Národopisná revue 3/2026

The study examines marriages to foreign nationals in Czechoslovakia during the period from the communist takeover in 1948 to 1989. Marriages to foreign nationals represented one of the legal ways of leaving the country and travelling abroad freely and without obstruction, which is why the regime sought to keep them under control. Marriages regarded as speculative and fictitious were perceived as a particular problem. Marriages to foreign nationals from Western countries continued to take place routinely until 1989, but the attitude of the Czechoslovak authorities towards them changed over the period 1948–1989. Periods of greater “liberalisation” alternated with periods of increased pressure. The basic nature of this approach, however, remained unchanged, and marriages to foreign nationals from the West were consistently regarded as suspicious and undesirable. The reasons were ideological, as well as socioeconomic (the departure of young, qualified people of working age, etc.) and security-related (concerns about espionage, etc.).

This study examines the transformation in the everyday lives of agricultural families in the Czech Lands after 1945 in the context of post-war political, economic, and social changes. Drawing on memoirs published in the literature, family chronicles, and oral history testimonies, it analyses the impact of state interventions on farming, family relationships, social status, and the adaptive strategies adopted of agricultural families. Particular attention is paid to post-war population movements, the system of compulsory agricultural deliveries, and the collectivisation campaign. The study demonstrates that collectivisation fundamentally transformed not only property and production relations but also traditional values, intergenerational continuity, and the identity of rural families. It also examines the long-term consequences of these processes after 1989.

The study deals with the oral and literary tradition of Christological broadside ballads in the wedding repertoire of Moravia and Silesia. The subject is both wedding broadside ballads with Christological motifs and other Christological songs transferred to the wedding. The research is conceived from the perspectives of ethnomusicology, literary history and hymnology. The analysis of the wedding repertoire presents the broadside ballad as a medium that catechetically developed the concept of marriage and which transferred elements of Baroque spiritual lyrics into the oral tradition of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Broadside ballads have successfully taken over the function of the bearer of the wedding repertoire since the 18th century; weddings and oral traditions supported some Christological songs until the production of broadside songs no longer existed. The reception is characterized by regional variability of tunes and a common wedding note.

The subject of this study is the Code of Lekë Dukagjini (1933), codified by Shtjefën Gjeçovi on the basis of the customary laws of the northern Albanian highlanders. The study proposes a philosophical-hermeneutic framework for interpreting honour as the ethical and metaphysical foundation of the Kanun. Through a systematic reading of its twelve books, the analysis examines the ways in which honour, besa (the given word), kinship, property, boundaries, justice, blood, ritual, and relations with the sacred are interconnected. The study places selected principles of the Kanun in dialogue with ancient legal, philosophical, and religious traditions, particularly the Code of Hammurabi, the Old Testament, and the works of Plato and Aristotle. It argues that customary rules governing everyday social relations are presented not merely as pragmatic regulations but as expressions of a sacral order linking individual conduct, communal morality, and a transcendent conception of justice. In this perspective, honour functions as a principle through which the social and metaphysical dimensions of life are articulated and maintained.