The Green Butterfly: Hana Ponická (1922–2007), Slovak Writer, Poetess, and Dissident E-Book

Josette Baer

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 302

Beschreibung

To the older generations in her native Slovakia, Hana Ponická is well-known for her successful children’s books and courageous fight against the communist regime. Her psychological ordeal began in February 1977 when the elderly lady refused to sign the so-called anticharta, a condemnation of the human rights group Charter 77, which had published its first manifesto in the West on 1 January 1977. All Slovak and Czech artists had to sign the anticharta; they were forced by the regime to condemn the dissidents, the most prominent among them being Václav Havel (1936–2011), who were standing up against the violation of basic human rights enshrined in the Czechoslovak constitution following the conclusion of the CSCE treaty of Helsinki. Ponická, like most of her fellow artists, had neither read the Charter 77 manifesto nor the text of the anticharta; she thus refused to sign. Her courage prompted the regime to terrorize her psychologically. This political biography is the first ever written about Ponická, despite her being a household name in Slovakia. Josette Baer’s analysis is based on Ponická’s memoirs of that cruel year of 1977, newspaper articles she published prior to 1971, when the regime effectively banned any critical voice from publication, and newspaper articles she published after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 to promote the establishing of a rule-of-law state and democracy. The documents of the StB, the Slovak and Czech Security Services, are analyzed for the first time; they are evidence of how the StB tried to pressure the resilient and disciplined grandmother of three into obedience. Oral history interviews with Dirk Mathias Dalberg, Vlasta Jaksicsová, and Mary Šamal inform the reader about the situation of the Slovak dissidents of Charter 77, how normal citizens lived in the regime, and how the Czech and Slovak exile communities in the USA saw the dissidents in Communist Czechoslovakia.

Leseprobe

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

This study is dedicated to my dear colleague Jozef Žatkuliak (1954–2017), a member of the Department of History at the Slovak Academy of Sciences (HÚ SAV) and specialist in Slovakia’s political history in the post-Dubček years. He was the first to mention Hana Ponická to me and kindly provided me with online sources back in 2014. Sadly, Jozef is no longer with us, but thanks to him, I began to read Ponická’s texts. I would have loved to discuss her life and political activities with him.

My biography is also dedicated to Helena and Ivan Klíma in Prague, who were so kind to Hana Ponická, supporting their fellow intellectual during her hardest times.

The Green Butterfly. Hana Ponická (1922–2007). Slovak Writer, Poetess and Dissident

Foreword The intellectual in the two totalitarian systems and in democracy

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

X. Introduction

X.1 Method, Key Contexts, Research Questions

X. 1. 1 Method: Contextual Biography

X. 1. 2 Research Questions

X. 2 Slovak and Czech Dissidents under the Normalization regime. Oral History Interview with Dirk Matthias Dahlberg (SAV)

I. Writer, translator and poetess (1939–1974)

I. 1 Early years: women’s themes and cultural issues (1939–1953)

I. 2 Liberalization and its end (1965–1969)

I. 3 Janko Novák (1974)

II. Lukavica, the StB and the Bratislava Five (1977—1989)

II. 1 Notes from Lukavica—one year in the life of Hana Ponická (1977)

II. 1. 1 The Slovak Writers’ Union

II. 1. 2 The State Pension Fund

II. 1. 3 Nature as allegory for politics

II. 2 The ŠtB: surveillance and intimidation

II. 2. 1 Operation MILL (September 1977)

II. 2. 2 Pravda and the November interrogation (October–November 1977)

II. 3 The end: the trial of the Bratislava Five (November 1989)

III. A Slovak voice for Slovak Democracy (1990–2001)

III. 1 The Velvet Divorce (1989) and Sovereign Slovakia (1993)

III. 2 Oral history interview with Vlasta Jaksicsová

III. 3 Oral history interview with Mary Šamal

Conclusion

Chronology

Bibliography

ForewordThe intellectual in the two totalitarian systems and in democracy

From afar, the story of Hana Ponická’s life does not deal solely with her person and personality, but also has wider historical implications and goals that originate in her life, namely, her crucial ethical legacy, which is valid to this day.

