CZECH REPUBLIC. Prague 07.2018
16th Sokol Rally. Boys choir at the main Sokol performance.
Established in 1862, the Sokol (Falcon) gymnastic-cum-paramilitary organisation created the foundations of contemporary concepts of the Czech nation. During the interwar years, the many thousands of synchronised displays given by the Sokol clubs came to symbolise the popularisation of the nationalist ideology and the notion of society’s mental and physical renewal. The organisation was declared illegal by both the Nazis and later on the communist authorities of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1948. Borcy (Fellas) is a male Sokol collective which was reactivated in the nineteen nineties and invokes the organisation’s pre-war traditions.