Ladislav Štoll'Participation on the Shaping of the Czechoslovak Culture

The aim of the thesis is to describe how a literary critic and an ideologist of the Communist Party Ladislav Štoll influenced the making of the Czechoslovak culture in the 20th century. At the same time we try to capture Ladislav Štoll's life in the form of a political biography, which describes his activity in connection to the discussions, polemics and the political development of the Czechoslovak cultural left wing. As a part of the thesis we describe the activity and opinions of Ladislav Štoll in the interwar republic, his attempts to write his own fiction and broadly also his participation in the discussions amongst left-wing intellectuals (so called generational discussion, the controversy around André Gide, polemics about the Moscow Trials). Also his relationship with the thinking of Zdeněk Nejedlý, the heritage of F. X. Šalda and Štoll's opinions before the outbreak of the Second World War is analysed in the thesis. We try to capture Štoll's activity during the Second World War, including the problem of his involvement with the anti-Nazi resistance. The main focus of the thesis is Štoll's activity after the war. We analyse his place in the polemics about socialism and the cultural orientation of Czechoslovakia. We also look at Štoll's influence on the universities including his lecturing at..