Czechoslovak Leviathan

Review Czechoslovak Leviathan Karol Szymański ROUBAL, Petr: Československé spartakiády (Šťastné zítřky, sv. 22) [Czechoslovak Spartakiads (Happy Tomorrows, Vol. 22)]. Praha, Academia 2016, 405 pages, ISBN 978-80-200-2537-1. What was the cost of the Czechoslovak Spartakiads held regularly between 1955 and 1985? How many spectators and gymnasts participated in them? What did they eat and drink? And where were they accommodated? Was the birth rate in Czechoslovakia infl uenced by the fi ve-year Spartakiad cycles? Did the “Spartakia- dian murderer” really exist? Or more broadly – how did the communist powers manage to transform the Spartakiads into an effective instrument of their policy and ideology? And how did their position on the former Sokol movement’s tradition of group gymnastics evolve over time? Responding to the above and many other related questions will be much easier now after the publication of Petr Roubal’s book Czechoslovak Spartakiads by the Academia Publishing House in the series Happy Tomorrows. The book is a comprehensive and sound compendium on the history, organization and signifi cance of these extraordinary events on a global scale. As the author points out in the introduction, it was not his intent to cover all the issues that might possibly come to the reader’s mind in relation to the phenomenon of the Spartakiads. Roubal planned to address “only” four themes in his book. This enabled him, on the one hand, to trace the evolution of the Spartakiads in their broader socio-political and cultural context and, on the other, to re-examine key 192 Czech Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.VI aspects of these issues, their essence as well as infl uences on them. Roubal focused on four essential questions: What was the origin of the Spartakiads? What was their visual message? How were they organized? How did the public respond to them? This scheme was also refl ected in the structure of the work. The core text of the book (excluding the introduction, conclusion and footnotes) is conceived as four parts, despite being divided into fi ve chapters: “Genealogy of the Spartakiads,” “Symbolism of the fi rst Spartakiad in 1955,” “Symbolism of the ‘Normalization’ Spartakiads,” “Organization of the Spartakiads,” and “Society and the Spartakiads.” In order to respond to the second question above regarding the Spartakiads’ visual legacy – so diametrically different in the 1950s and the “normalization” era – the author had to research and analyze these two periods separately, consequently describing them in two separate chapters. This structure fully corresponds to the author’s aims, allowing him to classify and systematize his rich material, while remaining clear and consistent (with the possible exception of the chapters on the symbolism of the Spartakiads, in which the announced chronological framework is not strictly followed). The fi rst three chapters, in which Roubal thematically draws on his previously published studies and expands on them, constitute the strongest part of the book. The opening chapter on the genesis of the Spartakiads accounts for approximately one third of the book’s core text, and the two chapters on symbolism together occupy about the same space (with the chapter on the “normalization” period being longer). The chapter on the organization of the Spartakiads is somewhat shorter (about one quarter of the core text), and the least attention (one might add disproportion- ately little attention, since this chapter covers about one tenth of the core text) is devoted to the respons e of society to the Spartakiads and the refl ection on them. A common theme of the fi rst three chapters of Czechoslovak Spartakiads is the history of a specifi c form of social communication using the symbolism of the body and its movement. The author presents readers with a unique visual-political strategy aimed at creating an image of a single collective body (nation, people, society in general) by using a gathering of individual bodies, publicly performing synchronized gymnastics. In the fi rst chapter, Roubal traces the roots of the Spar- takiad tradition back to ancient times. It is, however, modern age theories of “body politics” which defi ne the relation between the human body and power that he sees as pivotal to this tradition. He then fi nds direct inspiration for the initial stages of the Spartakiad tradition in the emerging emancipation movements of the 19th century and in the way these movements visualized their aspirations for an ideal national collective. His focus is on the German Turner movement, and especially on the Czech Sokol movement, which was inspired by the former, yet also formed in opposition to it (for example in contrast to the Turner movement, it emphasized, with reference to ancient ideal, the aesthetics of gymnastic performance). Roubal follows its development, looking primarily at the organization, practice and symbolism of the Sokol Slets (Sokol movement festivals), which came to be labelled “mysteries of democracy” in interwar Czechoslovakia. He also draws attention to the rival interwar Olympic Games and Worker Spartakiads, which were organized