<i>Vzlety a pády: Pohled do historie Československých aerolinií v letech 1923–1993</i> by Lenka Krátká

The title of Lenka Krátkáʼs book can be translated into English as “Ups and Downs: A Survey of the History of Czechoslovak Airlines, 1923–1993.” Covering seven decades from the founding of the Czechoslovak State Airline (Československé státní aerolinie, or ČSA) until the breakup of the Czechoslovak state, the book is the first systematic work on the history of the airline. The text runs for more than 440 pages, with an additional twenty pages of tabular appendices and another fifteen pages of bibliography. The book also contains a wealth of illustrative material consisting mainly of pictures, maps, and organizational charts, along with a four-page summary in English at the end.Krátká emphasizes that her book is not intended “to provide a comprehensive view”; rather, she wants “to offer a broad framework for further research into the various aspects of the history of both the airlines themselves and Czechoslovak civil aviation transport generally.” She also seeks to correct an unbalanced image of Czechoslovak airlines in the mass media and popular literature. These portrayed the late 1950s and early 1960s as a “golden age” for air carriers as they rapidly expanded their long-haul routes to the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, while offering first-class service on board—typically a draught Pilsner and traditional dishes served on china. Although Krátká’s efforts to fix the record are not explicitly mentioned in the English summary, they are readily apparent in the text, especially in chapter 9, which engages directly with these narratives.Methodologically, Krátká approaches her subject from the perspective of oral history and economic history. However, because she has not systematically traced developments in the ČSA in the general context of the Czechoslovak economy, the book reads more like a classic business or corporate history. In part, this is also because her analysis is based almost entirely on documents from the ČSA archives, which are held in the State Regional Archives in Prague. These collections are extremely rich, but Krátká tends to interpret all the surrounding political and economic developments through the prism of the airline, which sometimes leads to dubious arguments. Czechoslovak aviation policy emerged as the result of various intersecting factors, both internal (foreign, transportation, and finance ministries and the Communist ruling organs) and external (the Soviet Union).The structure of the book is relatively straightforward. Aside from an introduction and conclusion, Vzlety a pády consists of nine chapters. The first eight are ordered chronologically to cover developments from the establishment of the company on 6 October 1923 until the breakup of Czechoslovakia on 1 January 1993. The final chapter seeks to counterbalance the popular narratives in the media and public discourse by critically assessing the quality of the services provided by ČSA to its customers.Chapter 1 focuses on the interwar period and continues through World War II, when the ČSA was liquidated and many of its employees who remained in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were persecuted and even executed by the Nazis. Chapter 2 follows with the reconstruction of the ČSA after 1945 and discusses the impact and consequences of the Communist takeover in February 1948 on the airline. Chapter 3 focuses on the period from 1949 to 1955, revolving around two key developments: the termination of most routes to non-Communist countries in 1951; and the subsequent efforts by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to develop domestic routes and flights to other Soviet-bloc countries while replacing all pilots and flight attendants who were not loyal to the Communist regime.Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the ČSA's supposed “golden age” from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s. The rapid expansion of long-haul routes to the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and North America was fueled primarily by government subsidies. By the mid-1960s, echoing general trends in the country, public discussion began about how to put the company on a more viable economic footing, but these proposals were thwarted by the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Chapters 6 and 7 detail the subsequent stagnation and deterioration of the airline in the 1970s and 1980s. The main reason for this development was the inadequate quality of the Soviet civilian aircraft, which were inferior to Western models. The repeated oil shocks of the 1970s exacerbated the ČSA's problems. The airline engaged in unfair pricing and experienced a rising accident rate, causing grave damage to its reputation.In May 1989, even before the fall of the Communist regime, the Czechoslovak government decided to purchase two Airbus A310 aircraft for flights to non-Communist countries. Despite the far-reaching political and social changes that followed the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, the ČSA's trajectory continued by “gravity flow” until 1991, when the government decided to privatize it. Chapter 8 discusses the subsequent transformation in the late 1990s only briefly, reflecting both the chronological span of the book and the exiguity of documents made available to researchers for the 1990s and 2000s.The book is rich in detail but overwhelmingly descriptive. Unfortunately, Krátká offers no analytical framework in either the introduction or the conclusion. The conclusion consists mainly of quotations from documents or personal recollections of employees about their work at the airline. The book thus leaves readers without any analysis of major trends, a missed opportunity on Krátká’s part to place her research in a larger international context.Another drawback is the persistent use of document citations as chapter and section titles. Perhaps this choice was made to “lighten” the heavy and detailed text or to attract a non-academic audience, but the practice is somewhat disconcerting and does not clearly indicate the coverage of the text.One final concern is that Krátká has not sufficiently situated her book within the existing corpus of literature on the history of civil aviation. Her methodological framework (business and oral history) with an emphasis on documents from the company archives is fully justifiable, but the text would have benefited from better engagement with the existing literature, which would have allowed Krátká to place the activities of the ČSA in a larger international perspective. In addition to my own recent book, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2020), other books one might mention include Alan Dobson, A History of International Civil Aviation: From Its Origins through Transformative Evolution (London: Routledge, 2017); Jenifer Van Vleck, Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); David MacKenzie, ICAO: A History of the International Civil Aviation Organization (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); Marc Dierikx, Clipping the Clouds: How Air Travel Changed the World (London: Praeger, 2008); and Guy Vanthemsche, La Sabena—Lʼaviation commerciale belge 1923–2001: Des origines au crash (Brussels: De Boeck, 2002).Despite these reservations, Krátkáʼs book on the history of the ČSA is important for historians in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and even for a wider circle of aviation historians, to whom it offers a detailed case study on the internal policymaking of one of the major airlines in the Soviet bloc.

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