Why Kundera never went home
compactmag.com
compactmag.com
Author of the article tries to downplay it with
> The article didn’t produce any evidence apart from hearsay and a police protocol mentioning that Kundera was the source of the information.
I think Kundera always regret it and that's why he withdraw to France and stayed there. Yet he never apologized or even commented on that topic.
I grew up with his books and they had great impact on me when I was 18. He's a great writer. I wouldn't even mind that he snitched if he went through some acknowledgment and redemption. But he hasn't and remains a flawed character in my eyes. Almost every Czech author who emigrated helped the dissent that stayed home in some way. He didn't.
Havel is a great man, one of our greatest. He's a fine author. Kundera is a great author. Not a fine man.
The evidence is
direct:
- the original police report of Miroslav Dvořáček's arrest
witness:
- Iva Militká, one of the persons involved in the arrest
indirect:
- police lecture from 1952 made by interior minister Jerman. Kundera is only mentioned by initials but it's another piece of the puzzle https://www.lidovky.cz/domov/novy-objev-udani-v-kauze-milana...
There's a huge Kundera biography written by Jan Novák. Critics say it's biased but it's well sourced. It paints Kundera's character as someone who could easily do it.
I guess the main evidence is the police report. Secret police was of course known to blackmail people and fabricate things. Everybody accused of collaborating with them used the defense that all documents were made up. There were other several high profile people that were accused and used this defense but eventually enough evidence was discovered and the people admitted guilt.
With Kundera, the "blackmail" angle is weak. The record was not attached to his file, it was forgotten in the file of pilot Dvořáček who was arrested. Also at that time Kundera was just communist student functionary, not someone famous worth blackmailing.
2. The evidence is mostly based on a police report which names Kundera. You could make a case that the secret police would occasionally falsify these things, but in general they'd also do this for a reason (mostly because they'd use for some blackmail / publicity stunt). This does not seem to be the case here...
https://www.respekt.cz/respekt-in-english/milan-kundera-s-de...
The thing is, regardless of him collaborating with regime, is that if you spend decades elsewhere, its very hard to come back. The "back" changes without you being part of it, so technically its impossible and you move into relatively foreign place with people you know and don't in the same time, even if folks still speak your language.
Also, I presume most of you don't know this, but if he had in 90s any longing for home after communism fell, a quick visit would cure practically anybody. Society was a mess, wolves robbing state and society of everything possible, leaving bloody trails everywhere. People were beheaded (in my town one morning a cop's head was found on top of his car), or dissolved in acid (again even people my parents actually knew). Ministers were mafia-style executed in broad day (still not solved). Common folks were robbed in privatizations of state's properties (literally some form of ponzi scheme or worse were happening on state level). Organized crime and top politicians were very tightly intertwined.
This all improved nowadays but not as much as we would like.
If you see this and much much more, why on earth would anybody move from France? That's much more advanced, free and intellectual-friendly society, at that time by mega-parsecs.
1998 was the absolute worst in the Czech history in regard to murders with 3 murdered people per 100 000 people. In comparison, US rate in 2021 was 6.8.
> This all improved nowadays but not as much as we would like.
There's always room for improvement, but today Czechia is one of the safest countries on earth (safer than France, for example).
What country are you talking about? Certainly not Czech Republic.
> Ministers were mafia-style executed in broad day (still not solved).
Jan Ducky was the minister executed, he was connected via corruption to many many politicians still active today, even former Czech prime minister Babis (who comes from Slovakia), he is actually one of the suspects who ordered it back in 90s.
Dissolving folks in acid was done in both states, before and after we split. Of course we only hear about cases which were discovered, back home many ended up permanently "missing". But anyway I don't think I was clear (or you guys misunderstood me) - its not for the crime rate alone that would make people like Kundera not wanting to come back, but overall state of society and state itself. If you paint yourself 90s as some sort of pinnacle of our history where everybody was happy and people were singing and dancing on the streets, we must have lived in different universes then.
I mean its 2023, I happily live in Switzerland for many years, having lived in both Czech republic and Slovakia long term in the past, and I would not go back for exactly same reasons. What most rich folks back there (CZ and SK too) do is create a bubble around themselves to not be part of rest of society - but that's desperate attempt for quality of life which is a baseline in other places. Kind of South Africa approach although you can see it in other places where middle class evaporated. Definitely not a place I want to raise my kids, or grow old with all that it brings.
No, we don't agree. Wild part of 90s was result of voucher privatization, which barely started before the split of Czechoslovakia.
That never stopped thousands of other artists, politicians, writers, businessmen, and so on having done the same or much much worse. Heck, most of Germany's ex-Nazi establishment continued to not only live in Germany, but to hold positions of power post war, be public intellectuals and so on.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/04/how-i-spent-th...
Please, don't take this guy seriously. Yes, he was an ambassador to France and it's a shame to our country that this person held such job.
