The Development and Activity of the Czechoslovak Geographical Society in the Eighty Years of Its Existence
Authors: Trávníček Dušan 
Published: June 2023

The development of the Czechoslovak Geographical Society can be divided into three main periods: the first is concluded by the end of World War I, the second is finished after World War II. The third and the most important epoch, continuing the second one, is the contemporary period. The Period of 1894-1918. On May 1, 1894, the Czech Society of Geography and Geology (Česká zeměvědná společnost) was founded. Its main task was issuing the Journal of the Czech Society of Geography and Geology. The Period of 1918-1945. World War I and the Great October Socialist Revolution brought a number of political and social changes, among them also the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic. In 1920, the Society was given a new name, the Czechoslovak Geographical Society. In 1924, the Section of the Czechoslovak Geographical Society in Brno was founded. From 1930 up to the beginning of World War II the most characteristic feature of the Society's activity were congresses of Czechoslovak geographers. The Period from 1945 up to the Present. The liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Army together with the national and democratic revolution made it possible to renew the activity of our geographers in the Czechoslovak Geographic Society. In 1946 the Slovak Geographical Society was established in Bratislava. A year later the Fifth Congress of Czechoslovak geographers was organised in Prague after a 10 year break. There were some changes in the organisation of the Czechoslovak Geographic Society, particularly at the end of 1952, when the summit scientific institution, the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, had been established. Among a number of Societies which were joined to it later on, was also the Czechoslovak Geographical Society. The Sixth Congress of Czechoslovak geographers took place in Smolenice near Trnava in 1955. The Seventh Congress of Czechoslovak geographers in Brno, 1957, accepted the recommendation that lectures about the place of the congress and its surroundings should be given at the congresses. At that time Sections were being established as local branches of the Society. Prague remained the seat of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Geographical Society, which became its supreme organ. For the Central Bohemian region a local branch was established in Prague in 1956. In due course further branches were founded and their centres were the following towns: Opava (1957, from 1969, in Olomouc), Prešov (1959), Liptovský Mikuláš (1960), Plzeň, Ústí nad Labem (both in 1961), Bratislava (pedological 1964), Banská Bystrica (1966), České Budějovice (1967), Hradec Králové (1972). These branches then organised further congresses of Czechoslovak geographers (1959 Opava, 1962 the Ústí branch in Teplice Spa in Bohemia, 1965 Prešov, 1969 Olomouc, and 1972 České Budějovice). Since 1966 the Czechoslovak Geographical Society has built up professional groups organised on three levels, the central, the regional, and the local ones. In 1971 the Czechoslovak Geographical Society paid much attention to actions organised on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The Central Committee of the Society started establishing contacts with similar societies in the Socialist countries. The Czechoslovak Geographical Society is interested in making a broad public cooperate on the solution of topical geographic problems. The tasks which are being solved by the Czechoslovak Geographical Society at present are closely connected with life, and they are aimed at the needs of Czechoslovak economics and, recently, also at the effort at improving the environs of man.