The publication focuses on mapping the influence of journalist, literary critic, politician, and communist ideologist Ladislav Štoll (1902–1981) on the formation of Czechoslovak culture in the 20th century. Ladislav Štoll's life is captured in the form of a political biography that shows his activities in the context of discussions, polemics, and the political development of the Czechoslovak cultural left. Key chapters focus on Štoll's political involvement in cultural policy during the 1950s, including the impact of his most famous report 'Thirty Years of Struggle for Czech Socialist Poetry.' The book captures Štoll's political rise as well as the period of critical evaluation of his political-aesthetic concepts during the de-Stalinization of the late 1950s, his fall from power during the Prague Spring of 1968, and his return and activities in the 1970s.