Moreover, if you read the article, you'll realize it's not about Kundera's reasons for not returning (his real friens said that he was used to living in France), but mostly about Drulák's hatred for Havel. Why Drulák hates Havel so much, I don't know.
Probably because Drulák is idiot and Havel isn't.
As far back as 2014, when he was _First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs_ he was criticizing Havel and his policies from a policy standpoint: https://www.praguepost.com/czech-news/czech-foreign-policy-a...
He pitches the issues between Havel and Kundera as ideological, and representative:
Their exchange reflected the fault line between democratic-socialist and liberal intellectuals: Kundera argued for a new model of society that would be free and fair, avoiding the vices of both Western capitalism and Eastern European authoritarianism; Havel defended Western capitalism as the only desirable model, needing fine tuning, but no major revision.
And his position on the ideological battle is quite clear in the book he published titled Budoucnost Levice bez Liberalismu_ (The future of the left without liberalism).
This isn't to say the article isn't accurate or interesting. (I loved both Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being; and Havel's Summer Meditations). But I think it's useful context, and I'm definitely taking its contents with a pinch of salt, and double checking the falsifiable claims therein.
In the last sentences of the article, the author shows his true colors and advocates for a "multipolar world", which is basically a politically-correct way of saying "we should get closer to Russia".
And indeed, if you look him up, you might learn that he signed a petition calling for an end to support for Ukraine[1] and he frequently speaks out against NATO and defends Russia[2][3]
[1] - https://voxukraine.org/en/russian-disinformation-narratives-...
[2] - https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/svet/3439336-valka-neni-v-rusk...
That seems like a very healthy suggestion to me, irrespective of whether you think randomly invading your friendly neighbourhood democracy is reasonable or not.
Even if the author is shown to be obviously pro-Russia in other sources, this here is a suggestion to resist absolute truths and to read you some Kundera. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Its more of a polite way of saying a great deal of the rest of the world does not want to live in a unipolar world run by the USA and its allies.
So, not quite the dialectic that one would suppose. Russia is but one party to that ideology - there are many, many more, and thats what makes it multipolar.
Other nations are sick of American/Western influence in their politics - which is vast and extensive, and: undeniably corrupt.
A Multipolar World is one in which the sovereign rights of nations are respected and not superseded/subjugated by extra-national entities/agencies which do not answer to the democracies or indeed legislature of the nation involved.
A unipolar world is one where a single nation can call up a collective cabal to form an imperial army and invade and destroy countless other nations around the world, and not a single other nation can stand against that cabal and bring its war criminals to justice.
A Multipolar world is one in which small countries do have a choice of their own - and they can thus choose to eschew American hegemony. That is happening across the globe in spite of all attempts by America's hegemonic organs to maintain the iron grip they have had for decades over the worlds poor. Thankfully.
But ok, I'll give you that -- I prefer a unipolar world with US hegemony or whatnot rather than a multipolar world where I have to live in the Russian part (which by the way absolutely never respected the nations that it had subjugated, convince me that I'm wrong).
Absolutely not, boffinAudio, the other way around! It was you who brought US into this discussion, I did not. I am a citizen of a former satelite country of the Soviet Union and I do not want this situation repeated. But some people do not understand that you can hate being a Russian/Soviet subject (as the Polish, Czech...) without having to love the US.
And FYI, part of my family is from South America and I am well aware of the anti US sentiment there and understand its reasons. But it just bears no relevance on what Russia did in Central and Eastern Europe. It's still the same story -- country A attacks country B, but you say. Yes, but country C did this to country D before! So country A has right to do it. Bad luck country B!
Then we are essentially aligned, because I believe that this dialectic is a fallacy, also. You can not want to be ruled by Russia or America - that is a multi-polar perspective (See also: China) - and still believe in peace, freedom and democracy, which are not exclusively American properties, nor are their antipodes exclusively Russian-owned.
The "unipolar world" of American hegemony is over. The poorer nations are defeating it, finally, their own way: by walking away from the petrodollar. And given the sheer statistics of war crimes committed to sustain the petrodollars' hegemony, it can't happen fast enough.
Even if Americans ignore the crimes of their state, the rest of the world doesn't. Its a lot clearer to those with access to the atrocities that America's crimes against humanity far, far exceed those of any other nation - by a wide magnitude.
However, that doesn't mean that the pro-Russian path is the right one to take, either. In the same way that the ultra-wealthy need to start paying their taxes, the American (and Russian) people need to start confronting the crimes of their state with a great deal more honesty. The rest of the world watches.
I think you are stuck in the dialectic of Russia vs. USA - but the rest of the world is not so easily trapped.
