#czechoslovakia — Public Fediverse posts

Herní Archiv: We digitized journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club. “Some time ago, we received on loan for digitization journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club from 1972-1997. Although not directly related to games, it is still interesting and rare material. Thanks to its focus on consumer electronics, it occasionally contains interesting observations about computing technology, and the club also played […]

Herní Archiv: We digitized journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club. “Some time ago, we received on loan for digitization journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club from 1972-1997. Although not directly related to games, it is still interesting and rare material. Thanks to its focus on consumer electronics, it occasionally contains interesting observations about computing technology, and the club also played […]

Herní Archiv: We digitized journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club. “Some time ago, we received on loan for digitization journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club from 1972-1997. Although not directly related to games, it is still interesting and rare material. Thanks to its focus on consumer electronics, it occasionally contains interesting observations about computing technology, and the club also played […]

Herní Archiv: We digitized journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club. “Some time ago, we received on loan for digitization journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club from 1972-1997. Although not directly related to games, it is still interesting and rare material. Thanks to its focus on consumer electronics, it occasionally contains interesting observations about computing technology, and the club also played […]

You Can See a Swirling Sculpture Made of 8,000 Books at a Library in Prague – Smithsonian Magazine

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You Can See a Swirling Sculpture Made of 8,000 Books at a Library in Prague

Officials are managing an influx of tourists coming to see “Idiom,” a seemingly infinite tunnel of books by the artist Matej Krén, at the Municipal Library

By Christian Thorsberg, Correspondent January 16, 2026

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Nearly 30 years after a dizzying sculpture fashioned from books was first installed at the Prague Municipal Library in the Czech Republic, literature lovers on TikTok and Instagram have turned the artwork into a viral fascination and unexpected tourism hotspot.

Idiom, created by Slovak artist Matej Krén, features roughly 8,000 books stacked into a tower. Mirrors placed on the top and bottom give the illusion of infinite length, and a raindrop-shaped entryway invites visitors to peek inside the wormhole—almost like they’re literally disappearing into a good book.

“The Idiom is meant to symbolize the infinity of knowledge,” according to a description of the sculpture on the library’s website. “[Books] are like bricks to [Krén], but they contain much more information, destinies, stories and knowledge. He puts them into the form of dwellings: primitive on the one hand, infinitely intelligent on the other.”

The installation made its debut at the Sao Paulo International Biennial in 1995, and in 1996 it was brought to Prague. It was first exhibited for a summer at the Jiri Svestka Gallery, which in the 1950s was a communist warehouse of banned books, before moving to its permanent home at the library in 1998.

For years, Idiom stood as little more than a familiar fixture, with its fame generally limited to the regular library-goers in the Czech capital. But beginning in 2022, the sculpture gained renown by going viral on BookTok, the pocket of TikTok dedicated to discussions of books and writing. Algorithms on Instagram similarly pushed the sculpture to the forefront of feeds.

“Kids that were in Prague looking into their phones suddenly saw a cool thing that they liked and they wanted to see it as well,” Czech journalist Janek Rubeš told Radio Prague International in 2023. “And as it is in today’s world, everyone wants to have the same picture or same video, because it looks cool and they can get likes.”

Quick fact: Idiom on the cover of Science

A photo of the sculpture was featured on the magazine’s cover in January 2011.In that issue, researchers analyzed a massive collection of 5.2million books to study cultural trends.

Today, librarians and local tourism officials are bewildered at the foot traffic the sculpture generates. During peak travel seasons—such as Christmas and Easter—more than 1,000 people each day endure wait times of more than two hours to snap a photograph.

“We’ll have to deal with it in some way, because working with tourist crowds is a completely different service from that we have provided up to now,” Lenka Hanzlikova, a spokesperson for the library, tells Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Most readers laugh about it and say it’s bizarre, but we have had people who wanted to return books and joined the queue.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: You Can See a Swirling Sculpture Made of 8,000 Books at a Library in Prague

When political repression intended to isolate and break individuals instead produces solidarity, resistance, and moral authority: Klára Pinerová examines the prison experience of Czechoslovak political prisoners from the 1950s to post-Communism as both a tool of repression and a foundation for collective identity and memory politics with the emergence of the "heroic victimhood" narrative.

