Letters of Solidarity and Friendship: Czechoslovakia 1968–71 by Parker David (review)

Abstract

SEER, 98, 2, APRIL 2020 388 technocratic future — the ‘combat readiness’ of East European states in case of Western attack was open to doubt. And military defence of frontline borders with NATO had, after all, been the very purpose behind the Warsaw Pact, from 1955 onwards. Department of Humanities Matthew Stibbe Sheffield Hallam University Parker, David (ed.). Letters of Solidarity and Friendship: Czechoslovakia 1968– 71. Bacquier Books, Holmfirth, 2017. 436 pp. Illustrations. Timeline. Notes. Index of letters. £14.99 (paperback). David Parker, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Leeds, presents us with a collection of correspondence between his late father, Leslie Parker, and a doctor in Czechoslovakia, Paul Žalud, who spent the Second World War in the United Kingdom but subsequently returned to Communist Czechoslovakia out of a sense of duty. Although the two never met one another, they developed an intimate correspondence lasting from 1968 until 1971, the year that Leslie Parker passed away. The letters exchanged between the men represent a valuable contribution to our understanding of life in Communist Czechoslovakia during the first years of Soviet occupation and the onset of so-called ‘normalization’. In addition, Parker’s criticisms of capitalist society and injustices are insightful. Parker was a veteran member and functionary of the British Communist Party, whereas Žalud was a disillusioned Czechoslovak ex-Communist doctor (he left the Party in 1941) struggling to salvage his career and provide for his family in the provincial city of Ústí nad Labem. Their letters are reprinted here largely in their original format, and organized chronologically. There is a short introduction at the beginning and some reflections by the editor at the end of the volume. The exchange of letters was initiated by Parker after Žalud published a letter in The Times dated 14 July 1968 (published 19 July 1968) in reaction to their coverage of the pre-occupation Prague Spring. Žalud disagreed with The Times on why hard-line Communists in the Soviet Union persisted in their belief that the liberalization measures adopted by Czechoslovak party leader, Alexander Dubček, during the first half of 1968 were part of an imperialist Western conspiracy to undermine the Soviet bloc. Žalud referred to Karl Popper’s ‘conspiracy theory of society’ in order to explain Soviet thinking in his attempt to correct the impression made by The Times that the Soviet leaders felt the way they did because they were ‘prisoners of Marxist doctrine’. The point made by Žalud was that Soviet thinking had nothing in common with true Marxist REVIEWS 389 doctrine. The editor refers to some unpreserved initial correspondence initiated by Parker criticizing Žalud’s stance. When Žalud responded in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion, which occurred in August, Parker apologized and the friendly correspondence began. The first letter in the volume was sent from Žalud to Parker on 28 October 1968. Žalud mentioned that thirty thousand Czechoslovaks had already left for the West and that the Czechoslovak Communist Party was still struggling to preserve the sovereignty of the occupied country, but that the Soviets were interfering wherever possible. In his reply, Parker wrote of the social ills facing Britain and other Western countries. He also mentioned that Communists in Britain and other Western countries were torn by the question of whether antiimperialism meant always agreeing with Soviet foreign policy. Finally, Parker stated that the existence of the Communist countries in Europe was a good thing because ‘if they were to go, the salvation of humanity would be put back possiblycenturies’.Žalud’sreply(thefinalletterof1968inthevolume)tookissue with Parker’s notion that the success of the socialist revolution was sufficient to end ‘man’s exploitation by man’ by stating: ‘The expropriation of the means of production and the verbal declaration that the proletariat has been raised to the position of the ruling class is by no means a fool-proof device to do away with exploitation.’ The letters exchanged in 1968 demonstrate the differences in perception between Parker, an individual with Communist beliefs in a free country, and Žalud, who lived in Communist Czechoslovakia and experienced first-hand difference between Communist theory and practice. Over the course of 1969, twenty letters were exchanged. Parker initially wrote with the...