Index on Censorship

On the eighth anniversary of the occupation of Czechoslovakia we have decided to mark that tragic event by the publication of a special issue. Three of the contributors — A. H. Hermann, Ivan Kraus, and A. J. Liehm — live in exile, one is a Rumanian novelist now in the USA, and another an American journalist who spent three years in Prague before being expelled in 1970. The others all live in Czechoslovakia, and it is an indication of the conditions prevailing there that they cannot use their own names but have had to adopt pseudonyms.

Apart from articles on literature, theatre and films, and a piece on the banned singer, Marta Kubisova, we also print a translation of Vaclav HaveFs new one-act play, Audience (‘Conversation’), which has been banned in Czechoslovakia. This is its first publication in English.

Its author, Czechoslovakia's leading dramatist, whose plays are well known in the West, has been forced since the occupation to work as a labourer in a brewery in his home town of Trutnov. Now 40 years old, he has been ‘on the index’ for most of his life, for as the son of ‘bourgeois’ parents, he was prevented from studying by the post-1948 Communist regime and took a job as a scene shifter in a small Prague theatre. He started writing stories and plays, but for a long time could not get any of his work published or performed. It was only during the relatively relaxed period of the sixties that his satirical plays were at last staged, becoming immensely popular with Czech audiences and soon gaining their author a name abroad. Since 1969, Havel has again been one of the many outstanding writers who go unpublished and are constantly harassed and persecuted by the authorities.

Over the past two or three years we have received much interesting material from Czechoslovakia, whose output of unofficial and censored literature of all kinds has been immense. Limitations of space, and the need to maintain a sensible balance, in the geographical as well as political sense, have often forced us, however regretfully, to discard articles which we should have liked to publish. We have had to be very selective even where this special issue is concerned — the Czech material we have received would easily have filled all of it, and to spare. The following case histories each deserve more extensive coverage, but perhaps will serve as an illustration of life in occupied Czechoslovakia eight years after the invasion, at least as it is for those who refuse to accept what has happened as ‘normal’, for those who refuse to undergo the indignity of ‘recanting’ their beliefs and to pretend that all is well.

(The FOREMAN'S office. A door, left, and next to it a framed diploma hanging on the wall. Right, a wardrobe and filing cabinet, on top of which are several empty beer bottles. On the rear wall a large, amateurish painting of Ŝvejk and the publican Palivec, with the inscription ‘Lot of good beer, lot of good cheer’. In the centre of the stage, an office desk and three chairs, the desk covered with papers and more beer bottles; also a few glasses. A crate of beer stands next to the desk. Along the walls, and especially in the corners of the room, a motley of discarded bits of machinery, an ancient radio, a broken hat-stand, a pile of old newspapers, rubber boots, etc. The curtain goes up to reveal the FOREMAN sitting with his head resting on his folded arms on top of the desk, snoring loudly. After a while there is a knock at the door. The FOREMAN immediately awakes.)

On 25 December, 1975, Vaclav Havel sent a letter to various Party and local government officials in response to the harassment of a large number of people who had taken part in an amateur performance of his new play, as well as of many members of the audience. He pointed out that he had earlier written to the State Security authorities, asking them to stop the harassment, and to the mayor of Prague.

We are publishing an abbreviated text of his letter.

May over this our state lasting peace hold sway oppression fear and hate let them all pass away all pass away May you my nation once again your liberty sovereignty regain Here your home create in keeping with your dream from the oppressor's yoke escape May injustice falsehood dread brute force not long bow your head

In March this year the relatives of five well-known Czech political prisoners wrote to President of the Republic and Communist Party leader, Gustdv Husák, appealing for their release and complaining of ‘the inhumane and illegal conditions’ to which they were subjected.

The letter was signed by the parents of student leader Jiří Müller, the wife and children of Ing. A. Rusek, the wife and children of Dr Jaroslav Ŝabata, and the wives of Dr Milan Hübl and Dr Jan Tesaŕ. It was sent together with a detailed account of the prisoners' conditions, quoting extensively from their letters home and pointing out the many infringements of Czechoslovak laws and international human rights covenants committed by the prison authorities.

In this part of the appeal, entitled ‘Documentation’, the signatories show that political prisoners are given worse treatment and fewer privileges than common criminals, and that on various occasions the prison authorities do not abide even by their own regulations. They also point to the persecution of the prisoners' families, stating that their wives have repeatedly been dismissed from employment and can only hold menial jobs, white their children are not allowed to study at secondary schools and universities.

The existence of this appeal was made public abroad at press conferences held earlier this year in Paris, Vienna, Stockholm, Oslo and Dublin. Excerpts from the letter were published by a number of leading newspapers, including The Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Quotidien de Paris. In Czechoslovakia itself, despite the extraordinary security precautions taken during the XV Congress of the Communist Party in April, copies of the appeal were delivered to each of the delegates, 2,000 copies being distributed in Prague alone.

Below we print the complete text of the letter and an edited version of the ‘Documentation’, from which we have selected mainly excerpts from the prisoners' letters. We should like to thank the Palach Press for making this text, as well as Václav Havel's letter (see p. 55), available to us.

INDEX Index is a quarterly chronicle of events throughout the world published to illustrate the ways in which freedom of expression is being variously curtailed or denied. Such a chronicle cannot hope to present a comprehensive picture of this problem, but is offered as a supplement to the information and comment appearing elsewhere in these pages.