We can thus, with an eye on the greater and lesser details, generalize about the turbulent fate of this admirable representative of Slovak cultural life in the second half of the 20th century, because it applies to the whole of the political, societal, and cultural development of Czechoslovakia, thence also of Slovakia in the Cold War.

From the 1940s onwards, the years when the heroine of our story stepped into public life, until the first decade of the 21st century, when she died, Slovakia experienced a very dramatic and at times contradictory development. The country went through several fundamental changes with regard to the constitution and governmental politics. People judged the phases and the goals, remembering their own times, now rejecting and condemning them. This prompted the repeated interruption of the continuity of how people were understanding historical developments in Slovakia, which also mirrored their historical consciousness, referring to how they were perceiving society’s collective historical memory.

A sensitive barometer and basic mirror of the situation back then were the reactions of the members of the artistic and scientific, indeed the entire cultural community, who were addressing the most important political and societal issues of Slovak public life. Through her professional activities, but also because of her private life and family background, Hana Ponická had been moving in the circles of the Slovak cultural and intellectual elite since her early youth. She became a natural and very important part of the elite, albeit not always a typical one; more than once, she found herself in the role of an enfant terrible, a role which she did not choose herself; external conditions out of her reach and influence pushed her into that role. The principles of democracy, humanism and tolerance formed her thinking and actions, that is, the essential elements of an intellectual.

One cannot, however, precisely define the characteristics of an intellectual because they do not exist. The concept of an ‘intellectual’ does not have distinctive features of general validity, nor strictly drawn defining borders. The concept is determined by the present times, the geopolitical status of a country and its political system. Paraphrasing the eminent Slovak literatus Rudolf Chmel: an intellectual is a widely talented, critical, and educated person who thinks along non-conformist lines. In a given situation and when the times demand it, the intellectual is capable of overcoming the boundaries of his area of professional expertise and interests by consulting his own experiences and opinions, his moral integrity but also the personal and moral courage that he needs to make a decision.

As the authentic bearer of that concept, the intellectual thus has the ambition to voice his opinions and activities to the wider public, or, at least, to those groups of citizens from which he expects consent and proportionate responses to his suggestions, considerations, or plans. He is aware of the risk of not being understood, rejected by public opinion, as expressed by most of the citizenry, and, on top of that, the risk of discriminatory and persecutory measures issued against him by the government.

Certainly, the practices mentioned were and still are being followed by totalitarian regimes, but there are also democratic states that cannot always resist their lure, even if their attacks on ‘indecent’ citizens—i.e. free-thinkers and non-conformists—are more sophisticated and appear to be milder. Against the risks mentioned, the intellectual, equipped with his scientific, journalistic, or organisational acumen, actively steps into the events of public life, and engages in them. Sometimes, as if through a ‘back entry’, and generally not very successfully at that, he finds himself in an environment alien to him: the arena of mindless political fights, for which he is not prepared in mental terms. As an exception, and as distinct from professional politicians, he is not interested in power or money. In the pragmatic—or rather, cynical—environment of everyday politics, the authentic intellectual does not fit in; he is not welcomed and cannot be indoctrinated because of his critical mind, incorruptible ethical position and moral grounding.

Professional politicians certainly are using and abusing, to their benefit, popular persons and outstanding members of public life who enjoy considerable authority. However, the moment when the intellectual perceives any critique or disagreement from them, he quickly disengages, rids himself of the politicians, and if he has any power or means at his disposal, he subsequently condemns and ostracizes them. As a result, intellectuals—like most leading personalities—leave practical politics, feeling hurt, disappointed and disgusted.

Yet, this does not mean that all of them automatically give up on the essential elements of democracy, tolerance, humanism, or general human decency. They still have the ambition to act in the public sphere, yet not in politics, limited by ideology, but in the informal and non-official civic sphere. They want to engage in a continuous dialogue with the citizens, initiate and ask uncomfortable questions and, together with the discussants, look for answers, which are, however, rarely comfortable, or acceptable to the powers that be. That is why in totalitarian regimes, oppression, discriminatory observation, and direct persecution are established and organized very quickly.

In this environment, the intellectual cannot work in his profession, nor engage openly and freely in public. The brutal monitoring affects those who disseminate non-conformist thinking; it prompts damaging, but not always direct, or visible consequences for the whole of society and its moral profile. It is a characteristic element of the totalitarian government that it first deliberately targets its victims among the most eloquent and creative personalities of the artistic and scientific circles of the nation.

