21.3.

21.3...positives of commuunism,...
21.31) As noted above, the social care about mothers was generous and it became more stronger in the beggining of 70s and then in Husak’s era… Government passed a pro-natality law which, in combination of high number of post-war born women at productive age caused a baby-boom at that time…For example, mothers were given special social contributions for childern school things, their clothes,… (in 1974 and 1975 it reached its top - 194,2 and 191,8 thousand childern were born)… And also the model of family and its position in the society was a little bit different from now– for the young family at that time was typical to spend all the free-time togehter and they also concentrate all the activities to the family circle.Another advantage which is very difficult to find sufficient arguments for, was the social cohesion between people. Also Marx said, that people fight in capitalism like eagles but in socialism they share more together (maybe the poorness and desperacy..*), they were not so ambitious and care more for each other than in this „anonymus“ world.The most visible positive for many people could be that the gulf between „the top five“ and the others wasn’t so deep, the „social scissors“ are more splayed in contemporary society and it causes societal tensions. I mean that the idea of communism was „for all the same“ but the capitalistic slogan sound something like „who tries he deserves“.. For example, the number of „poor people“ was thanks to full employment, government’s generous help for families and other social contributions very low.. It’s fact that the poverty became more visible after 1989. Concerning emplyment, which has very much to do with the topic of poverty, there was almost nobody unemployed in the era of communism, but now, although the rate of unemployment has been declining since 2003, it tis still about 7,7%.But there are no real positives for me!!! I think that some of socialist ideas, propagated by Marx,Engels were not bad at all, but they have arised from absolutely different background…And theory about socialism which leads to communism maybe sounds nice but the reality is very different from it. This is the reason I always vote for the right wing, I want the freedom of speech, freedom of move and I don’t want communist to have control over my country anymore!!!2) A) Talking about last fifty yrs, the best thing was that the communist regime has broken down as we already said. But there are also many other important events for our country – the entry into the EU has moved the Czech republic closer to the advanced european democracies and led us to share more with them..Even that there are many disadventages and the voices of eurosceptics are very strong, it is very important to us to be a part of the EU..B) The worst thing was the lack of freedom under communist supremacy…I think that that time under Soviets has fixed something very typical and sad to the czech character, something what is incomprehensible for other nations ..And that is what I find as the worst.. The Communist regime used inherent Czech nationalism to create xenophobic attitudes towards anyone who came from the outside world and/or who differed in any significant way from the accepted "collective" way of behaving within the "nation."I don’t want to generalize but it is also very typical for many czech people to underestimates themselves..and not only for the „common“ people, it is also typical for czech political leaders, to follow the allies but not to ask for anyhing and be absolutely not-assertive…C) How does our country enrich the world? I think that there were born so many excellent artists (Antonin Slavicek, Emil Filla, Toyen, Olbram Zoubek,…), musicians and harmonists (Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak,…) so we definitely can say that those people have enriched the world. The czech medicine, especially surgery plastic, as I know, is very well developed and czech doctors are ones of the best specialist in the world. And we also have many important inventors!!For example, Otto Wichterle has invented contact lines, Karel Schinzel has introduced a coloured photography or Prokop Diviš has invented a lightning rod…3) Regarding videoconferences, I’m very satisfied and keen on it! I haven’t had any experiences before and I’m very glad I’ve enrolled this course! I think this is the most effective way of communication between students and I think it can motivate us to be better in debates, to prepade the arguments and so on.. It’s also very interesting that we meet students from all over the world, talking about different cultures, traditions, … I really like it and I don’t have any recommendations or complaints or anything else..