Warsaw Pact Invasion Research Articles

Karel Kachyňa and The Holocaust: More Than Films for Children

Karel Kachyňa and The Holocaust: More Than Films for Children examines three Holocaust-themed works, Golden Eels (Zlatí úhoři, 1979), Death of a Beautiful Deer (Smrt krásných srnců, 1986) and The Last Butterfly (Poslední motýl, 1991), by Czech filmmaker Karel Kachyňa during the normalisation period of the Czechoslovak communist era. This work seeks to challenge the critical reception of Kachyňa’s normalisation era (1970-1989) works, where a focus on his use of children’s narratives and crude humour during the period has had a diminishing effect. Engaging with legitimate concerns over Kachyňa’s ability to continue to work following the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 in Czechoslovakia when many of his New Wave contemporaries like Jiří Menzel and Věra Chytilová were banned and some like Miloš Forman felt compelled to emigrate, this work explores how Kachyňa’s Holocaust-themed works address the filmmaker’s attempts to produce a humanist poetics in the face of a dehumanising authoritarian regime, despite essentially working for the communist regime he was attempting to criticise. In generating analogies between the Nazi regime and his contemporaneous experience under communism, Kachyňa provides a powerfully subversive body of work which this article argues is deserving of greater attention in scholarship.

My past and thoughts (with apologies to Alexander Herzen)

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Canadian Slavonic Papers occasionally publishes documents of historical significance, and we are happy to include among them memoirs and personal accounts of remarkable experiences that might not otherwise find an outlet. Ten years ago Norman Pereira, an emeritus professor of Russian history at Dalhousie University and long-time member of the Canadian Association of Slavists, published a first installment of his recollections in CSP (“Confessions and Professions”). We are pleased now to present Prof. Pereira’s expansion on that earlier work. Readers of this engaging text will see that our distinguished colleague has led a remarkable life; his gripping anecdotes about his youth in revolutionary China, education at Berkeley in the 1960s, arriving in Moscow just days before the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and organizing Dalhousie’s famous study abroad program in the Soviet Union bring colour and ethnographic detail to the events, mentalities, and everyday life of worlds we have lost.

The Motives of the Feminist #MeToo Movement in Václav Havel’s Plays

ABSTRACT Václav Havel (1936–2011) was for many people in the Czech Republic the most significant and certainly the most revered cultural and political figure of the past half a century. In the 1960s, Havel became the most important representative of East European absurd drama. His work was banned after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Gradually, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Havel emerged as one of the most important Czechoslovak dissidents and after the fall of communism in 1989, he was elected President of Czechoslovakia and then of the Czech Republic. In all, Havel wrote 13 plays. In them, he criticizes the shameless and arrogant quest for power, which is usually conducted by the abuse of language. This article, however, is the first in the history of criticism of Havel’s plays which points out that from as early as the 1960s, Havel systematically included scenes of sexual manipulation of young women by ageing men, in his plays, thus anticipating the #MeToo movement by many decades.

A Cruel Theatre of Self-Immolations: Contemporary Suicide Protests by Fire and their Resonances in Culture [Okrutny teatr samospaleń: Protesty samobójcze w ogniu i ich echa w kulturze współczesnej

<i>A Cruel Theatre of Self-Immolations: Contemporary Suicide Protests by Fire and their Resonances in Culture</i> [Okrutny teatr samospaleń: Protesty samobójcze w ogniu i ich echa w kulturze współczesnej