Even sadder is the understanding that many (the majority?) members of the cultural community, among them also intellectuals, are capitulating to the overbearing pressure from the regime, due to fear and opportunism, but also calculation. They turn away from their close and not so close colleagues and friends, who knew how to stand up against that pressure. In the best case, they tell them in private about their personal and moral solidarity or try to support them materially.

All the above-mentioned events and characteristics directly limited and influenced the professional and private life of Hana Ponická. She spent most of her adult life surviving two totalitarian regimes, which she came into personal and professional conflict with. In the first case, and as a university student, she joined the anti-Fascist resistance. After the Communist seizure of power in 1948 and the establishing of the second, this time the ‘red totalitarianism’, the regime painfully infringed on her artistic freedom and scientific research. Back then, some members of the cultural community were beginning to understand the moral duty of a citizen, artist and intellectual, engaging in public life also outside of their professional interests. This happened after the harsh sobering up and disappointment of the post-war pseudo-revolutionary illusions, and the daily experience of the anti-democratic and anti-humanitarian character of the totalitarian regime.

The first time that disappointment was clearly visible was in the year 1956. Back then, the regime oppressed the quiet attempts at a true civic engagement in public. The process leading to demands for basic social reforms, voiced most often by Czech and Slovak scientists, writers, and other artists, was unstoppable. It peaked in the famous events of the so-called Spring of Prague; it lasted several months more, even after the brutal suppression of the reform process by Soviet tanks in August 1968.

In those months of an extraordinary spiritual and moral elation in all parts of Czechoslovak society, Hana Ponická’s public engagement and focus on civic duties began to become visible. They were apparent in her texts that she was still allowed to publish. She was not alone in her activities, and she was never a ‘fighter on the barricades’. Calmly, she explained to the readers, and the radio and television audience the convincing evidence of her view of the events, not only in the fight for democracy and human rights, but also about aspects related to solutions of actual and constitutional problems, which were fervently catching the attention of the wounded conscience of the Slovak public, humiliated by the occupation of the alleged allies. She excelled in her extraordinary argumentation, which was rationally formulated, bearing a touch of female sensitivity.

For two more decades, the re-established totalitarian system of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, referred to as ‘Normalization’, was again oppressing not only artistic and scientific freedom, but also the civil and human rights of the people—much as if the wheels of history were turning backwards. A society, which is again shocked by fear, apathy and indifference towards public issues falls into lethargy. Certainly, the regime did not take up the drastic measures of persecution it had used in the first years of being in power, but went against its critics, mainly members of the cultural community, with the refined method of ‘carrot and stick’.

The government was trying to terrorize and silence its opponents not only by monitoring them with the police, state administration and the judicial system, but also with the offer of cooperation and most importantly, the promise to be allowed to publish again and return to public life, naturally under the condition that they give up their independent civil activities, and, humiliating themselves in public, revoke and regret their earlier texts, or other ‘damaging’ expressions and opinions. The ‘sorting of the souls’ began again in both nations’ communities of culture, art and literature, and in wider society; this process had repeated itself several times in modern Slovak history.

The decisive boundary of that sorting or selection was the moral integrity of a person, determined not only by an individual’s character, but also fear, courage or cowardice, and the understandable wish to continue the forbidden artistic work, yet sometimes also promoted by careerism and the willingness to openly collaborate with the totalitarian regime. In that complicated and psychologically challenging process, Hana Ponická prevailed with honour. Because she repeatedly refused to publicly revoke her opinions, the state security service monitored her, harassing her with various oppressive schemes.

The harassment did not break her, on the contrary: it re-inforced her national and civil focus. She belonged to a small group of Slovak intellectuals and dissidents, who risked their personal freedom participating in various activities, for example, showing solidarity with Charter 77, signing the petition A Few Sentences and engaging in the independent movement for civic freedom; they criticized the totalitarian regime and its rule. She never underwent the humiliation of publicly revoking her opinions, positions, and activities, albeit the authorities tried to press her into it several times—in exchange for the possibility to publish again and return to public life.

