Love and Freedom

by Rosemary Kavan

  ‘She suffers from constant pain in her feet,’ he told me. ‘When she was in prison she was forced to walk many miles a day on a stone floor in an unheated cell for two years. Now the frost-bite makes her feet bleed. She looks very frail but her memories give her strength. Her room is a shrine to Vlado. His photos, pipes and books are preserved. She talks endlessly of his goodness and their love.

  ‘She described their last meeting. They had been exchanging love letters written actually in adjacent cells, but she had pretended she was outside, not wanting Vlado to know she was in prison. Before the meeting she was given infra-ray treatment, a perm and make-up. Vlado’s last words were: “In ten years’ time you will greet a socialist Europe for me.” He believed that one day the archives would be opened up and his innocence established. And so they shall! Lída must live to see his name cleared publicly and with honour by the highest authority.’

  Jan presented his interview with Lída to Universita Karlova, a liberal journal published by Charles University. A dozen variously emasculated versions were rejected by the censor’s office. In the end one of them got into print through a misunderstanding — contrived by Jan — between two censors. It was the first piece about a trial victim to reach the Czech public.

  ‘It’s a beginning,’ Jan remarked. ‘One day I’ll publish the full, uncensored article.’

  Jan did not write only on political and sociological themes. He wrote also about subjects close to youth — pop and rock, hiking and camping. He published humorous and touching stories about individual patients and ward life inspired by his frequent periods of hospitalization. So too, he published one or two poems and wrote a television play on the theme of moral courage. This would have been staged in 1967, had political events not intervened.

  *

  Although the trials remained taboo and other political issues tricky, 1963 inaugurated one of the laxer periods in the pattern of loosening and tightening. I therefore applied for a job that would bring me closer to events and allow me to write about them. This time I was lucky. Despite my — habitual — lack of experience, I was taken on by Czechoslovak Life, a monthly magazine presenting Czechoslovakia to the world in four languages: English, French, Italian and Swedish. What a widening of my horizons. I had the company of a multinational staff, access to foreign newspapers, contact with visiting celebrities and delegates to international conferences, and the whole spectrum of life in Czechoslovakia was opened up to me.

  I approached my first assignment with an empty head and a stomach full of butterflies. My target was an artist who made puppets for advertising and for educational films. He was curious both about English life and about my own situation. A bottle of duty-free Cinzano maintained me in top gear for an hour. We then got through a second bottle and the latest political jokes. In the evening I floated airily into the street, and only when I reached home and comparative sobriety did I realize that the topic of socialist advertising had remained unbroached. I conducted the interview by telephone the next day. Photographs were selected over a flask of brandy and the finished article was toasted in Bull’s Blood. I was won over to journalism!

  My search for material made me even more aware of the contradictions of Czechoslovak society. There was no lack of achievements in science, medicine, technology and culture. Czech films and experimental theatre were earning international reputations (and much needed hard currency!) Yet nearly every success represented the tenacity of an individual or small group in the face of bureaucratic bloodymindedness, and had required miracles of improvization. I interviewed many remarkable people, such as cinema director, Miloš Forman; Ladislav Fialka, founder of the Prague Mime Theatre; Jiří Srnec who introduced the Black Theatre; Alfred Radok, inventor of the Laterna Magica, a combination of live actors and multiple screens; Jiří Suchý and Jiří Slitr, composers of satirical sketches and revues; Dr Nan Žaludová, Scottish wife of a Czech scientist, who had built up a department of quality control and mathematical statistics from scratch on a shoestring, and Marta Kubišová, singer and former student of Indian philosophy. At our interview she said: ‘I hope I shall know when it’s time to leave the stage.’ Unfortunately, she was given no choice. After singing her famous Prayer for Marta for her invaded country in 1968, she was banned from the stage for life.

