Union for Cooperation with the Army as an instrument of pre-military preparedness in the years 1951-1956
Abstract
The Union for Cooperation with the Army (hereinafter Slovak:Zväzarm/Czech: Svazarm) was a unified, voluntary, military preparedness organization of socialist Czechoslovakia, established on the model of the similar Soviet organization DOSAAF. Its formation in the 1950s reflected not only the efforts to gradually sovietize the Czechoslovak state and consolidate the hegemonic control of the Czechoslovak Communist Party over society, but also the specifically Czechoslovak notion of military preparedness.
The latter combined patriotic and physical education, civic militarism and the acquisition of knowledge useful for military service and for the defence of the state. In its focus, Zväzarm conceptually followed the First Republic associations and efforts to centralize military preparedness education, the Third Republic's Military Preparedness Union, and retained some of their goals, albeit in the service and ideological configuration of the communist regime.
At the time of Zväzarm's formation and its early period, framed by the years 1951 and 1956, its primary task was the preparation of youth and conscripts for basic military service, which also underwent significant changes along with the Czechoslovak army during the period under review. The aim of this paper is to present the basic assumptions and goals that the top leaders of the Communist Party and the army expected from Zväzarm and that it itself declared in its publications.
What was to be the role of the free-time pre-military training in imparting both practical and patriotic-ideological "knowledge" to future conscripts? How was its effectiveness reflected? And did Zväzarm, before it became rather synonymous with the association of sports and leisure activities, contribute to the militarization of Czechoslovak society?