Special Collections: Czech & Slovak

The T. & A. Baťa Shoe Company was founded in 1894 in Zlin, Moravia (now the Czech Republic), by siblings Tomáš, Antonin and Anne Baťa, descendants of a family of cobblers. What began as a small, family enterprise, expanded over the course of the century to over ninety countries to become the largest and, at times, the most successful shoe manufacturer and retailer in the world. Documentation related to all of the Bata Shoe Company’s innovations can be found in the Bata archive in the form of carefully kept administrative records, staff training manuals, financial files, and internal company memos.

Includes corporate files from the Canadian Bata Shoe Company (including correspondence; legal and financial records; product development, marketing and promotional files; technical and production-related files, and human resources files). The bulk of the material was created by the Canadian Bata company, however many records relate to several of the oraganization’s international outposts, including companies headed in Africa, India, Asia and Europe. The collection also includes press clippings and other publications about the Bata Company and its historical significance. There are also a small number of Bata family records, primarily for Thomas J. Bata (1914-2008), Sonja I. Bata, Tomáš Baťa (1876-1932) and Marie Bata.

Donated by Sonja Bata, 2014.

Catalog to the Slavonic Library of the National Library of the Czech Republic.

This collection documents the history of the Charter 77 human rights group.  It includes more than 500 reports by VONS (Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted), and many samizdat writings, including periodicals issued by members of Charter 77 and other individuals.

The collection includes approximately 150,000 articles on some 100,000 individuals who lived and worked within the borders of the region known today as the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These individuals influenced the development of politics, economics, religion, art and culture in the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia from the 8th century through all periods of Middle European history up to the present.

Manuscript collection: This is a collection consisting of news clippings, typescripts, Radio Free Europe reports and analyses, special issues of newspapers printed during the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, and various ephemera, all of which were used by Professor H. Gordon Skilling as source material for his book Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1976).

Book collection: This includes books in Czech, English, French, German, Russian and Slovak; the major intellectual, literary, and political journals and newspapers of the country; and official documents.  It also contains Professor Skilling’s published materials, including books, pamphlets, journals and runs of the most important Czech and Slovak newspapers, as well as 1968 issues of Pravda (Moscow) concerning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

This  collection of reports on politics and military affairs, statistics, interviews, meeting minutes, court proceedings and diplomatic cables, documents the creation of the Third Republic. The Third Republic was established after World War II as a compromise between pre-war Czechoslovak Republic leaders and the Czech Communist Party (KSC).

A collection of books assembled and donated by Professor H.G. Skilling and others on Czechoslovakia from the early 1930s to the early 1960s, tracing the country’s history from independence to the Communist takeover after World War II. The main focus is on the First Republic and the period of Communist rule. Skilling was a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University from 1959 to 1980.

The Declassified Documents Reference System provides online access to over 500,000 pages of previously classified United States government documents. Covering major international events from the Cold War to the Vietnam War and beyond, this single source enables users to locate key information underpinning studies in international relations, American studies, United States foreign and domestic policy studies, journalism and more. A wide range of documents is devoted to the Soviet Union, selected Soviet republics, and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. Highlights include U.S. intelligence reports on Ukrainian nationalists at the end of the Second World War as possible allies in case of a war with the Soviet Union; the Budapest Uprising of 1956; the Czechoslovak crisis of 1968; the Polish strikes and the Solidarnosc movement, etc.

The papers include correspondence between Jan Drabek, Josef Škvorecký, Zdena Salivarová, and Lumír Salivar, concerning 68 Publishers, Czech writers in exile, and Czech publishing and translating. The letters provide information regarding surreptitious funding being given by several organizations to Czech banned writers, and the outing of Czech cultural figures supporting Bolshevik organizations. References are also made to author and President Václav Havel, Nobel laureate Jaroslav Seifert, and filmmaker Miloš Forman.

Created by U.S. Presidential directive during World War II and at first placed under the Federal Communications Commission in 1941, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was later transferred to the War Department, and then to the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

The original mission of FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. These translations, or transcriptions in the case of English language materials, make up the Daily Reports.

The FBIS Daily Reports collection is divided into two chronological segments: 1941-1974 and 1974-1996. FBIS Daily Reports, 1941-1974, consists of a single Daily Report publication. FBIS Daily Reports, 1974-1996, is comprised of eight separate regional Daily Reports, of which Part 6 pertains to Eastern Europe (EEU), and Part 7 to the Soviet Union and Central Eurasia (SOV). Regional coverage for eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is also included for the years 1968 to 1974.

