by Luke Seidl
Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” As Russian tanks retreat through the Roki Tunnel and Georgians pick up the pieces in Tbilisi, Poti, and Gori, we recall that on this day 40 years ago Soviet tanks rolled through Czechoslovakia in an attempt to squash Prague Spring In April of 1968, Czech President Alexander Dubek introduced a series of reforms that aimed at liberalizing the economy and increasing freedoms of press, speech, association, and travel. For almost four months, Prague became a venue for open debate and biting Soviet dissent, much to the chagrin of Leonid Brezhnev. And so, on August 20, 1968 the Soviet Union and three satellite nations (Hungary, Bulgaria, and Poland) invaded Czechoslovakia, and by morning had occupied the golden city of spires and red roofs. Dubek was arrested and Czechoslovakia would wait two decades for freedom from Soviet rule.
It is dispiriting, then, to see a nationalist Russia asserting its influence in the Caucasus with alarming bellicosity almost twenty years after the end of the Cold War and 40 years after Prague Spring. It seems all too familiar, and given the modus operandi of Vladimir Putin, not surprising. Compounded with tensions over the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, Kosovo independence, oil pipelines, and NATO expansion, the Russo-Georgian war of the past three weeks offers a scary reminder of things past. Interestingly, an old actor in this play, Mikhail Gorbachev (who once praised Dubek socialism with a human face as influential in his glasnost and perestroika), offers a scathing criticism of Western policies in this respect and defends Russia as re-actors to Georgian aggression. See his op-ed in today New York Times. Regardless of who is to blame for this month tragedy, it is certain that the mercury is rising on the Moscow-Washington hotline once again. Using Kundera’s insight, all parties must now take steps to ensure more tragedies do not ensue.
With the support of Atlas, groups like the New Economic School in Georgia, Liberalni Institute in the Czech Republic, and others in former Yugoslavia, are fighting against irresponsible governance and hostile state actions.
Copyright © 2010 The Atlas Network.
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I loved reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being back in high school – is Kundera free market? I’ll have to dig up a copy…
Kundera’s writings are mostly anti-communist polemics that celebrate the individual over the collective. A leitmotif common in his most popular novels, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness, is one of his protagonists battling totalitarian policies (e.g. secret police, speech censorship, human rights violations, etc.)
Behind Fascism, Communism, behind all the occupa-
tions and invasions lurks a more basic pervasive evil
and that the image of that evil was a parade of people
marching with raised fists and shouting identical syllables
in unison. – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
While his novels suggest that he is an ardent individualist, he was also a card-carrying communist until 1970 (an experience that I imagine was the inspiration behind many of his works). He was once expelled for his “individualistic tendencies”, but rejoined. However, his subversive writing later in his career lead me to believe he rejected communism. Perhaps he remained in the party to conduct “research” for his novels?
I knew I dug that book in h.s. for a reason!