The writer, journalist, translator and organizer of cultural events, the tireless propagator of Slovak culture abroad, withstood every pressure and also the tawdry offers of ‘liberating self-criticism’. Because she was getting into an unwanted professional and more often also personal isolation from her terrorized and opportunistic writer friends, she desperately tried one more time to speak up in public, that is, at the congress of the Writers’ Union. In her speech, which she was not allowed to present, she protested against the anti-democratic methods of the government in cultural policy and immediately became the outcast of the officially acknowledged community of writers.

Yet, she knew that her attempt to speak up was not her swansong in the official framework of the Slovak Writer’s Union; she knew that, by trying to have her speech published in the minutes of the Congress of the Writers’ Union, she would have to face persecution by the government. Back then, fear dominated the Writer’s Union; attempting to show courage by supporting a female colleague was a no-go, and not one of the then influential literati supported her in public, although they had at their disposal her courageous text. Her influential speech was made public in full in the foreign press, where it was dubbed the Slovak Charter 77.

After the fall of the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia, the dissident and authentic intellectual Hana Ponická returned to public life, with her honest publicistic and organizational work, and without celebratory fanfares. She did not wish for a political career but dedicated herself to artistic work and activities in the framework of civil organizations. She continued to maintain her critical and constructive comments about public, mainly cultural events.

Perhaps this is a cynical statement, but fate was kind and forgiving to Hana Ponická, because she did not live long enough to witness the increasing devaluation of the principles of the Velvet Revolution, the brutalization of society, the growing hatred in the political struggle, nor the steady ongoing harsh commercialization of the cultural space. She would have protested against them in the name of the ideals of democracy, humanism, decency and true cultural values, for which she fought tirelessly throughout her life.

Ivan Kamenec, Bratislava, December 2021

Abbreviations

Archives and libraries

ABS Archiv Bezpečnostných Složek—Archives of the State Security Services, Prague, Czech Republic

ÚPN Ústav Pamäti Národa—The National Memory Institute, Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

SNK Slovenská Národná Knižnica, Martin—The Slovak National Library, Martin, Slovak Republic.

Political parties, associations, organizations and media

CC KSČ Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party

CC KSS Central Committee of the Slovak Communist Party

COMECON Council for Mutual Economic Assistance; see RVHP

CP Communist Party

ČSA Československá Armáda—Czechoslovak Army

ČSD Československé Drahy—Czechoslovak Railways

DS Demokratická Strana—Slovak Democratic Party

HG Hlinkova Garda—Hlinka Guards

HSĽS Hlinkova Slovenská Ľudová Strana—Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party

HOS Hnutie za občiansku slobodu—Movement for Civic Freedom

KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti—Soviet Committee for State Security

KPSS Komunističeskaia Partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza—Communist Party of the Soviet Union

KSČ Komunistická Strana Československa—Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

KSS Komunistická Strana Slovenska—Slovak Communist Party

MP Member of Parliament

MNO Ministerstvo Národné Obrany—Czechoslovak Ministry of National Defense

MV Ministerstvo Vnútra—Ministry of Interior, Slovakia

NF Národní Fronta—Czechoslovak National Front

NKVD Narodnii Kommissariat Vnutrënnikh Del—The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs

RVHP Rada vzájomnej hospodárskej pomoci—Council for Mutual Economic Assistance

SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands—Socialist Unity Party of Germany

SNP Slovenské Národnie Povstanie—Slovak National Uprising

SNR Slovenská Národná Ráda—Slovak National Council

SNS Slovenská Národná Strana—Slovak National Party

SSl Strana Slobody—Slovak Party of Freedom

SSSR Soiuz Sovietskich Socialističeskich Respublik—Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics

StB Státní Bezpečnost—Czechoslovak Federative State Security Service; Czech State Security Service

ŠtB Štátna Bespečnosť—Slovak State Security Service

VB Verejna Bezpečnosť—Public Security, Police

VPN Verejnosť proti násiliu—Slovak Public Against Violence

ZNB Zbor Národnej Bezpečnosti—Corps of National Security, Slovakia

Acknowledgements

This biography is the first academic study to investigate the life, political activities and political thought of Hana Ponická (1922–2007). The Slovak intellectual survived WWII and the years of Czechoslovakia’s Stalinization (1948–1953) as a student, young wife, mother, poetess and writer; she was an ardent supporter of Dubček’s reform politics that began in Slovakia in 1963 and ended with the invasion of August 1968. With the beginning of her resistance against Husák’s Normalization regime in 1977, a cruel future awaited the intelligent, energetic and outspoken woman. After refusing to sign the anticharta in February 1977, Ponická was banned from publishing and could no longer work as a translator and writer.