  In each issue of our magazine we printed a story or novel-extract by a new young Czech or Slovak author. We also ran a series on modern Czech artists. I learned that many of these writers and painters had rejected socialist realism from the start. They had recorded a picture of the time according to their own conscience and had stored their works in drawers and attics until the official screw was loosened.

  Cultural brinkmanship persisted throughout my five years on the magazine. Non-conformist writers, artists and filmmakers continued to stretch the bounds to the limit. Those at the fore were proscribed and we were obliged to shelve our reviews of their work. The second line stepped up and eventually found themselves at a new brink, farther forward. The earlier prohibitions were lifted and we were then able to publish our reviews.

  In spite of the hazards, my enthusiasm never flagged. Each month I became engrossed in the subject of my article, whether it was mental health, co-axial cables, pollution, preventive medicine or demographic trends. (The latter, incidentally, were alarming. The current pay policy, whereby a navvy earned more than a neurologist, together with the housing shortage, was causing a sharp decline in the population and its IQ. Statisticians predicted that by the year 2000 every fifth Czech, or Slovak, would be either a gypsy or an imbecile!)

  I plunged boldly into controversial topics, such as legal abortion, female emancipation, provisions for unmarried mothers, care of the aged. After some time I received an invitation to call upon the Party Central Committee man responsible for foreign language journals. Expecting to be congratulated on my work in these new areas, I sailed confidently into the room. Behind an impressive desk sat a lugubrious gentleman in a well-cut suit draped over an ill-cut body. He greeted me in the heavy tone of an overworked undertaker. My exuberance evaporated as he said: ‘The Language Institute recommended you for candidature to the Party. On this basis you were admitted to the honourable profession of journalism. Journalists are privileged to defend the revolution through their medium and to chronicle the glorious achievements of the working class. I have followed your articles closely. They show an unorthodox approach. I have, however, let them pass — to date. But here is an article I cannot tolerate. It claims to be a candid view of the factory floor. You give a lot of irrelevant detail about our workers’ lives and opinions and much less about socialist competition and the political aims of the working class. You make socialist production sound like a struggle against tremendous odds. This is tantamount to sabotage of our propaganda.’

  ‘Not at all!’ I exclaimed. ‘My point was that, presented as flesh-and-blood people, our workers would be closer to our foreign readers than if they were just cardboard figures fulfilling production targets.’

  ‘Ah, but what section of our foreign readers? This sort of objectivism plays into the hands of our opponents.’

  ‘On the contrary, propaganda driven home with a sledge hammer loses us readers, even readers of the Left. I know the Western mentality. If I never mention problems, no one will believe me when I praise accomplishments. I’m trying to present socialism as an ongoing process, a continual search for solutions.’

  The custodian of the revolution remained unconvinced. He recited stiffly: ‘Comrade Kavanová, you will have to broaden and deepen your knowledge of Marxism-Leninism and the decisive role of the working class, or we shall be obliged to terminate your contract.’

  For two years I was denied the pay rise due to me on grounds of ‘political immaturity’, and my second nomination as a Party candidate was conveniently lost.

  Reprints of some of my articles in Western communist journals, and letters of appreciation from their editors spiked the CC guns for a time, but victory was never uncondi
tional. Our readership, however, increased, and I rejoiced in my international mail and the conviction that I was winning friends for Czechoslovakia and converts to socialism.

  Journalism and our commitment to writing the truth formed a strong bond between Jan and me. It transformed our relationship from one of mother and son to one of very close friends. We discussed our articles together and provided each other with background material.

  Jan used to quote a current aphorism: ‘A window onto the world can be blotted out by a newspaper.’ He found that to get articles on foreign affairs or domestic policies past the censor, the content had to be disguised.

  Jan had become one of the two assistants to the editor of Universita Karlova. After a year the editor decided that further collaboration would cost him either his job or his sanity. ‘UK has the honour of being the most-banned journal in the country,’ he complained to Jan. The censor informs me that the largest number of banned articles are either written by Kavan or supplied by Kavan!’