👉 https://popolacop.hypotheses.org/643

#PoliticalPrisoners #Czechoslovakia #hypoverse

#history #coldwar #nonviolence #pacifism #resistance #literature #science #charta77 #csce

I would like to study long-term nonviolent (social) resistance (history, theories, practice, etc.) in #Czechoslovakia after the occupation in 1968 by the USSR. Can anyone recommend some introductory literature? Thx!

File clerks at elevator desks in Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1937

https://piefed.social/c/historyphotos/p/1524944/file-clerks-at-elevator-desks-in-prague-czechoslovakia-1937

CNN: Czechs agog as national archive prepares to open mysterious envelope sealed for 20 years. “The final thoughts of [Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk], who governed the Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1935, are believed to have been recorded by his son Jan Masaryk just before his death in September 1937 and have been sealed in a letter ever since, according to Czech public radio, which has set up […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/09/20/cnn-czechs-agog-as-national-archive-prepares-to-open-mysterious-envelope-sealed-for-20-years/

This sealed #envelope contains the last words of the founding father of #Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue #Masaryk. He wanted that it would be opened on 19.9.2025 and not before.

This sealed #envelope contains the last words of the founding father of #Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue #Masaryk. He wanted that it would be opened on 19.9.2025 and not before.

This sealed #envelope contains the last words of the founding father of #Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue #Masaryk. He wanted that it would be opened on 19.9.2025 and not before.

This sealed #envelope contains the last words of the founding father of #Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue #Masaryk. He wanted that it would be opened on 19.9.2025 and not before.

This sealed #envelope contains the last words of the founding father of #Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue #Masaryk. He wanted that it would be opened on 19.9.2025 and not before.

Adolf Hitler was nominated for the #Nobel Peace Prize in 1939. The nomination of #Hitler was meant to be ironical:

"The nomination of Chamberlain provoked Erik Brandt to nominate Hitler as a provocation against Hitler and #Nazism.

The result of the Munich Agreement was that the western powers stabbed #Czechoslovakia in the back by handing over Sudetenland to achieve #peace.

Nor #Chamberlain or Hitler deserved a Peace Prize..."

👉 https://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/news/hitler-as-a-nobel-laureate

#history

when I was 10 years old I saw my first #coochie in a game of #truthordare. later that week a neighborhood kid from #Czechoslovakia ratted me out to my mom.

so no, I don't "stand with #Ukraine"

'The shop on main street', de Ján Kadár, Elmar Klos. An inept Slovak peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him “Aryan controller” of an old Jewish widow’s button shop. Humor and tragedy fuse in this scathing exploration of one cowardly man’s complicity in the horrors of a totalitarian regime. Made near the height of Soviet oppression in Czechoslovakia.
#cinema #autoritarisme #totalitarisme
#Czechoslovakia

https://archive.org/details/the-shop-on-main-street

#History: It's hard not to think back to #1930s when hearing of #Trump's treatment of #Ukraine. Before #WW2, #Czechoslovakia built 10K #bunkers to prepare for #nazi assault, and never got a chance to use them, because a similar kind of treacherous "#diplomacy" in the West made them give all that up to the enemy in '38 - after that, Europe was ripe for taking. #neveragain
Pics: https://tuszem.wordpress.com/2025/03/02/foto-wschod-kotliny-klodzkiej-jesien-2024-east-glatzer-kessel-fall-2024/

🔴 #BBC #JohnSimpson: 2025 could be year for the #history books

ℹ Just occasionally, there are years when the world goes through some fundamental, convulsive change

1968, with the Soviet invasion of #Czechoslovakia, the #Paris riots and the anti #Vietnam #War protests in #America, was one of them

1989, the year of the Tiananmen massacre, the fall of the #Berlin Wall, and the implosion of the #Soviet empire, was another ⤵

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0ng4eyr3xo #News

"Set in the run up to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 'Waves' is most fascinated with the way those working at the International News Office at Czechoslovak Radio served as a last standing bulwark against the authoritarianism that would eventually fully take over in 1968. . ."