Czechoslovak Leviathan 193 by left-wing parties so as to illustrate the communists’ position towards the Sokol movement in the postwar period. This position evolved from efforts to take over the Sokol movement and use it, through its “athletization” and sovietization project, to return to traditional mass gymnastic performances. In this context, Roubal describes the last Sokol Slet held in 1948 as a battlefi eld between the Sokol movement and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which, as soon as it seized power in the February coup, sought its own ritual pattern in order to suppress the content of the Sokol movement and replace it with a Soviet model and socialist interpretation. In the second part of the book, the author discusses the symbolism of the fi rst Spartakiad held in 1955, and, for the sake of completeness, though to a lesser extent, also the second Spartakiad held in 1960 – two events according to Roubal signifi - cantly infl uenced by the style of socialist realism. Following a detailed analysis of individual performances at the Prague Strahov stadium, the author draws two key metaphors for these early rituals and describes the principles of their organization. First is a metaphor of a mosaic, in the ideological context of which the performing social, professional, age or gender groups, arbitrarily and unambiguously defi ned by the central power, lacked any signifi cance in themselves but acquired it – just like the individual pebbles of a mosaic – only as parts of a bigger, perfectly organized whole (people, socialist society, etc.). This corresponds to the second metaphor of mechanism, which views the human body as an instrument with certain attributes and symbols, and society as a complex of mechanical elements – human compo- nents. Roubal also draws attention to the displays of social engineering strategies in the Spartakiad parades. He shows, on the one hand, how the communist govern- ment sought radical social change and the creation of “a new man,” and, on the other, how paradoxical tensions and confl icts in the semiotic world of socialism impaired its effectiveness and infl uence and led to a pragmatic reformulation of the Spartakiad principles. In the third section – after briefl y outlining “the fi rst truly post-Stalinist,” in- terim and experimental Spartakiad in 1965 and the circumstances under which the Spartakiad of 1970 was cancelled – Roubal delves into the symbolism of the Spartakiads “with a human face,” that is, the three consecutive Spartakiads held during the period of “normalization” in 1975, 1980 and 1985. He writes about the major changes in the programme and organization, metaphor of human body movement, modernization of gymnastics, and primarily about the transformation of the symbolism of the Spartakiad performances. With all of this he illustrates the pragmatic, if not outright cynical, shift from the principles that had governed the previous Spartakiads, towards a new concept and programmatic, propagandistic use of the Spartakiads. This entailed a transition from (and return to) the metaphor of a mosaic towards the concept of social coherence and from the metaphor of mechanism towards a metaphor of an organism, that is, principles that had been already applied at Sokol Slets. Roubal recounts in general terms the change in attitude towards the Sokol movement, which the communist regime representa- tives fi nally acknowledged (though under the condition of permanent ideological redefi nition) as part of a modern national tradition and newly used for the purposes 194 Czech Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.VI of the “normalization” Spartakiads. In this context, he also remarks on the return to the Sokol concept of “emancipation through segregation,” which, as part of the “normalization” gender engineering that accented differences between genders, became a basic organizational principle of the Spartakiad ritual. Roubal’s analyses result in a synthetic description of the Spartakiad model, which developed at the beginning of the 1970s and remained virtually unchanged until the last Spartakiad. A certain teleology can be traced in his conclusions, which stated that during the “normalization” the Spartakiads represented a goal, a completion and the creation of a certain alchemic formula, whereas previous Spartakiads were merely studies, attempts and a series of mistakes made in the process of work. The “normalization” model refl ected the Communist Party’s feeling of lacking le- gitimacy as well as their fear of any change or innovation. However, according to Roubal, it was also a conscious choice by the regime. By using proven symbolic and propagandistic patterns and fi xed ways of communication, the ruling elites strongly conveyed the basic message of peace and social order stability, which were to provide space for the free realization of family and personal values. Roubal also highlights the gradual, often profound, albeit concealed, sociocultural changes in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, which refl ected the global trends of social, demographic and technological modernization.

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