Archive: History | Communism Communism
Jakeš 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 democratic reform, "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
December 1988: Mitterrand meets dissidents in Prague
In the second half of the 1980s the sweeping reforms in the Soviet Union
were being echoed in several of the country’s Eastern Bloc satellites.
But in Czechoslovakia there were few signs of change, despite growing
diplomatic pressure from abroad. A key moment came in December 1988, when
President Francois Mitterrand made the first ever official trip to
Czechoslovakia by a French head of state. This was part of a broader
attempt to improve dialogue with communist countries, but Mitterrand also
came with clear human rights agenda. Just before his trip he was
interviewed by Czechoslovak Radio: More
Perestroika passes Czechoslovakia by
When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, it heralded a
revolution in Soviet-American relations. At a series of high-profile
summits, beginning in Geneva in 1985, a growing personal trust developed
between the Soviet and American leaders. Here is President Reagan – from
the Czech Radio archives - in Moscow on June 1 1988: More
Jiří Vidím – Owner of a hotel with a history
Jiří Vidím, a former teacher, entered the hotel business almost at the
very moment that communism fell in Czechoslovakia, and seized the
opportunities that freedom brought. For two decades now he has been running
Unitas House, a hotel in downtown Prague with a fascinating history. More
Calisthenics, communist style
Last year in this programme I played some archive recordings from the
pre-war gatherings of the “Sokol” movement, which brought together tens
of thousands of people in displays of mass gymnastics, all in an atmosphere
of great patriotic fervour. After the war, the communists suppressed the
Sokol movement as part of the old political order, instead staging their
own spectacular calisthenics displays in honour of the Communist Party. More
Tapes of infamous communist show trial with AP correspondent William Oatis unearthed in Czech National Archives
William N. Oatis, an Associated Press correspondent who served in Prague in
the hardline 1950s entered cold war history when the communist regime made
him confess falsely to espionage and sentenced him to 10 years in jail.
Now, fifteen years after his death, recordings of that shameful show trial
have unexpectedly been unearthed in the country’s National Archives. More
The Red Elvis in Havana
When I first moved to Prague nearly two decades ago, Czech friends were
often amazed that I had never heard of the American singer, Dean Reed.
Dubbed the “Red Elvis”, Reed was a household name throughout the
Eastern Bloc.
More
Communism only postponed Czechoslovakia’s end, historian Jan Rychlík says in his new book
Czechs and Slovaks spent most of the 20th century in one country,
Czechoslovakia. Ever since its foundation, however, each nation had a
different idea of how the country should work, and what their role in it
should be. In his new book entitled Czechs and Slovaks in the 20th Century:
Cooperation and Conflicts, historian Jan Rychlík argues that
Czechoslovakia was in fact bound to fail as a state, and that communism
only postponed its inevitable end. More
The Cold War on the streets of Belfast
In the 1970s the Cold War was fought on many fronts. One of them was
Northern Ireland, where the tension and violence that raged throughout the
decade also became part of the propaganda war between East and West. At the
time, Czechoslovak Radio’s correspondent in London was Karel Kvapil, who
had entered the radio after the wave of sackings following the 1968
Soviet-led invasion, and later went on to become its last communist era
general director. In 1977 Kvapil travelled to Belfast, to report on the
Troubles. For part of his programme he spoke with women on a housing estate
in a mainly Catholic area of the city: More
Jerri Zbiral: finding a new path to Lidice
Anniversaries give us the chance to think again about the meaning of events
and their relevance today. Next month it will be exactly 70 years since the
destruction by the Nazis of the Czech village of Lidice in June 1942. The
facts and figures are well known, and even in the shadow of huge numbers
later killed in the Holocaust, still remain shocking: 340 people were
murdered, including 88 children and all but two of the men of the village.
They were killed systematically and in cold blood in a calculated attempt
by the SS to prevent Czech insurgency. The extent to which Lidice later
became a tool of communist propaganda, using rhetoric that equated Nazi
Germany with the “West”, is also well known, and for many Czechs, the
memory of Lidice still remains tainted by this legacy. So what can Lidice
mean to us today, now that all but a handful of the survivors are no longer
with us and with memories of both Nazism and Communism fading? David
Vaughan brings us a special programme. More
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