press

The present contribution takes a relatively unconventional angle for its investigation of the abrupt shift in Czech unofficial journalistic culture from severely repressed samizdat before November 1989 to significant social force in the first years of the subsequent decade. It takes as its locus the Prague office building at the address Bolzanova 7, a former Czech Rail property assigned to the samizdat-based independent journalistic agency Informační servis at the end of 1990.

The study focuses on the Great Depression era, when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) attempted to attract new groups of voters. The study follows the Rozsevačka magazine, a party press journal for women sympathizing with the communist ideals, which paid considerable attention to the issue of austerity measures for women in the Czechoslovak civil service. The austerity measures had a big impact on the lives of women employees in the civil service, and the KSČ attempted to interest them as well as other groups of potential voters.