of road traffic rules.

The Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) is a nonprofit, non-political and cultural organization dedicated to the promotion of knowledge, the free spread of ideas, science and the development of people-to-people contact. The Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences unites professionals, scientists, artists, writers, students, lawyers, entrepreneurs and others around the world who are interested in Czechoslovak history, culture and science.

The Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1958 in Washington, DC by the provision of an Organising Council of over 200 members. In 1961, the organisation was established under the laws of the state of New York as a nonprofit cultural organization, operating first in the United States. However, the Society gradually began to establish branches in Europe and other continents. Initially, the Society received contributions from the Czechoslovak National Council (Czechoslovak exile organisation that represented political emigrants and supported refugees from the Communist Czechoslovakia), and later funded its activities from member contributions and sales of its own publications. In connection with the democratization process in Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1968, the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences began to address the question of how to help scientists and artists at home (i.e. in Czechoslovakia), how to obtain and deliver publications, etc. In 1977, the Society publicly supported Charter 77. In the 1970s and 1980s, the SVU supported exile publishers producing Czechoslovak samizdat works, and Czechoslovak independent artists, especially “banned” writers, as well. Thus, the Society contributed to raising awareness of works of Czechoslovak nonconformist authors and of the importance of independent Czech and Slovak literature abroad. In May 1987, the Society held a conference in Switzerland with an international participation dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Charter 77. In March 1989, the SVU publicly protested against the imprisonment of Czech dissident and playwright Václav Havel. After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, the Society extended its activities to Czechoslovakia and its successor states, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Since 1962, the Society has also regularly held world congresses that focus on various topics across science - literature, linguistics, visual arts, social sciences, physics, biology, and many others. Via these congresses, the SVU points out the importance of free Czech and Slovak science and culture in the world.

The Czechoslovak Writer (Československý spisovatel) was one of the most prominent postwar Czech publishing houses. It was established in the spring of 1949 through the merger of several private companies and cooperatives, and operated until as late as 1997. From its establishment until 1970 it was subordinate to the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, a professional organization that brought together Czech and Slovak writers and which had a relatively strong economic base thanks to its income. When the Union of Czechoslovak Writers was closed down at the turn of the 1970s because it had been one of the intellectual centres of the Prague Spring, it was subordinated to the Czech Literary Fund. After the fall of the Communist regime, the Czechoslovak Writer publishing house managed only with difficulty to cope with the market economy and soon got into economic difficulties, which resulted in its liquidation in 1997.