The Impact of the Repression on the Punk Subculture in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic - its Development and View of Communist Ideology

Abstract

The development of the punk subculture in communist Czechoslovakia was utterly different from that of the free West. The case study aims to clarify the resulting attitudes of contemporary punk leaders of different ages after more than thirty years of democratic development in the Czech Republic, taking into account the legacy of development from the times of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

Cultural and social repression reinforced the idea of "Do it yourself" and the determination of the subculture's leaders. The physical and psychological pressure thus made its mark in antipathy towards communism and communist ideology in general.

The resistance and disagreement were sometimes covertly expressed in song lyrics or civil disobedience. The subcultures of the past regime were united regardless of differences in viewpoints due to a mutual enemy in the form of the state apparatus.

After the 1989 revolution, a number of these conflicting ideas came to the forefront of cross-cultural clashes that spilled over into the very streets and filled the headlines. The purpose of the research was to compare the attitudes of pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary punks toward communist ideology and communism as a whole.

The results indicate that despite the subcultural ideological formation of subcultures, the punk subculture has retained its own approach to communist ideology, in which the vast majority of local representatives have a strictly negative or even anti-communist mindset. This precedent of the punk subculture is, the researcher believes, an integral part of all post-communist countries that have a corresponding repressive history.