Musical Theatre as an Object of Transnational Political Exchange

The paper focuses on the ways Czech-language theatres in Czechoslovakia were dealingwith the obligatory presence of Soviet operetta titles in their repertoire, dating from about 1950to 1989. The reform of Czech musical theatre began right after World War II. In search of the right,nationalized form of operetta, Czech theatre organs soon understood that the example must bedrawn from the hegemonic Soviet culture. In the Soviet discourse, mainly Isaac Dunayevsky’soperettas were considered masterpieces, and Czech theatre politicians were soon paying theirattention to them. After some initial difficulties in obtaining material for the operettas, Dunayevsky’spieces entered Czech theatre and stayed on the repertoire to the beginning of the 1960s. Afterthe Warsaw Pact Invasion in 1968, Soviet operettas re-entered the theatres’ repertoire; however,their reception and staging circumstances were much more complicated. The paper focuses on themain tendencies in staging Dunayevsky’s operettas in Czechoslovakia, the political and culturalbackground of productions, and the various ways of presenting it in Czech society and culture. Thecultural and historical microprocesses analysed may then throw light on a wider range of historicaland cultural phenomena, including cultural transfers and relations between Czechoslovakia and theSoviet Union, the discrepancies between the official and unofficial discourse, as well as the role ofpopular musical theatre in a socialist society.

Military Conflicts Between Communist States: Geopolitical Realities and the Realization of a Communist Peace

Despite historical perceptions of systemic communist-capitalist bipolarity in the Cold War world order, the international communist system was nevertheless affected by the same geopolitical realities that influenced the international system as a whole. By examining the seven cases of military conflicts between communist states from 1945 to 1991 – the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956), the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), the Sino-Soviet border conflict (1969), the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia (1978-1989), the Chinese invasion of Vietnam (1979), the Somali invasion of Ethiopia (1977-1978), and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989) – this article challenges both the notions of Cold War bipolarity between communist and capitalist systems as well as the Marxist theory of peaceful coexistence between communist states.

A Matter of Courtesy: The Role of Soviet Diplomacy and Soviet "System Safeguards" in Maintaining Soviet Influence on Czechoslovak Science before and after 1968.

In 1969, a few short months after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Sergei I. Prasolov, advisor to the Soviet Ambassador in Prague, informed František Šorm, President of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, at a formal meeting that he welcomed Šorm's suggestion to intensify scientific exchange between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Šorm politely declined this offer. Behind the veneer of diplomatic courtesy on the part of both actors, a real drama was taking place. Šorm and the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences had actually never formulated such a request. To the contrary, since the late 1950s the academy had repeatedly pointed out that the Soviets were incapable of coordinating scientific activities in the Eastern Bloc. The Soviet system of academic cooperation within the Eastern Bloc had already begun to collapse after the Geneva Summit of 1955, where the Soviets opened the door to international collaboration across the Iron Curtain. Yet it was only in the late 1960s that the Soviets realized that while they dominated large-scale international collaboration, they had lost control of internal developments within the Eastern Bloc.

Czech Culture Wars: Is Milan Kundera ‘a Bastard’?

ABSTRACT Like many countries of the world these days, the Czech Republic is afflicted by intractable culture wars. People obstinately hold on to their ideological positions because they give them power. The world-famous Czech author Milan Kundera, who was a communist until the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, is one of the subjects of such intractable culture wars, currently raging in the Czech Republic. The conflict about Kundera was deepened in June 2020 with the publication of a highly critical, 900-page ‘biography’ of Milan Kundera by another Czech fiction writer, former emigré to the United States Jan Novák. This piece comprises two reviews of Novák’s work, one by a well-know Czech broadcaster and the other by Professor of Czech Literature at Charles University, Prague.

Ku odrzuceniu „erenburgowatości”. Sławomir Mrożek wobec PRL-u w tekstach autobiograficznych

The article comprises an analysis of Slawomir Mrozek’s autobiographical texts in which he describes his attitude to the Polish government of the communist era. Mrozek initially approved of the official ideology of the Polish State, but in time began to ‘play a game’ with the censors, exposing the ubiquitous propaganda by means of stylistic and rhetorical devices, such as parables, symbols, allusions, and parodies. Having began to live abroad in 1963, he initially employed a cautious strategy of not breaking the bonds with Poland despite his status of an emigre, but after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, a military operation with an active involvement of the Polish army, declared his dissent and publicly denounced the Polish government. The article describes also Mrozek’s response to the declaration of martial law in Poland in 1981, as well as his misgivings about the political transformation of 1989. Translated by Dorota Chabrajska

Counter-Revolution, or Authentic Socialism?