  Like Pavel, Jan was undeterred by failure. If an article was tossed out of a daily or monthly, he tried to get it into his faculty magazine or a VOV bulletin, sometimes inserting it on the way to the printers. He filed away his banned articles for future use.

  In my job I continued to pinpoint specific aspects of social progress. I visited the newly established Sexological Institute. I spent a day and a night at the phone-in or drop-in Crisis Centre. I talked to people who were concerned with training in the use of leisure.

  At the same time, however, events in the student world proved that political freedom was still an illusion.

  Jan was reading Buchar, the engineering faculty’s magazine. ‘Listen to this.’ He read aloud: ‘Students assess actuality in terms not of what it is but of what it ought to be, and by this yardstick it falls short of its potentialities.’

  It was a quotation from Jiří Müller1, the editor, whom Jan had met through Pinc. Müller, three years Jan’s senior, was to play an important role in our lives. Jiří’s sense of justice had been deeply shocked by his uncle’s imprisonment and the judicial murder of eleven innocent men. As in Jan’s case, it was to shape his life. His parents had insisted he study engineering so that he might be assured of a steady job under the regime. But Jiří was a thinker, not a technocrat.

  Jan was a strong supporter of Jiří’s programme for the reform of society and the ČSM, which he saw as an extension of Pavel’s and his own ideas. It was based on wide public participation in decision-making and the creation of concepts, the right to minority views, a re-evaluation of censorship, a democratic political system, a greater exercise of political power by the trade unions and other social (non-Party) organizations, and democracy within the Communist Party. It also set out practical proposals for the scientific management of society and the economy.

  Jiří presented his programme at a students’ conference in December 1965, together with his ideas on the role of youth. He maintained that, without a degree of independence, the young would be unable to lead socialism ahead. While supporting the Party’s socialist aims, they should form their own views on the methods employed. He suggested that the Youth Union should, if necessary, act as a corrective to Party policy. This, Jan told me in the evening after the conference, had been a bombshell.

  Jiří was strongly opposed to the imposition of unity: true unity, he claimed, could exist only if it was based on common interests and common values. He urged decentralization of the ČSM into industrial, agricultural and student unions, serving the specific interests of the different social groups while allowing a co-ordinated approach to common problems through the central organ.

  Similar reforms had been discussed, unofficially, by Party reformers, but Jiří’s was the first to speak out on a public platform. Serious problems were inevitable. The apparatchiks accused him of advocating opposition to the Communist Party. No Czech citizen was credited by the regime with the ability to form his own opinions: it was assumed, therefore, that he had been briefed by the West German Intelligence. The usual corollary to ‘pro-Western imperialism’, i.e. ‘anti-Sovietism’, was thrown in, supposedly substantiated by Jiří’s visits to the Chinese Embassy in search of authentic information. Jiří defended himself vigorously but to no avail. The apparatchiks were out for his blood. Their combined pressure culminated in his expulsion from both the Youth Union and the University, and his drafting into the army, just a year after his conference speech.

  Jiří wrote to his mother from the army: ‘… Naturally I should have preferred to have remained at the University, but not at the price of renouncing my ideas (I don’t mean all of them, of course, but the basic issues of freedom, justice, man’s rights and duties and so on), that is to say, of disavowing myself. I truly rate spiritual values higher than material, and derive greater happiness from them …’

  1. Jiří Müller (1943–) was the best-known of the student leaders of the late sixties. He was arrested in 1971 and sentenced to five and a half years. He was one of the first Charter 77 signatories.

  Chapter 20

  Jan was incensed by Jiří’s expulsion. ‘In a clash of opinions,’ he raged, ‘the authorities pick the most articulate individual and make an example of him, hoping to scare off the rest. This time they have miscalculated. Ten of us have pledged to get Jiří reinstated. We need a quiet place for our meetings. The University’s no good; we can never be sure which students are police stooges. You won’t mind if we meet here, will you?’

