Between a Drag and Serving the Homeland

This collective monograph is devoted to an examination of the reflection on the now defunct institution of compulsory full-time military service in a broader time span from the onset of the so-called normalization in Czechoslovakia after 1968 until the full professionalization of the Czech army in 2004. Since the end of the 18th century, compulsory military service has been one of the important mechanisms of modern European nation-states, through which the ruling power sought to discipline, indoctrinate, socialise and, in the event of a threat, mobilise its citizens to defend the existing social order. The present book seeks to answer the question of the extent to which this ambition for power was successful in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries through an analysis of the reflection of several generations of drafted men who were forced to undergo compulsory military service during this period.