For the majority of Leftists in the 1960s, the Soviet Union ceased to be intellectually and ideologically inspiring. Both Soviet Communism and Western capitalism at that time represented “the System” which offered universal manipulability and universal marketability as its only alternative modes. Thus, the Left searched for authentic socialism, whether in the Marxist-humanist philosophy, in the Third World revolutions, or in the local socialist traditions. However, even though the global Left faced several general problems common to all Cold War worlds, there were also important contextual differences which prevented the common base from further development. Following this general context, this article will focus on the Left in Czechoslovakia and in the USA, particularly on the question whether the Czechoslovak reform movement of the late 1960s was inspiring for various groups on the US Left. With regard to the U.S. left-wing reactions to the Prague Spring or to the resistance of Czechoslovak people against the Warsaw Pact invasion, the article will pay attention especially to the discursive dichotomy of authentic socialism vs. counter-revolution.

Reflexe srpnových událostí roku 1968 v tisku

The article deals with how the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the following events have been reflected in the news. The authors analyse texts from selected important Czechoslovakian, Soviet and also later Czech and Russian newspapers in 1968 and also after each ten year anniversary of the Soviet invasion. The authors point out the changes in both characterization and evaluation of the events of August 1968 throughout the decades. The article emphasises the changes that have occurred in Russian press from the 1990s to the current era.

Eastern Europe in 1968: Responses to the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact Invasion by Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (review)

REVIEWS 789 example, the name of the nation, which was changed in 1993 from Muslim to Bosniak — and its recent dynamics are thoroughly covered here. Izetbegović’s Party of Democratic Action (SDA) as the force that promoted Islam as the key element in a newly emerging national identity is still commanding the majority, if fragile, allegiance of Bosnia’s Muslims, but is simultaneously broadening the fissures between Bosnia’s diverse communities. Finally, Bougarel introduces some clarity with his precise terminological rendering of different streams of thought among Bosnian Muslim thinkers, identifying traditionalists, reformists, revivalists, pan-Islamists and contemporary neo-Salafists, although the use of pan-Islamism after it was internationally abandoned begs further clarification. The book is equipped with numerous useful maps and tables. UCL SSEES Bojan Aleksov McDermott, Kevin and Stibbe, Matthew (eds). Eastern Europe in 1968: Responses to the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact Invasion. Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature, Cham, 2018. xxiii + 311 pp. Abbreviations. Glossary. Chronology. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £89.99. This collection of essays offers a timely scholarly response to the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring. Although the topic has been studied extensively and from a variety of perspectives, comprehensive assessments in English that compare responses to the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 in the countries of Communist Eastern Europe are rare. The editors have also made a conscious choice to keep the focus of the volume limited to individual countries and refrain from approaching the subject from a global history perspective. This sets the work apart from recent histories of the ‘global 1968’, yet it makes significant contributions to our understanding of the repercussions of the Prague Spring in the individual countries of Communist Eastern Europe. While the volume does not present a global history of 1968, it does highlight the international — and to an extent, transnational — aspects of the Prague Spring. At the same time, it also presents new knowledge on the subject, while offering a comprehensive account of the key events in the various countries in question. As could be expected from an edited volume, the approaches of individual authors differ to a significant extent. Some focus on specific events or themes, whilst others offer a more general overview of the impact of the Prague Spring in the respective countries. Also, some chapters explore new aspects of the topic, whereas others present a synthesis of existing research on the SEER, 97, 4, OCTOBER 2019 790 subject. Although the scholarly approaches the contributors adopt are varied, the volume remains remarkably consistent, and there are several common themes that link the various chapters which analyse country-specific themes. The coherence of the volume is ensured by the attempt of individual authors to address some key issues in their chapters, including the reactions in the respectivecountriestotheWarsawPactinvasion,socialresponsestothePrague Spring and/or the military invasion, as well as the legacies of 1968. The focus on individual countries demonstrates that while the events of 1968 were connected to international — and, indeed, global — developments, the reactions of the countries of Communist Eastern Europe to the crisis were different, and the impact of the invasion on domestic social and political affairs were by no means uniform in the region. As the case studies on Hungary, Romania, Poland, the GDR and so on, show, the backlash to the Prague Spring was entangled with diverse political agendas in the individual countries. In Romania, for example, non-intervention in the military invasion to suppress the Prague Spring stabilized Ceaușescu’s rule, whereas in Hungary the invasion contributed to the moderation of the reformist agenda of the Kádár regime. The peculiar, and somewhat paradoxical situation of the GDR — the country that supported the invasion enthusiastically, but did not invade Czechoslovakia in the end, out of fear to evoke memories of the German invasion of the Sudetenland — is also highlighted in the volume, although a more extensive assessment of political debates about the East German non-intervention — maybe even a separate chapter — was needed. Some of the stories presented in the volume are relatively well-known — Poland’s reaction, Kádár’s hesitation, Ceaușescu’s appeal to Romanian nationalism, and so on — but the book presents new material and explores...

