When the world tuned in to Prague: Exhibition of letters that captured 1968
Czech Radio’s international broadcasting service was once one of the main sources of information about Czechoslovakia abroad, and it annually received thousands of letters from listeners the world over. A portion of this rich, multilingual archive, currently on display in the foyer of Czech Radio, reflects the tragic events of 1968.
The year 1968 was an extraordinary period for the international broadcasting service of Czechoslovak Radio. After censorship was abolished during the so-called Prague Spring, international interest in events in Czechoslovakia increased sharply, and Radio Prague, the predecessor of today’s Radio Prague International, became an important source of information about Central Europe. At the time, thousands of letters from around the world arrived at the station’s Vinohradská 12 address, with listeners responding to its broadcasts, political events, and everyday life in Czechoslovakia.
The Czech Radio Archive is now presenting part of this correspondence to the public for the first time at an exhibition called Když svět ladil Prahu (When the World Tuned in to Prague). According to Czech Radio Archive head Tomáš Dufka and archivist Ivan Malý, the exhibition offers an opportunity to see archival materials that are not normally accessible.
Tomáš Dufka: “The idea for this exhibition came about years ago, when we discovered a collection from the international broadcasting service that had not yet been catalogued. When we began working with the collection, we found that a large part of it consisted of letters from 1968.”
Ivan Malý: “In some of the political questions from the 1960s, foreign listeners who had already been listening to Czech Radio for several years often asked what was happening here, why something had been presented in one way before March 1968 and why the rhetoric subsequently changed. We can therefore see that Radio Prague played an important role as a source of information about geopolitics, and the impact of its international broadcasting, particularly in 1968, was quite significant.”
Nevertheless, the story of the correspondence also has its dark side. During the period of normalization that followed the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, the management of Czechoslovak Radio had the responses of international-service editors to listeners’ letters analyzed and examined their political attitudes.
Tomáš Dufka: “In one of the boxes of letters, we found an analysis of the Czech editors’ responses to letters from foreign listeners. This analysis was prepared in 1971, and it was subsequently used as a basis for dismissing editors from the international broadcasting service.”
If an editor responded positively to a foreign letter supporting the Prague Spring, this was labeled “right-wing opportunism.” A more hesitant response, on the other hand, was viewed more favorably toward the editor.
Tomáš Dufka: “About 75 people were dismissed on this basis – around 35 initially, followed by dozens more. Among those dismissed was, for example, Bedřich Utitz from the German-language editorial team, who subsequently emigrated to Germany and became a prominent figure in the dissident movement. Another very interesting person was Jan Vinař, editor-in-chief of the French-language editorial team. Vinař spoke out very actively in support of the Prague Spring and subsequently had to emigrate to Switzerland.”
At the current exhibition in the foyer of Czech Radio, visitors can see and read only a small fraction of the enormous number of letters that Radio Prague received in 1968. According to the archivists, the international service was so popular at the time that it received as many as 100,000 letters a year.
Ivan Malý: “Here we have two display cases filled with archival materials. Although this is only a small selection of the letters in the archive, it reflects the diversity of languages. There are letters in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, German and English. Some of the letters also contain children’s drawings or poems. The writers often asked about the program and about details of what was happening in Czechoslovakia. And, for example, in letters written in Arabic, listeners often requested more interviews with students at Czech universities who came from the Arab world.”
In addition to the letters, the exhibition also features a ceramic mosaic created in Spain in 1986 to mark the 50th anniversary of international broadcasting.
The exhibition is free to visit and will remain open until the end of October.
