Building Bridges between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia through Football: How Sports Diplomacy Helped to Maintain Good Relations between the Two Countries in the Interwar Period

You are cordially invited to the lecture Building Bridges between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia through Football: How Sports Diplomacy Helped to Maintain Good Relations between the Two Countries in the Interwar Period by Dr Stipica Grgić (Department of Modern History, Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb), organised by the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which will take place on 22 October 2024 at 10:30 in the Large Meeting Hall of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and the Institute of History of the CAS. 

Invitation

After the end of the First World War in 1918, the world map changed. The old empires in Central and Central-Eastern Europe disappeared and were replaced by republics and monarchies that arose on their foundations, such as the First Czechoslovak Republic and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes/Yugoslavia. Both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia strove in the interwar period to build good diplomatic relations and present an image of themselves as a successful state. In addition to well-known diplomatic actions, for example the cooperation of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia within the framework of the Little Entente, one of the less explored elements to date is the influence of what is known as 'sports diplomacy' exerted by the authorities and the sporting officials who answered to those authorities. As a form of public diplomacy, sports diplomacy can be used to influence the public in order to accomplish foreign policy goals and to improve (or deteriorate) relations between certain countries. Sports diplomacy can also be used to build sympathy and trust towards a certain state, to create public understanding and support for the government's policies, as well as to consolidate the overall credibility and legitimacy of the government in the eyes of the citizens-spectators (Kobierecki 2020). That is why we will ask what messages were being conveyed about both countries and their citizens at those international football matches.

Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia played football against each other often. In the period from their first encounter in 1920 up to their last game in 1938, they played as many as nineteen matches. By that time, football had become a very popular sport both in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The various matches became ideal occasions to promote a certain country because, as Eric Hobsbawm noted: ''the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people'' (Hobsbawm, 1990). Research materials will primarily consist of various newspaper sources, i.e. prominent dailies published at the time (e.g. Lidové noviny), sports periodicals, along with a small number of memoirs written by actors from both sides.

Stipica Grgić is a Research Associate at the Croatian Institute of History’s Department of Modern History in Zagreb. His research focuses on social, political, and everyday history of Croatia and neighbouring countries in the late 19th and 20th century.

Additional information: Milan Sovilj, sovilj@hiu.cas.cz