“You have betrayed us for a little dirty money!” The Prague Spring as seen by primary school teachers

This study focuses on the everyday operation of primary schools in Czechoslovakia during the so-called Prague Spring and the subsequent communist political clampdown after the invasion by the Warsaw Pact forces. The authors focus primarily on the experiences of teachers, how events in this complex period affected their professional lives, and how the renewal of totalitarian power was reflected in their work. The research is based on oral history as a method which enabled us to acquire unique knowledge concerning the work and life of teachers in the period under study. Findings from extensive archival research are also an important part of the research. These show that during the Prague Spring, as in Czechoslovak society as a whole, the socio-political climate in primary schools relaxed and communist power weakened, as reflected both in school operation and in-class instruction. After the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, the regime became stricter again in schools and elsewhere (similar to before the onset of the Prague Spring). This was manifested especially in the constant control of teachers’ activities during the Prague Spring, in their persecution, and through the increasing emphasis on ideological aspects of teacher training and pupil formation through instruction.

Difficult Europeans: NATO and Tactical/Non-strategic Nuclear Weapons in the Cold War

ABSTRACTThis analysis examines NATO’s tactical/non-strategic nuclear weapons in the Cold War both for their perceived deterrent value against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact and as potential war fighting weapons. Within this debate lay questions related to extended deterrence, security guarantees, regional or theatre conflict, and escalatory potential. A central tenet that emerged in Europe was that nuclear weapons needed emplacement on the territory of non-nuclear NATO members to make deterrence more tangible. It raised huge questions of consultation. Once the Soviet Union had intercontinental missiles, the credibility of American readiness to use nuclear weapons in defence of its allies came into question. European alternatives and different consultation mechanisms to facilitate nuclear use became central to intra-NATO relations. Actively debated across NATO, they directly concerned above all the United States, Britain, and France—the nuclear weapons states in the NATO area—and West Germany, the potential main battleground in a Warsaw Pact invasion. Although dormant in NATO since the end of the Cold War, these issues will likely see revisiting in both Europe and other regional trouble spots.

The lay historian explains intergroup behavior: Examining the role of identification and cognitive structuring in ethnocentric historical attributions

Both historians and lay people attempt to explain national histories. However, psychological research, to date, focused predominantly on the patterns of those explanations with regard to negative historical behaviors. In this article, we assess ethnocentrism of people’s explanations of both negative and positive historical behavior of ingroup members (own nation) and outgroup members (other nation). Two studies analyze how Poles explain crimes and heroic acts committed in the General Government, as well as diverse behaviors during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The studies confirm an ethnocentric pattern of explanation: positive historical actions of ingroup members were explained more dispositionally than positive actions of outgroup members—negative historical actions of ingroup members were explained less dispositionally than negative historical actions of outgroup members. Furthermore, we found that this effect is more pronounced among individuals who highly identify with their nation. Apart from the influence of the strength of ingroup identification, we found that people who cling to structured knowledge (i.e. a high ability to achieve cognitive closure) tend to explain well-established historical facts (e.g. the Holocaust) but not little known facts (e.g. intervention in Czechoslovakia) in a more ethnocentric way.