If you'd prefer to live in the USA hegemony, its probably because you've been the recipient of its war treasure in some way - perhaps as a citizen or resident. But you would be best served in understanding this situation by actually looking at things from the perspective of the masses who have suffered under American boots for too long - the other side of the polarity of your desired hegemonic wealth: the people from whom it was stolen .. all you have to do is go for a non-tourist-package journey through the Americas .. or talk to a citizen of an African nation about the colonization of their continent by American-backed Western entities for decades...
And anyway: What Chinese boots? If China has invaded, destroyed and decimated another sovereign nation and left its people in tatters in the last 40 years, please inform me. Show me China's Syria? Show me its Afghanistan, its Libya, its Yemen? Show me China's West Bank?
It doesn't exist - and that is precisely why your 'lesser' nations are choosing the "Chinese Belt and Road initiatives" over "Western-made Syrian Open Slave Markets" and "American-made Depleted Uranium Deposit States", etc ..
People across the globe don't believe the American lie any more. They've seen the products of American war hegemony, even if American citizens haven't, and they're not impressed. Better to do a deal with China that results in roads and hospitals being built, than to do it with the USA, resulting in roads and hospitals being bombed.
China West Bank? Ehrm, Tibet? Hong Kong?
I just think the alternative will be worse, much worse.
Unless some kind of longevity revolution comes soon and Xi stays on the throne forever, I would expect the next Chinese leader to turn inward again.
Americans' don't want anyone else in the world to do to them, what their nation has been doing for 40 years: dropping bombs on mostly innocent people every twenty minutes.
China has managed to lift a billion people out of poverty into a new era of prosperity. It has created a wealthy middle class for millions and millions of people to improve their lives. Keep that in mind when the anti-China agitprop gets triggered by American exceptionalists.
The USA is not capable of doing that for its own people.
And, well, if the idea of CIA agents propping up pro-capitalism opposition figures is “pro-Russian”, then every Hollywood spy movie is pro-Russian. I have no idea how common “CIA meddles, all the way to the top” really is, or was, but it’s a common narrative across western culture so it didn’t strike me as super weird.
I’ll admit that the idea that Havel did little by himself to become the President, that it was all due to support by the CIA people, which wasn’t said so literally but certainly suggested, felt rather unrealistic.
Very. E.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
And on top it also ignores stuff like Operation Gladio going on for decades in Europe during the Cold War.
It’s clear the author doesn’t love everything about western capitalism, but that, I think, is a widely held opinion across Europe. It does not imply, to me, a suggestion that Russian style kleptocratic capitalism is a better form by any means so if the author makes that argument elsewhere, I didn’t see it here.
I guess I’m trying to say that I enjoyed the article, and learning that I don’t share the author’s politics hasn’t changed that.
Of course, that is a completely legit view that I also partly hold. However, this author is known for his looking up to a regime that is way worse (or 'not better form' as you say).
The title itself is misleading at best. Kundera "did" visit Prague pretty regularly in the 90s and 2000s. And the text doesn't get any better from there...
There already are a few comments about the author, but long story short - Petr Drulak is pretty well known in CZ for his support of weird / fringe political movements and parties. It's a pretty strange / convoluted story, mainly because he's been a high official in CZ diplomacy (foreign affairs ministry, ambassador to France, university professor). His articles are usually fairly complex, use a lot of cultural references, but they are ultimately a cargo cult. In the end no matter through which paths his arguments go, they always invariably end up in the same place. The place is "EU bad, Havel bad, NGOs bad, American domination bad, free market / liberalism good, cooperation with China / Russia good, old times / conservative worldview good".
I expect (wish) that with AI, VR, LLM (and other similar acronyms), in my lifetime we will be able to do the same.
I can only imagine having a coffee with some personalities (Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Einstein, Alice Cooper, et al) and being taught about their lives, beliefs, absorbing wisdom, etc.
You wouldn't be having coffee with them, you would be having coffee with an AI generated facsimile, operating under the assumption that all available information on the web is factually accurate, and that somehow the whole is equal to, or greater than, the sum of its parts.
They wouldn't be able to tell you anything new, or offer any real insight into the life or thoughts of the actual person they represent. There is no wisdom for you to absorb that doesn't come from external sources. It's all fake. Hollow.
You'd be better off just reading the things they wrote, or a biography about their lives than letting the cancer of hyperreality spread even further than it has.
I hate to be that guy, but isn't the Czech Ambassador's job to be dealing with (listening to) the French État (govt), while it's a Czech Consul's job to handle matters for ordinary citizens?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consul_(representative)
A consul is an official representative of a government who resides in a foreign country to assist and protect citizens of the consul's country, and to promote and facilitate commercial and diplomatic relations between the two countries...Unlike an ambassador, who serves as the singular representative of one government to another, a state may appoint several consuls in a foreign nation, typically in major cities; consuls are usually tasked with providing assistance in bureaucratic issues to both citizens of their own country traveling or living abroad and to the citizens of the country in which the consul resides who wish to travel to or trade with the consul's country.