Last Minute Shopping?

There's a little shoppe in Prague I recommend for interesting gifts . . .

Karlstejn Castle

The photo (by Mrs THC) is of Karlstejn Castle, about 25 miles from Prague, and taken during our recent trip to the Czech Republic.

The castle was founded in 1348 by Charles IV, King of Bohemia.  Not sure who the dresses are by.

Burning Bush

(Jan Palach)
Some of my posts are planned well in advance.  When visiting the Museum of Communism I knew I'd be writing a post on it.  Some posts are more spontaneous.  It was only when writing the Museum of Communism post and finding myself mentioning Vaclav Havel and Frank Zappa that I decided to write about Plastic People.  Other times themes become apparent to me only over time and this post is an example, tying together the Museum of Communism with last week's post on the lonely Tank Man who courageously confronted a tank column outside Tiananamen Square in 1989.

The link is the death of Jan Palach, a 20 year old student who, without letting anyone know in advance, set himself afire in Prague's Wenceslas Square on January 16, 1969 to protest the demoralization of the Czech people in the wake of the Soviet invasion of August 1968 which crushed the Prague Spring government of Alexander Dubcek.  Palach died three days later.  The act received world-wide publicity (I remember watching coverage at the time) symbolizing the plight of all peoples under communist domination and inspiring dissidents in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Palach's grave became a pilgrimage for those who resisted the regime until 1973 when the State removed his body cremating it to stop the visits.

Palach's self-sacrifice and its aftermath is the subject of a recent three-part HBO Europe documentary shown on Czech TV.  Directed by the Polish director, Agnieszka Holland, who also made the shocking, disturbing and moving drama of WWII and the Holocaust, Europa Europa (1990), Burning Bush brings to light the surprising story of a defamation suit brought against Communist Party officials in the wake of Palach's death.  Though doomed to failure it was one of the first actions by Czech dissidents to resist the regime and the lawyer representing the Palach family, Dagmar Buresova, eventually became the first Minister of Justice in post-Communist Czechoslovakia. 
The series has been edited for a limited film release and is being shown at the Film Forum in NYC.  It was reviewed by AO Scott of the NY Times who wrote:

"the film does a remarkably persuasive job of capturing the nightmarish and sometimes grimly comical quality of life under totalitarianism"

Palach was not the only self-immolation in protest of the Soviet invasion.  A month after his death Jan Zajic also burned himself in Wenceslas Square and six weeks later Evzen Plocek did the same in the main square of another Czech town.  Only after the fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe was it realized that the first self-immolation protesting the Soviet action took place in Poland in September 1968.  Ryszard Siwiec, a 59 year old veteran of the WWII Polish Home Army burned himself in front of 10,000 people at an event in Warsaw.  The story was suppressed in the Polish press and to the extent there was any public mention, people were told it was an accident caused by spilling vodka and smoking but Siwiec left a written note explaining his motives and after the fall of the Polish regime in 1989 his story was told in a documentary and today he is honored in his country.(Siwiec's self immolation, from Wikipedia).

Palach's memory served as a rallying point for dissidents for the next twenty years.  On the 20th anniversary of his death a coalition of opposition groups planned Jan Palach Week in Prague.  The most prominent group, Charter 77 issued a statement on the meaning of Palach's act:

“He died because he wanted to shout as loud as possible. He wanted us to realize what was happening to us, to see what we were really doing, and to hear what we were saying in those times of reputedly inevitable concessions, “reasonable” compromises, and hopefully clever tactical ploys. We started forgetting that something has to resist even the greatest pressure, something fundamental that cannot be bought or sold, but that is absolutely essential for maintaining our human dignity.”  

In conjunction with the week, Vaclav Havel, spokesman for Charter 77, issued an appeal against any further acts of self-immolation.

The State banned the planned memorial service in Wenceslas Square and arrested opposition leaders, including Havel, who was imprisoned for four months.  Nonetheless crowds gathered in the square for several days until dispersed by water cannon and security forces.  Ten months later the communist regime was overthrown in the Velvet Revolution.

You can learn more about Jan Palach at the memorial website established by Charles University which he attended.

Today there is a memorial in Wenceslas Square to honor Jan Palach and Jan Zajic.

Museum of Communism

While THC and Ms THC were on their recent visit to Prague (a beautiful city - go see it), their host and dedicated blog fan, JS, took THC to see the Museum of Communism, conveniently located across a passageway from a McDonalds and right next to a casino.  The Museum bills itself as featuring "Communism: The Dream, The Reality and The Nightmare", accomplishing that goal admirably in a small space with fascinating exhibits that can be seen in a one hour visit.

                                          (All other photos in post from Museum of Communism)
Czechoslovakia, the Bohemian and Moravian provinces of which have constituted the Czech Republic since 1993, was born when the four century rule of the Austrian Hapsburgs collapsed in 1918.  From 1918 to 1938 the country was a vibrant and prosperous democracy.  That abruptly ended in September 1938 when Britain and France acceded to Hitler's demands to transfer the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia to Germany thus denuding the Czechs of their defensive perimeter, in return for which Hitler promised that Germany had no further territorial ambitions in Europe, a promise that lasted for a mere six months.  In March 1939, Slovakia declared its independence from the rest of Czechoslovakia, a declaration immediately recognized by Germany, which had encouraged the Slovak action.  The Nazis then ended the existence of the defenseless rump state converting it into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ruled by Reinhardt Heydrich of the SS.

Czechoslovakia remained under the brutal Nazi rule until 1945 when it was occupied by advancing Soviet troops who were initially welcomed as liberators.  Like the rest of Eastern Europe the country came increasingly under the domination of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union in the immediate years after the war until in February 1948 it officially became a communist state, plunging back into a darkness that was to last for four decades.  One of the benefits of being a communist state was that you were able to put up giant statues of Josef Stalin, like this one that loomed over Prague in the 1950s.

The commies ran their usual gameplan on the country which the museum takes you through with its exhibits, including contemporary propaganda posters.

(The State and the The People work together to ensure no American spies will enter the country; oh, and by the way, we'll kill The People if they attempt to leave our Socialist Paradise)

           (Supporting the freedom loving people of North Korea against the American aggressors!)

(Control of the educational system was key to creating The Socialist Man.  The poster notes that "Pupils were raised or encouraged . . . towards class hatred against more wealthy classes, hostility towards democratic states as well as towards religion")

(The State Source Shops provide abundance to The People!  The Museum shows the reality - very few goods available for purchase though the privileged leadership cadre did have access to plentiful basic goods as well as luxuries.)

               (Timely arrival to work deals the decisive strike against the American aggressors!)

(This poster at the Museum explains how the Communist focus on materialism created a spiritual vacuum leading to environmental devastation and reductions of life span.)


In the spring of 1968, a new government came into power under Alexander Dubcek, promising "socialism with a human face" which proved to be too much for the Soviet Union which invaded in August 1968, installing a repressive puppet government which imposed "normalization", a synonym for alignment with Soviet policies.


During the early 1970s a Prague rock n roll band called Plastic People of the Universe (in tribute to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention) began to subtlety protest against the status quo, receiving the support of some intellectuals, Vaclav Havel, a writer, a man of outstanding moral clarity and courage, an astute observer of the psychology of the totalitarian state and one of the great figures of the 20th century.

                                                                 (Vaclav Havel)

The regime itself staggered on until November 1989 when it collapsed in the face of the relatively non-violent "Velvet Revolution".  The Museum features an inspiring video of the events of those November days.  The first President of the newly free Czechoslovakia was Vaclav Havel.


For the ash heap of history