Dikobraz

Dikobraz was founded after the Second World War by the writer Jaroslav Vojtěch, who put together its editorial staff consisting of the prose writer Václav Lacina, the artistic editor Ondřej Sekora and the journalist Zdeněk Vavřík. He planned to publish an independent humour magazine for everybody, regardless of their political views. The first issue appeared in July 1945. In the years after the war, the magazine published caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini, praising the Allies. Apart from that, it criticised the collaborationists: e.g. Adina Mandlová, Lída Baarová and Vlasta Burian. In 1946 the magazine was taken over by the journalist Zdena Ančík, who actively participated in the purges of the Association of Czech Journalists. In February 1948 the magazine officially became a regime publication. It endorsed purges and ridiculed the “remnants of the bourgeois society” such as prostitution, the Catholic church, factory owners and members of Sokol. It dedicated a lot of space to the trial of Milada Horáková. In 1951–1952 the writer Pavel Kohout became a new editor-in-chief. The magazine focused primarily on caricaturing capitalism and building Stalin’s cult of personality. At the end of 1950s it was very successful; every new issue was accompanied by large queues. Dikobraz emphasized its artistic side, but it used comics very carefully. The artists Adolf Born and Oldřich Jelínek published their most successful works in the magazine. Other contributors included Miloš Nesvadba’s cycle Father and I (Otec a já).

After the brief political liberalization after Stalin’s death, the magazine, led by Eduard Littman, became significantly more liberal, although it remained an instrument of propaganda. It abandoned the cult of personality and directed its satire against “western values”. An exception to this was the period between January and August 1968, when the magazine reflected the social changes and propagandist satire all but disappeared from its pages. From 1960s, authors such as Vladimír Jiránek, Jaroslav Kerles, Jan Kristofori, Jiří Winter Neprakta, Vladimír Renčín and Jan Vyčítal contributed to the magazine. After August 1968 some of the authors could only publish under a pseudonym. After the Velvet Revolution there was an attempt to revive the magazine, under the name Nový Dikobraz (New Dikobraz). The magazine was discontinued in 1995.