  I was in a quandary. I admired Müller’s courage; I supported his views. But I knew from experience how the system worked. A few critical people worked at the same place, drank at the same pub or met at the same flat and, voilà — a ‘faction’, a ‘conspiracy’. Up to now my role had been to keep our somewhat disorderly home going. My part in politics had been determined by Pavel. Now I was being asked to make a political decision of my own. Brave words about combating the wrongs at one’s door step rang in my ears. The choice had already been made. ‘Of course you may meet here.’

  Jan hugged me. ‘The other parents refused; they were too scared. I knew you wouldn’t be. I’ve arranged the first meeting for tomorrow evening.’

  Pan Pinc arrived first.

  ‘Well, Mrs Ferdinand, I see they have disposed of Müller!’ he observed1.

  The others came in twos and threes. Karel Kovanda was a frequent visitor — with a different girl each time. For Karel, falling in love was as easy and necessary as breathing. After the end of an affair he would drop in and recite Romantic poetry with appropriate Slav melancholy. Then his natural buoyancy would assert itself and he would respond eagerly to the next pair of shapely legs or languishing eyes.

  The rest of the group was unknown to me. There was only one girl, Jana, a slim, elf-like creature with an alert, humorous face, poor skin and astonishingly large violet eyes. She was an anthropologist whose concern for people had led to political involvement. She was to become as dear to me as a daughter. She arrived with a tall, handsome young man, Jirka Holub. (The possibility of a romance did not occur to me at the time.) A fair-haired young man with an obdurate mouth and a steely glitter in his eyes introduced himself tersely as Laštůvka2. A slight youth with a guarded expression turned out to be Luboš Holeček3 who had collaborated on Müller’s programme. His enemies called him a fanatic, his friends an absolutist. He was certainly a moralist who demanded of society the same ethical standard he set himself. When he moved into our flat I discovered qualities which a casual acquaintanceship did not reveal. One of them was courage. Nearly blind in one eye, a skiing accident deprived him of the sight of the other for quite a time. He never complained or demanded special treatment, but swotted for his examinations from notes tape-recorded by his friends, and passed them at the first attempt.

  I served wine and sandwiches, wished them luck and was about to withdraw.

  ‘Aren’t you going to drink a toast with us?’ Karel inquired.

  ‘Why, yes, if I’m invited.’
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  ‘Sit down then,’ said Pinc.

  Evidently I was not considered a security risk. We toasted the success of the venture, then Pan Pinc opened the meeting. This is a matter of individual conscience. None of us knows who will be next. If anyone wants to back out, no one will blame them. ‘There is everything to lose and nothing to gain. But to carve out one path to freedom is to act as though we were free and thus force the milieu to respect that freedom.’

  ‘Okay, okay, wise chief, we wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t thought that one out,’ remarked the irrepressible Karel.

  Those of the group who were Party members — Pinc, Jana, Laštůvka, Coufal and Jan — were the most vulnerable, for the apparatus had given them a clear-cut choice: ‘Either with the Party or with Müller!’ None of them had wavered. The group’s ultimate aim was to secure Müller’s reinstatement; their immediate aim was to publicize the views for which he had been expelled. The daily press would not touch Müller with a barge pole. Jan suggested that a special Müller bulletin be printed by an enterprising student who had managed to acquire an antique press.

  The bulletin was duly produced but it was seized by the ČSM apparatchiks before it could reach the factories. The ‘Prague radicals’, as they were now called, settled down for a long siege.

  Our household became known as the Kavan Commune. Everyone in the group had a key. They came and went as they pleased and shared the shopping, cooking and clearing up. The appearance of a bunch of flowers, box of chocolates or bottle of wine addressed to the ‘mother of the regiment’ indicated a windfall or simply the collection of a grant. The grapevine that hums so efficiently in all totalitarian states warned us that our phone was tapped, and we were under police surveillance.