Suchergebnisse

The editor of Index on Censorship describes what happened when she went to a banned symposium in Prague.

Title story from exiled Czech writer's first published book

In response to his banishment to barbaric Tomis, on the Black Sea, in 8 C.E., Ovid composed theTristia,entreaties to Emperor Augustus to permit his return to civilized Rome. Feeling equally alienated from fin-de-siècle Vienna, the Czech expatriate poet, Josef Svatopluk Machar, produced the slim collectionTristium Vindobona.One poem, "První dojmy" (First impressions), finds Machar's narrator and alter ego tormented by visions of an otherworldly and unattainable Prague. "Na Kahlenbergu" (On Kahlenberg) takes the narrator to the eponymous hill outside Vienna, where he invokes his distressed land to the north. The legacy of Habsburg dominion over the Czechs appears to him as a "wide and bloody path" spanning historical battlegrounds from Diirnkrut, near Vienna, to the White Mountain, west of Prague. Czech critics in 1893 hailedTristiumas both a literary and a political event, its stature enhanced by its publication under the "shadow of bayonets," that is, during an official state of emergency in Prague. The young critic Emanuel z Čenkova raised only an amicable objection in his review inLiterární listy:Machar's narrator could easily come home—eluding reverie and history—since "express trains cross like lightning" between Vienna and Prague.

THE ELECTION ON 17 DECEMBER 1987 OF MILOS JAKES AS GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE (CC) OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA (CPCZ) IN SUCCESSION TO GUSTAV HUSAK CONSTITUTED, AT LEAST ON THE SURFACE, THE SMOOTHEST TRANSFER OF POWER IN THE POST-WAR HISTORY OF EASTERN EUROPE. THE AUTHOR HERE CONTENDS THAT THE REPLACEMENT OF HUSAK BY JAKES MAY BE INTERPRETED AS A MOVE OF CONSIDERABLE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE FOR CZECHS AND SLOVAKS AS THEY ENTERED THE ANNIVERSARY YEAR OF THE PRAGUE SPRING. IN THIS RESPECT IT MAY BE COMPARED WITH THE REPLACEMENT IN 1971 BY ERICH HONECKER OF THE VETERAN STALINIST, WALTER ULBRICHT, WHO (AS HUSAK MAY WELL DO) REMAINED AS TITULAR HEAD OF STATE AND A MEMBER OF THE POLITIBURO UNTIL HIS DEATH IN 1973. MILOS JAKES HAS ALREADY BEEN DISMISSED BY MANY PUNDITS BOTH IN THE WEST AND AT HOME AS A MERE INTERIM LEADER, AND IT WAS DOUBTLESS TO COUNTERACT SUCH SPECULATION THAT HE HAS STRONGLY CONDEMNED 'WAIT-AND-SEE AND SITTING-ON-THE-FENCE ATTITUDES'. HOWEVER, AT THE AGE OF 65 AND IN SEEMINGLY EXCELLENT HEALTH, HE COULD REMAIN AT THE HELM FOR A DECADE. WHILST YIELDING NOTHING IN COMMUNIST ORTHODOXY HE COULD NEVERTHELESS IMPLEMENT SOME CHANGES FOR THE BETTER IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA. BUT JAKES WILL BE ONLY TOO WELL AWARE OF WHAT WAS APPARENT 20 YEARS AGO, NAMELY THAT ECONOMIC REFORM IS LARGELY MEANINGLESS WITHOUT A PARALLEL PROCESS OF POLITICAL REFORM.