World War I To Communism: Continued Struggle of Czech Nationalism
With the onset of World War I, in 1915 the Sokols were officially disbanded. Many members were active in persuading the Czechs to defect from the Austro-Hungarian army to the Russian side. Sokol members also helped create the Czechoslovak Legions and local patrols that kept order after the disintegration of Habsburg authority, and during the creation of Czechoslovakia in October 1918. They also fulfilled their title as the "Czech national army", helping to defend Slovakia against the invasion of Béla Kun and the Hungarians.
The Sokol flourished in the early interwar period, and by 1930 had 630,000 members. The Sokols held one last Slet (350,000 Sokols) on the eve before the Munich Agreement of 1938 and were later brutally suppressed and banned during the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. After World War II they held one more Slet in 1948 before they were once again suppressed, this time by the Communists. The Communist Party tried to replace tradition of Slets with mass exercises employed for propaganda purposes: Spartakiad (spartakiády).
The Sokols reappeared briefly during the Prague Spring of 1968. After years of hibernation, Sokol was revived for the fourth time in 1990; a Slet was in 1994 (23,000 Sokols participating), after the fall of Communism.
Presently, the organization focuses on physical training in gymnastics and other athletics. Its popularity is, however, well below pre-war levels and a large percentage of members are older people with memories of the pre-1948 Sokol movement. A further Slet was held in 2000 (25,000 Sokols); another was held in July 2006. In July 2012 there was celebration of 150 years of Sokol movement, Slet's are expected to be held every six years.
Read more about this topic: Sokol
Famous quotes containing the words world, war, continued, struggle, czech and/or nationalism:
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The British blockade won the war; but the wonder is that the British blockhead did not lose it. I suppose the enemy was no wiser. War is not a sharpener of wits.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Crushed to earth and rising again is an author’s gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen, he will contemplate a fact he should never permit himself to face: that in all probability books have been written, are being written, will be written, better than anything he has done, is doing, or will do.”
—Fannie Hurst (1889–1968)
“I’m neither Czech nor Slovak ... I’m still trying to figure out who I am. I think I’m Jewish. But first I want to be human.”
—Natasha Dudinska (b. c. 1967)
“The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.”
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986)