Post-War Czechoslovak Nationalism in the Media Reception of the Film about Jan Rohac of Duba

This study explores nationalist strategies inscribed in the media reception of the 1947 Czechoslovak movie Warriors of Faith. While the Slovak press paid only marginal attention to the film, I demonstrate that the Czech press developed an exclusionary Czech nationalist discourse of Hussite tradition while entailing other components of Czech nationalism such as pan-Slavism. The analysis shows that the film reviews can be differentiated according to a clash between non-communist and pro-communist camps. Although the non-communist press criticized the principles of socialist realism, cultural nationalism, and ahistoricism, it failed to present any distinctive narrative. On the other hand, pro-communist reviews framed the movie as a normative model for Czechoslovak politics and society, emphasizing elements of Czech nationalism, rendering it an authentic part of communist ideology. They did so by transposing historical realities to the present-day moment and prompting the,legacy fulfilment" of the proto-communist martyr Jan Rohac to (re)invent Czechoslovak unity and Slavic integrity.