In this volume, I have tried to convey to the reader how the Normalization regime (1969–1989) psychologically terrorized citizens who dared to disobey. I have made every effort to understand the psychological and financial pressures the regime put on Ponická. The material I found in the archives of the State Security Service StB in Prague and Bratislava is available to the English reader for the first time.

I am greatly indebted to my colleagues and friends for their interest in my research and willingness to discuss specific issues with me. My thanks in alphabetical order: Jozef and Mária Banáš, Norbert Kmeť, Kristina Larischová, Juraj Marušiak, Ondřej Matějka, Slavomír Michálek, Jaroslava Roguľová, and my friends AB and XY in Prague, who have been teaching me about life under the Communist regime for more than a decade now. My special thanks go to Dirk Matthias Dalberg, Vlasta Jaksicsová and Mary Šamal for the oral history interviews they kindly agreed to give. My friend Karen Henderson, a specialist on Slovak politics, drove us up to Lukavica in the summer of 2020, so I could visit the place where Ponická had lived and written her memoirs.

The staff at the SNK Martin were, as always, friendly, professional, swift and uncomplicated: Ľudmila Šimková, Alžbeta Martinická, Karin Šišmišová, Zuzana Horníková, Jozef Liška, Ivana Pakánová and many others—thank you. My thanks also go to Marketa Doležálová, Veronika Chroma and the staff at the Archives of the State Security Forces at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ABS ÚSTRČR) in Prague and Mrs Vadajková and Mr Mikle at the Bratislava Institute for the Memory of the Nation (ÚPN) for the material on the Slovak StB.

Valerie Lange at ibidem publishers and I have known each other since 2006, when our cooperation began. One could not wish for a more effective, supportive and friendly editor. Peter Thomas Hill is my English teacher; his precise and meticulous judgement and thence correction of my English is most valuable to me.

Lastly, I wish to thank Ivan Kamenec for his supervision; he is one of the greatest experts on 20th-century Central European history that I have the honour to know and a most kind colleague.

Needless to say, but I say it anyway: any errors and shortcomings in this volume are my own.

Josette BaerZurich, Bratislava and Prague, January 2022

Fear [after the 1950s and again after 1968, add. JB] as a phenomenon did not manifest itself only in the sphere of political persecution; it was not as brutal as in the 1950s, but it had much more refined and elaborate forms and instruments at its disposal. […] Fear dominated the entire society, although it was not always apparent. Eventually, the recurrent activities such as reporting to the authorities, denunciations, collaboration with the State security services had, in most cases, their origins in the individual’s feelings of being under threat by the state.”1

X. Introduction2

To the Czechs and Slovaks, the year 1977 is a symbol of resistance. On 1 January 1977, a handful of Prague intellectuals opened the New Year with a bombshell—the first manifesto of the Human Rights Group Charter 77 was published in the West.3 The Husák4 regime reacted vehemently. The Ministry of Culture organized the so-called anticharta in February 1977,5 the government-dictated statement of loyalty to Czechoslovak Socialism and the politics of Normalization6 alike. The ‘voluntary collective protest’ signed by artists, poets, writers, singers, and actors against the Charter 77 manifesto would discredit the dissidents of Charter 77 at home.

I am no expert on literature and poetry; this study therefore focuses on Hana Ponická’s (1922–2007) political texts. This book is the first political biography of a courageous woman, who was, up to now, completely unknown outside Slovakia. Ponická started to write about politics and societal issues shortly after WWII and commented on politics until 1971. She was allowed to publish translations of government-approved foreign literature, poetry, and children’s books until February 1977; after her refusal to sign the anticharta, the regime took away her voice—until the Slovaks and Czechs, with the power of the people, successfully challenged the Party’s monopoly of governmental rule in the Velvet Revolution of November 1989.