Komaromi, Ann Uncensored: Samizdat Novels and the Quest for Autonomy in Soviet Dissidence (review)

SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 734 Aleksei Semenenko’s concluding summary outlines Aksenov’s role as a prominent, synthetically- (if not synaesthetically-) bound cultural persona of specific prominence deserving of further study. The volume’s successful mixture of Romantic, baroque and avant-garde perspectives offers the precise creative model that is typologically relevant for analysing Ivan Aksenov’s cultural output in all its splendid complexity. University of Ghent Dennis G. Ioffe Komaromi, Ann. Uncensored: Samizdat Novels and the Quest for Autonomy in Soviet Dissidence. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2015. x + 254 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $39.95 (paperback). This is an exceptionally stimulating monograph which sheds much new light on the role and significance of tamizdat and samizdat in what turned out to be the last two decades of the USSR. The author bases her discussion on three major works of prose fiction written or completed in the aftermath of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (this had a much greater impact on Russian writing that the brutal 1956 crushing of the Hungarian Revolution): Vasilii Aksenov’s Ozhog (1969–75), Andrei Bitov’s Pushkinskii dom (1964–71) and Veniamin Erofeev’s Moskva-Petushki (probably 1969). All three works, first published abroad and fairly quickly translated into English and other languages, were finally published in the USSR shortly before it collapsed. As Ann Komaromi reminds us, post-Stalin dissidence gradually developed from ‘Cultural Opposition’ into ‘Political Opposition’ (p. 133) — perhaps, one could add, reflecting the difference between the dissenters (like the three writers mentioned above, who strove for professional autonomy) and the dissidents. Like, for instance, Pasternak and Siniavskii, most of the literary dissenters (and many other Soviet citizens) had ‘stylistic differences’ with the Communist regime, but were not very anxious to participate in political activities and ‘merely’ wanted to engage in their chosen profession. This distinguishes them from dissidents like Vladimir Bukovskii, who can be (and has been) described both as a ‘Soviet dissident’ and as an ‘anti-Soviet dissident’. Much depends on how we define homo sovieticus, bearing in mind that in the USSR the sovety had less influence and power than councils in many other countries than the organs of the CPSU. Of course, some of the most active dissenters, such as Natal´ia Gorbanevskaia, whose consciences forced them to become dissidents, also had no wish to become politicians — they ‘merely’ wanted to help to ‘convert’ the USSR into a more tolerant, liberal and democratic country, giving up on its imperialistic and messianic ambitions. REVIEWS 735 The three authors to whom much of this book is devoted were (in one case he still is) more concerned about the parlous state of Russian society than about any attempt to replace those who rule over it. ‘Bitov [b. 1937], like Aksenov, directed his critique at his generation and people around him in Soviet society at least as much as he indicted the regime’ (p. 73). Komaromi quotes Lidiia Ginzburg as summarizing the main characteristics of the previous generation to Bitov’s as ‘accommodation, justification, and indifference’ (p. 78), apparently inherited by many or most of Bitov’s coevals. Perhaps only ‘a change of consciousness could furnish the building blocks of a new society’ (p.22). The USSR’s official philosophy and ideology were based on a very dogmatic atheism. The after-effects of this are only too apparent in today’s Russian society, which in some ways is more neo-Soviet than post-Soviet. Komaromi periodically touches on this, but one aspect of the juvenile nature of Soviet society which she might have said more about is the predilection for referring to the protagonists of the three novels (if Moskva-Petushki is best considered as a novel) by diminutives of their first names — Tolia (Toliachka) Von Shteinbok, L´eva Odoevtsev and Venichka (Venia) Erofeev. Naturally, diminutives are often used in the literature and life of other countries, and the current President of Russia is often called disrespectfully by one or another familiar version of his given name, but I think there is something significant behind Aksenov’s, Bitov’s and Erofeev’s use of this device. These characters are men who have...

