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Czech HistoryPresident Gustáv Husák, the face of Czechoslovakia’s “normalisation”
The last communist president of Czechoslovakia Gustáv Husák became the
symbol of the spineless regime that ruled the country after the Soviet-led
invasion of Czechoslovakia. Himself a political prisoner in the 1950s, he
oversaw the persecution of opposition activists in the 1970s and 80s – an
intellectual who supported the reforms of the Prague Spring turned into the
Soviet Union’s lackey. We look at the life of Gustáv Husák on the 99th
anniversary of his birth. More
ArtsHow the Velvet Revolution overturned the literary landscape
Writers were at the forefront of the Velvet Revolution. But when the dust
settled on the political changes they found a fast changing publishing
revolution underway that left some of them sidelined. We look at the
changes in the publishing and literary world over the last two decades. More
From the ArchivesJiří Dienstbier remembers a fateful day
Because August 21 is the fortieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the radio played such a central role in the
events of those dramatic days, in this edition of From the Archives we
shall be hearing the memories of one of the key journalists involved in
those dramatic events. Jiří Dienstbier was one of Czechoslovak Radio’s
star reporters at the time. Later he was to become one of the best-known
dissidents of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and after the Velvet Revolution he was
the country’s first post-communist foreign minister. On the morning of
August 21 1968, he was one of several radio journalists, playing a
cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet occupiers, as the Soviets tried to
silence the radio station. In some of the recordings that survive, you can
hear quite distinctly tanks and machine-gun fire in the background. More
SpecialThe 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia through the eyes of Soviet troops
August 21 marks the anniversary of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by
the Soviet Union and other communist countries. The occupation crushed an
attempt to reform the communist regime, and drove the country into two
decades of hard-line rule. What that all meant to the people of
Czechoslovakia has been looked at many times. In our special programme
today, we look at August 1968 from another perspective: that of the
occupiers.
More
ArtsHow the Velvet Revolution overturned the literary landscape
Writers were at the forefront of the Velvet Revolution. But when the dust
settled on the political changes they found a fast changing publishing
revolution underway that left some of them sidelined. We look at the
changes in the publishing and literary world over the last two decades.
More
From the ArchivesJakeš stands alone like a fencepost
The expression “jako kůl v plotě” – “like a fencepost” -
entered Czech folklore in the summer of 1989. The date was July 17 and
Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party chief Miloš Jakeš was meeting local
party activists in the small West Bohemian town of Červený Hrádek. The
authority of the party was being increasingly challenged, and thousands
had
signed Charter 77's appeal for greater recognition of human rights,
"Několik vět"
(a few sentences). Not realizing that he was being recorded, Jakeš
complained bitterly that he felt he was standing on his own and
unsupported
“like a fencepost”. Soon the recording had circulated around the
country and abroad, and Jakeš, who was already famous for his
malapropisms
– he once mixed up the words “boiler” and “broiler” - found his
authority shaken still more. More
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