The reports includes news, interviews, speeches, editorial commentary, and other materials.

 This is an extensive collection of the Jazz Section of the Czechoslovak Union of Musicians, consisting of publications dealing with art, music, poetry, photography, and culture in general.  The Section was officially dissolved by the government in 1984, but continued to function underground.  The Jazz Section’s original purpose was the promotion of jazz and rock music and was the main defender of ‘alternative’ music in Czechoslovakia. Notable items in the collection include Bohumil Hrabal’s banned book Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (I served the King of England) as well as its most ambitious project: a three-volume dictionary/discography of North American rock musicians entitled Rock 2000.

The Klement Family papers consist of “birthday books”- albums created by Anna Pachner Klement for her grandson, Tomaš (Tomi), beginning at age two, when he was diagnosed with Sydenham’s chorea. Albums depict stories of a young boy and his adoring grandmother and the life of one Jewish family in Prague during the 1930s. Two years after Tomi’s birth, Adolf Hitler came to power, and the albums begin to record the changing attitude towards Jews in Czechoslovakia. The last album was written in 1940 and in it Mrs. Klement describes how they are forbidden to go to the theatre or the movies. In July 1943, the Klement family was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp and fourteen months later they were shipped to Auschwitz where Tomi, his grandmother Anna, and mother Heda were gassed. Also included in the family papers are photo albums, photographs, Anna Klement’s diaries, poems by Anna Klement, family papers including obituaries, marriage certificates, etc., and Olga Klement’s diaries as well as her art work, autobiography, correspondence, notebooks and betacam tapes.

 “Petlice” is a collection of privately-issued typewritten samizdat works in Czech and Slovak.  It contains journals, books, and pamphlets by authors not permitted to publish officially in Czechoslovakia before 1989.  The subjects cover belles-lettres, philosophy, religion, economics, politics and history.

These publications constitute three separate collections, consisting of approximately 60 boxes of materials issued by various departments of Radio Free Europe from 1961 to the present. Many of the publications are weekly background and situation reports on Eastern Europe and the USSR in English. About half of the material consists of publications from the Czechoslovak Unit of Radio Free Europe issued since 1970, and reprints of items from Czech and Slovak newspapers and journals.

The Reeves Papers contains papers as well as audio and video recordings of interviews with Czech and Slovak leaders.  Topics discussed include the Prague Spring, Christianity in Eastern Europe, Czechoslovak political affairs and life in Czechoslovakia before 1968.  Also included are reminiscences of pre-1948 Czechoslovakia used in CBC’s “The Human Face.”

This database provides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of political processes through the lens of revolutions, protests, resistance, and social movements. The collection includes videos, printed materials, and images from a variety of time periods, regions, and topics, including material on the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the Prague Spring.

Papers.

Records documenting the history of the family of Harold Gordon Skilling, including his wife, Sara (Sally) and his own life and career. Sous-fonds I: Skilling family. The emphasis is on Gordon's father, William Watt, his uncle, Ernest (a Shriner), and his brothers Donald and William, who fought in World War I (Donald was killed in action). Sous-fonds II: Sara (Sally) Bright Skilling. Her education in the United States, her travels with Gordon in Eastern Europe in the 1960s and her skill in entertaining. Sous-fonds III: Harold Gordon Skilling. The emphasis is on the research and writing of his books on T. G. Masaryk and Alice Masaryk, on his travels, especially in Eastern Europe, and on the seminars he held in his residence during the last years of his life. These records consist primarily of correpondence (personal and professional, including with Vilem Precan (1993-2000) and Vaclav Havel), diaries, drafts of books and articles, reviews, addresses, index cards, scrap books, and photo albums.

Personal records of H. Gordon Skilling, consisting of: Masaryk medal awarded by the Czechoslovak Association of Canada, 1985; certificate, case and medallion relating to honorary degree awarded by Charles University, Prague, 1990; Komensky medal awarded by Komensky University, Bratislava, 1990; certificate and medal for the Order of the White Lion, Third Class, Czechoslovakia's highest honour for non-citizens, awarded by President Vaclav Havel on Professor Skilling's 80th birthday, 28 February 1992.

Records of conferences and meetings attended; drafts of and correspondence regarding articles written; correspondence relating to the writing of Communism, National and International and Governments of Communist East Europe; personal files (1961-1979) and correspondence (1974-1983); lecture notes as visiting professor, Columbia University, 1952.