Publication contracts that she had signed years previously as a respected member of the Slovak Writers’ Union (Sväz Slovenských spisovateľov)7 were declared null and void, the expected revenue for her work was cancelled. Husák’s Czechoslovakia was no rule-of-law-state. The citizens had to deal on a daily basis with the harsh reality that the law, the constitution, was a matter of interpretation by the Party.

In February 1977, Hana Ponická began her long fight for justice, freedom of speech and conscience against the regime that spectacularly failed to uphold the main principles of its own constitution. She did not know how long this fight would last. Because of her courage and resilience, the Slovak poetess, writer, and translator, hitherto a member of the prestigious Writers’ Union, became an outcast.

This biography is based on material from four sources: first, Ponická’s newspaper articles prior to 1977, with a focus on women’s issues, the regime’s cultural policy and her criticism of the invasion and the early stages of the Normalization; second, her memoirs of the year 1977, which she entitled Lukavické zápisky (Notes from Lukavica); third, my analysis of the StB files on Ponická, which are available to the English reader for the first time; and fourth, articles she published after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, voicing her ideas about how to establish a rule-of-law-state and democracy in the years of post-communist transition.

This study consists of three parts: in chapter I, I present Hana Ponická’s early years with a focus on her political journalism up to 1974. Having survived WWII, she most probably survived the years of Czechoslovak Stalinization under the rule of Klement Gottwald (1896–1953)8 thanks to her marriage; her first husband and father of her three children Štefan Žáry (1918–2007) was a former resistance fighter on the Italian front, a Party member and correspondent of the Czechoslovak Press Agency in Rome from 1948 to 1950. She also experienced joy and hope for a better future when Alexander Dubček’s9 (1922–1992) reform course began in 1963 in Slovakia and then from January 1968 in the Czech part; the Czechoslovak Spring would last for only eight months.

In chapter two, I present a summary of Ponická’s memoirs Notes from Lukavica and an analysis of the files the StB was collecting on her starting in February 1977. I focus on the psychological terror the StB mounted against the courageous woman with examples and explanations from Ponická’s memoirs and StB material. The trial of the Bratislava Five in the summer of 1989, when already thousands of East Germans were fleeing through Hungary to the West, should be understood as the symbol of the Party’s ideological intransigence.

Chapter three deals with Ponická’s post-1989 political activities. How did she see Slovakia’s future in Czechoslovakia?10 In this last chapter, I shall analyse Ponická’s thoughts about Slovak sovereignty, her views about feminism and her activities with regard to her rehabilitation.

Ponická had lived through seven (!) political regimes: from democracy (1918–1938) to clerical Fascism (1938–1945) to semi-democracy (1945–1948) to Stalinist Socialism (1948–1963) to Dubčeks Reform Communism (1963–1968) to Normalization (1969–1989) and, finally, to Slovak sovereignty (1993). The brief years of the Czechoslovak Federation (1990–1992) ended with the so-called Velvet Divorce of summer 1992, effective by 1 January 1993. Slovakia was, for the first time, a sovereign state and embarked on the path towards democracy and market economy which led her to EU membership in 2004.

X.1 Method, Key Contexts, Research Questions

X. 1. 1 Method: Contextual Biography

Slovak historian Peter Jašek wrote the first biography of Communist politician Vasil Biľak (1917–2014), who was one of Slovakia’s most despised politicians because of his involvement in the invasion of 1968. Under Communism, Jašek wrote, a historian’s task was, first and foremost, to follow the Marxist doctrine of scrutinizing the conditions and goals of the masses, the working class; individuals did not matter and thus writing biography was no task for a historian.11

This study has an interdisciplinary focus: it presents an analysis of political ideas against the background of established historical facts. The combination of political theory analysis with contextual biography12 is particularly suitable for a biography of Ponická because it is based on a specific approach to biographical and historical writing. The contextual biography method offers us a deeper insight into the historical context, presupposing that a person’s activities, thoughts, and personal impressions cannot be separated from the historical circumstances he or she was subject to. The British historian Sir Ian Kershaw, FBA (Fellow of the British Academy), on the method and its relevance:

“Any attempt to incorporate such themes [technology, demography, prosperity, democratization, ecology, political violence, add. JB] in a history of twentieth-century Europe would not by-pass the role of key individualswho helped to shape the epoch. […] They are neither their prime cause nor their inevitable consequence.New biographical approaches, which recognize this are desirable, even necessary. Their value will be, however, in using biography as a prism on wider issues of historical understanding and not in a narrow focus on private life and personality.”13

The method of contextual biography and the analysis of political thought as a dimensionof biographical writing affords a unique insight into Slovakia and Czechoslovakia’s political environment: Hana Ponická’s personal views and activities, perceptions of events and ideas render vibrant the historical context in which she thought and acted, and her ideas and thoughts act as a prism on the intellectual and political atmosphere of the various political regimes she lived under.

Marxism-Leninism, the ideology the KSČ regime established on the so-called victorious 25 February 1948 in Prague, has been subject to countless historical, philosophical, and sociological studies. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin’s works can be found in libraries and on the Internet. For those willing to delve into the depths of Marxist-Leninist theory, I recommend Sir Isaiah Berlin’s (1909–1997) biography of Marx,14 the texts of Ernest Mandel (1923–1995),15 Neil Harding’s analysis of Leninism,16 and Leszek Kołakowski’s extensive study of Marxist thought.17 Moreover, Edvard Radzinsky’s biography of Stalin,18 William Taubman’s meticulously researched biographies of Krushchev and Gorbachev,19The Black Book of Communism20, François Furet’s excellent historical study of Communism,21 and Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder’s debate about intellectuals in the 20th century offer excellent analysis.22The series of the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP papers),23 published at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington D.C., USA, offers outstanding research about the Soviet bloc, China and international politics during the Cold War.

X. 1. 2 Research Questions

To achieve a deeper insight into the subject matter of this investigation, readers should keep these questions at the back of their minds, let themselves be guided through the text by the following questions: First, what was the source of Ponická’s resistance and mental strength? Did the Normalization regime politicize her or rather the Czechoslovak Spring? Second, what type of government did she advocate after 1989? Did she pursue Slovak sovereignty, thus the division of Czechoslovakia? And third, what type of feminism did she support after 1989; was she an outspoken activist for female rights in an emerging market that was slowly replacing the centralist economic structures of the former regime?

Let us now talk to an expert on the Normalization regime and Slovak and Czech dissidents.

X. 2 Slovak and Czech Dissidents under the Normalization regime. Oral History Interview with Dirk Matthias Dahlberg (SAV)24

JB: Dear Dirk, you are a specialist on Czech and Slovak dissent, especially the Slovak dissidents Miroslav Kusý, a Charter 77 member, and Ján Čarnogurský, to name but the best-known. What are the origins of your academic interest in Slovak and Czech dissent? Why did you choose this theme for your PhD and post-doc research?

DMD: My general interest in east central Europe, that is, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia,25 goes back to my personal origins. I was born in Cottbus, a town in Lower Lusatia, inhabited by a small Slavic tribe, the Sorbes, or Wenden, as they refer to themselves in German. I grew up with two languages: the names of our streets and official government statements were published in the Sorb language and German. Add to this the Slavic names of parts of our town, Cottbus, and also the names of communities in the region. Furthermore, I should mention the proximity of Cottbus to Poland and the Czech Republic; under Communism, Czechoslovakia was the only country people from the former GDR could travel to without problems. The socialization in the GDR required the teaching of Russian as a compulsory language from primary school on.

My special interest in Czech and Slovak political dissent is connected to my interest in Czech and Slovak political thought, and my academic endeavours. I have always been interested in political thought and its history. There is nothing new to be said about the classic political thinkers.26 Yet, to me it is interesting to go back to their political thought, which offers us theoretically consistent advice on contemporary issues. These old thinkers can always be related to the present, that is, be understood from our contemporary situation.

