Street Politics. Student Protests in Prague 1962 - 1967

This thesis deals with the genealogy of so-called "Strahov events", i.e. the protest of students from Strahov dormitories, which took place on October 31, 1967. The key question is why seemingly an insignificant event - a power outage - led to the collapse of the university organization of the Czechoslovak Union of Youth (ČSM). The thesis analyses the 1960s through optic of street politics, and examines manifestations of the particular student collectives that preceded the Strahov protest and which set up the implicit rules on how to enter the public space and what content it should bring in and how to avoid repressive reaction in the same time. In particular, it focuses on the majáles festival marches in 1965 and 1966 and the so- called Petřín incidents - the annual May Day clashes between the Public Security forces and the youth at Petřín hill. It helps to answer related questions: how these collectives influenced the origin, course and consequences of the Strahov demonstration. In addition, the thesis focuses on the process of creation of student social movement. It examines what the students expected in the 1960s, what was the purpose of their criticism and how their criticism was influenced by the context social transformations that took place in the state-socialist Czechoslovakia in the..