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Incompatible Reading Cultures: Czech Common Readers and the Soviet Mass Reader Concept in the Early 1950s

Abstract This article explores how, in the implementation of the Soviet mass reader concept in the early 1950s, the Communist authorities in Czechoslovakia strove to reeducate Czech common readers by prescribing particular texts and particular ways of reading. Focusing predominantly on normative discourse, the article argues that the implementation process was, if not directly doomed to fail, at least to encounter serious obstacles as it suspended inherited cultural and social contexts which were important preconditions for making sense of texts. Contrasting features of a Czech reading culture with those of Soviet mass reading practices, notably the concept of the “readers’ discussion”, this article highlights the distinctive controversies inherent in the cultural construction of the Soviet bloc that challenge the Soviet bloc’s seemingly unified identity.