Za hranice služebně

This book covers the hitherto neglected question of foreign business trips in the period of people’s democratic and later socialist Czechoslovakia, covering it from the perspective of individuals’ experiences as well as from the perspective of collective entities – the state, communist party and other institutionalized players. In addition to an insight into broader political, legislative and administrative contexts of business trips, it also contains thematic studies focusing on the different groups of employees who in the period under scrutiny traveled abroad or worked there on a long-term basis. The studies depict foreign trips in the areas of transportation, foreign trade, culture, sport as well as trips by representatives of the military or those by the Czechoslovak political elites. They also include specific experience of men and women who travelled abroad “for business purposes,” presented through edited interviews. The book includes photographs from the period.