Description
For most Czechs and Slovaks the Prague Spring was an exciting experiment in socialist democracy. For conservative apparatchiks throughout Eastern Europe, it represented a frightening slide into the politics of disorder and chaos - the bureaucrat's Babylon. The dramatic Soviet invasion of August 1968 was but the first small step towards 'normalization' - the restoration of order.
This process, which was begun in 1969, involved one of the most extensive social and political purges ever undertaken in post-war Eastern Europe. Having experienced their methods himself, Milan Simecka has been able to dissect the work of the 'normalizers' as they single-mindedly eradicated the last traces of independent thinking from the Party and conducted a ruthless onslaught against the cultural intelligentsia. Simecka's account will not only be of use to students of Czechoslovakia: it also invites comparison with Poland and other East European Countries, focusing as it does on the relationship between state and intellgentsia.
For the English edition Zdenek Mlynar, author of Night Frost in Prague and the highest-ranking Czechoslovak Communist Party official to emigrate to the West, has written a special introduction.
About the Author
DR. MILAN SIMECKA (06/03/1930-24/09/1990) was born on 6 March 1930 in the Moravian town of Novy Bohumin. From 1954 he worked as a lecturer at Bratislava's Comenius University, and in the sixties he wrote for many journals known for their reformist politics, Kultumy zivot, Literarni lisp and others, as well as for radio and television. In March 1970 he was expelled from the university and worked as a driver and a building worker. He was held in custody on a charge of 'suberversion of the republic' from May 1981 to May 1982, but the case was never brought to trial. He published samizdat essays and articles from 1975 and was regarded as one of the finest political commentators in Czechoslovakia.
Book Information
ISBN 9780860917861
Author Milan Simecka
Format Paperback
Page Count 168
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 179g
This process, which was begun in 1969, involved one of the most extensive social and political purges ever undertaken in post-war Eastern Europe. Having experienced their methods himself, Milan Simecka has been able to dissect the work of the 'normalizers' as they single-mindedly eradicated the last traces of independent thinking from the Party and conducted a ruthless onslaught against the cultural intelligentsia. Simecka's account will not only be of use to students of Czechoslovakia: it also invites comparison with Poland and other East European Countries, focusing as it does on the relationship between state and intellgentsia.
For the English edition Zdenek Mlynar, author of Night Frost in Prague and the highest-ranking Czechoslovak Communist Party official to emigrate to the West, has written a special introduction.
About the Author
DR. MILAN SIMECKA (06/03/1930-24/09/1990) was born on 6 March 1930 in the Moravian town of Novy Bohumin. From 1954 he worked as a lecturer at Bratislava's Comenius University, and in the sixties he wrote for many journals known for their reformist politics, Kultumy zivot, Literarni lisp and others, as well as for radio and television. In March 1970 he was expelled from the university and worked as a driver and a building worker. He was held in custody on a charge of 'suberversion of the republic' from May 1981 to May 1982, but the case was never brought to trial. He published samizdat essays and articles from 1975 and was regarded as one of the finest political commentators in Czechoslovakia.
Book Information
ISBN 9780860917861
Author Milan Simecka
Format Paperback
Page Count 168
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 179g