An Ordinary Man, a National Hero, a Polish Palach? Some Thoughts on the Memorialization of Ryszard Siwiec in the Czech-Polish Context

On 8 September 1968, Ryszard Siwiec set fi re to himself during a harvest festival in the 10th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw. Through his self-immolation, he sought to protest against Communist rule in general and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in particular. However, his death did not gain wider attention. Further protests ‘by fi re’ took place in the subsequent months and years in East Central Europe. Among them was the self-immolation by the Czech student Jan Palach in Prague. In contrast to Siwiec, this young man was immediately recognized as a martyr in Czechoslovakia as well as on the other side of the Iron Curtain. It was only after 1989 that Ryszard Siwiec’s story became increasingly well-known. Today, his act still remains in the shadow of Palach’s, however. This article deals with the marginal position of Siwiec in the Polish national pantheon. By reflecting on the various constraints on creating martyrs in state and post-socialism, it focuses on one particular aspect of Polish and Czech – or rather Polish-Czech – memory politics. As for the ‘Polish Palach’ Ryszard Siwiec, the paper demonstrates that Czechs have played a crucial role in popularizing him.

«Я решил говорить»: последнее слово обвиняемого как заключительный аккорд политических процессов в СССР 1960-х гг.

The author considers materials of the social and political samizdat in its context of dissident activity of the 1960s that is known in Soviet history as an early period of human rights protection. The analysis is made with reference to the final statements of dissidents at political trials that have not been examined from the point of view of source study as an self-standing historical source on the history of the dissident movement in the USSR. The author’s attention is focused on the ‘elevated’ or ‘classical’ samizdat, i.e. materials connected with the most notable dissident events. The article deals with the highly popular samizdat works, such as the last statement of Yu. Daniel, A. Sinyavsky, whose political trial was the beginning of human rights protection activities in the USSR. Additionally, the author studies the last statement of V. Bukovsky, demonstration organizer, founder and distributor of samizdat; the participants of the demonstration in Red Square in August, 1968, a protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia among which are the statements of K. Babitsky, L. Bogoraz, V. Delone, V. Dremlyuga, and P. Litvinov. Alongside this, the author analyzes the definition of samizdat in terms of the cultural, sociological and source study discourse. Referring to a number of source study approaches, the article considers the pragmatic aspect in the formation of samizdat texts based on the materials of political trials of dissidents. One of the main purposes of the paper is to define the problem of the Soviet dissidents’ last statement introduction into research as sources that can help shed light on the personal, psychological, moral, and ideological makeup of the dissident movement in the USSR.

The colours of socialism: visual nostalgia and retro aesthetics in Czech film and television

Since the end of the 1990s, post-socialist nostalgia has been a powerful trend in Czech film and television. This article focuses on the examples of Filip Renč’s 2001 musical comedy Rebelové (The Rebels) and the Czech television series Vyprávěj (Tell Me a Story, 2009–2013), which both portray the period around the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Through an analysis of the visual style of the film and television series, as well as a discussion of the way the texts recontextualize the popular culture of the period they portray, the article proposes that Czech post-socialist nostalgia is more fruitfully viewed as “retro”, which is here differentiated from non-nostalgic depictions of socialism through a comparison with the mini-series Hořící keř (Burning Bush, directed by Agnieszka Holland, 2013). Although retro’s concern with surface and style can be interpreted as apolitical, the author argues that the political agenda of Czech retro texts needs to be understood by the ways they combine a fetishization of the aesthetic trappings of the period with a condemnation of the political system of the time.

Církevní a politické souvislosti života Josefa Hloucha

This study deals with the life story of Bishop Joseph Hlouch in the context of the dramatic political, social and religious changes of the 20th century - during the interwar Czechoslovak Republic, in the post-war period and during the existence of the Communist regime from its takeover in 1948 to the period of "normalization" after the Warsaw Pact invasion.