Fim Review: 'Waves' Journalism Thriller on End of Prague Spring

https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/waves-review-jiri-madl-prague-spring-kviff-1236192823/ via "Variety"
Photo via The Prague Reporter
#Waves #VLNY #Movies #PragueSpring #Czechoslovakia #Journalism #News #Press

Ui! #CharlesGames hat auf Steam ein Gratisspiel veröffentlicht. Wer wie ich keinen Schimmer von der samtenen Revolution in der Tschechoslowakei hat, sollte da gerne mal reinschauen. 😊
#Velvet89 #Czechoslovakia #educationalGames

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3133340/Velvet_89/

About #power of #photography and power of #women through the #lens of #Czech-#British #photographer #LibaTaylor.

A #refugee from #Soviet-occupied #Czechoslovakia spent her life #documenting other #refugees.

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #UK #Entertainment #TheArts #Photography #Representation #Culture

https://globalvoices.org/2024/08/26/about-power-of-photography-and-power-of-women-through-the-lens-of-czech-british-photographer-liba-taylor/

🇨🇿#PragueSpring 2/2

The invading soldiers were shocked when they came to a peaceful country-there was no violent revolution to fight against!

But they still kidnapped the country's leadership to #Moscow.
Then the Russians established more pro-Kremlin totalitarian regime in #czechoslovakia 🇨🇿 until 1989 (#VelvetRevolution).

🇨🇿 #PragueSpring 1/2

56 year ago, in 1968:

#Russia (and the countires totally controlled and occupied by #Moscow back then) attacked #Czechoslovakia with tanks under the pretext that they were going to fight "against the revanchist fascist revolution".

That sounds familiar, right?

Fieseler Fi156 Storch The Fieseler Storch was one of the most famous short take and landing aircraft aircraft of WW2. It saw widespread action in almost every theatre of war as an army co-operation and liasion machine. This particular example was photographed at the Shuttleworth Trust's Old Warden Airfield, but is now in Norway. Postwar production contiued in Czechoslovakia, France and Romania #ShuttleworthTrust #OldWarden #Fieseler #photography #aircraftphotography #Storch #avgeek #aircraft #Czechoslovakia #France #Romania #ww2history #WW2 #history

Fieseler Fi156 Storch The Fieseler Storch was one of the most famous short take and landing aircraft aircraft of WW2. It saw widespread action in almost every theatre of war as an army co-operation and liasion machine. This particular example was photographed at the Shuttleworth Trust's Old Warden Airfield, but is now in Norway. Postwar production contiued in Czechoslovakia, France and Romania #ShuttleworthTrust #OldWarden #Fieseler #photography #aircraftphotography #Storch #avgeek #aircraft #Czechoslovakia #France #Romania #ww2history #WW2 #history

Fieseler Fi156 Storch The Fieseler Storch was one of the most famous short take and landing aircraft aircraft of WW2. It saw widespread action in almost every theatre of war as an army co-operation and liasion machine. This particular example was photographed at the Shuttleworth Trust's Old Warden Airfield, but is now in Norway. Postwar production contiued in Czechoslovakia, France and Romania #ShuttleworthTrust #OldWarden #Fieseler #photography #aircraftphotography #Storch #avgeek #aircraft #Czechoslovakia #France #Romania #ww2history #WW2 #history

Fieseler Fi156 Storch The Fieseler Storch was one of the most famous short take and landing aircraft aircraft of WW2. It saw widespread action in almost every theatre of war as an army co-operation and liasion machine. This particular example was photographed at the Shuttleworth Trust's Old Warden Airfield, but is now in Norway. Postwar production contiued in Czechoslovakia, France and Romania #ShuttleworthTrust #OldWarden #Fieseler #photography #aircraftphotography #Storch #avgeek #aircraft #Czechoslovakia #France #Romania #ww2history #WW2 #history

Fieseler Fi156 Storch The Fieseler Storch was one of the most famous short take and landing aircraft aircraft of WW2. It saw widespread action in almost every theatre of war as an army co-operation and liasion machine. This particular example was photographed at the Shuttleworth Trust's Old Warden Airfield, but is now in Norway. Postwar production contiued in Czechoslovakia, France and Romania #ShuttleworthTrust #OldWarden #Fieseler #photography #aircraftphotography #Storch #avgeek #aircraft #Czechoslovakia #France #Romania #ww2history #WW2 #history

NEW EPISODE Listen here coldwarconversations.com/episode298/
#czechoslovakia #Hockey #icehockey #praguespring #dubcek @histodons