The political thought of the states of east central Europe I have mentioned above, however, remains fairly unknown.27 The reason for this situation is, firstly, the language barriers. Few of the significant key texts have been translated, leading to the fact that the text material for research is limited. The translated texts are often available only to those, who are seriously interested, because the editions are relatively small. Add to this also a certain lack of interest; one might perhaps even speak of a certain arrogance from the West. One often hears that the theories of this region lack innovation and originality. Also, the dissidents had repeated only that which was already known.28 This might actually be true, yet a lack of originality or the sheer re-articulation of themes considered to be anachronistic can rarely be an explanation for the disinterest of a distinct scientific discipline that engages with historical texts. Until today, the historiography of political ideas and political theory continues to focus on Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Montesquieu, the Federalists, de Tocqueville, Marx and many others.29

Czech and Slovak political thought is interesting primarily for the reception of and adaptation to Western political ideas. Czech and Slovak thinkers adapted Western ideas to the specific conditions pertaining in Central Europe, located between eastern Europe on the one hand, and Germany and western Europe on the other. I shall come back to this point later.

In the end, it was coincidence that brought me to my theme. I was an Erasmus exchange student in Prague and sat in on lectures and seminars which were dedicated to topics and concepts such as Central Europe (Mitteleuropa), apolitical politics, anti-political politics and also the symbolic centres of Czech history. To me, a student of political science and the history of eastern Europe, this was of course immensely interesting. I did not yet understand much because of the language barrier, but these courses sparked my interest—which then prompted me to improve my knowledge of Czech. My improved Czech facilitated access to the Slovak language. The above-mentioned topics and concepts also played an important role in the dissent of the 1970s and 1980s. The key factor for my decision to embark on an academic career was, however, the Hungarian novelist and essayist György Konrád: his book Antipolitik. Mitteleuropäische Meditationen brought me closer also to Hungarian literature.30

In my PhD thesis, I did not yet examine Czechoslovak dissent, but focussed on the so-called apolitical politics, promoted by Thomas G. Masaryk and his adherents between 1890 and 1940.31 This concept is often mentioned with reference to Václav Havel, but it has a much longer tradition. Ultimately, apolitical politics originates in the mid 19th century; therefore, one can speak of a Czech, perhaps even of a Central European tradition of apolitical politics.32 In my PhD thesis, I had, so to speak, ‘found too much’ to let go of this theme. After my PhD, I literally worked towards the dissidents of the 1970s and 1980s in my publications and analysis. I also made detours, for example, my analysis of Karel Kosík’s conception of Central Europe or Zdeněk Nejedlý’s conception of democracy in the 1920s.33

In my post-doc years at the university of Pardubice I began to occupy myself more intensively with Czech and Slovak dissent. First, I delved into the study of Czech political thought of the 19th century, namely Karel Sabina, Emanuel Arnold, Karel Havlíček-Borovský, František Ladislav Rieger, František Palacký and others. Equipped with a good overview, I started to study Czech and Slovak dissent—and stayed with this theme. My starting point was, of course, Václav Havel. Whether one likes it or not, one has to deal with Havel when dealing with Czech dissent. Reading Havel’s texts, I got access to other dissidents. I knew Petr Uhl from his comments in the Czech daily Právo. In my above-mentioned Erasmus year (2000 to 2001), I had bought Milan Šimečka’s texts in Prague antiquarian bookshops, without knowing when I would have the time to read them. I also tracked down Kusý’s texts in antiquarian bookshops. The person and name of Egon Bondy kept cropping up in my studies. I knew him mainly as a writer, less so as a philosopher and political thinker. Apart from Bondy, these personalities are not as fascinating as Havel, but that does not mean that they are less significant as dissidents. It is interesting that Šimečka, Kusý, and later, also Bondy lived in Bratislava. While in Pardubice in my post-doc years, I worked intensively on these four persons, analysing their criticism of Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s and their political thinking about how the future should look, especially the future of a better society. And I scrutinized their texts for connections to the history of Western political thought.

I was and still am angry about the fact that international analysis of Czechoslovak dissent mostly focusses on Václav Havel, because I know other dissidents who were authors of noteworthy texts and interesting thoughts. Havel’s fame and star status is, I reckon, related to his upper-class origins, but also to his significant essays, which have been translated into many languages.34 Other writers, such as the above-mentioned, are, in my opinion, unjustly cast in his shadow. The thought of the four I mentioned shows interesting parallels to Havel’s thinking; hence, it is not always clear, who actually influenced whom. Dissidents did not copy Havel’s thoughts, following him intellectually—the dissidents were a pluralistic group of individuals.

In this context, there is also an interesting hypothesis, voiced by some Czech thinkers, that the dissidents, and above all, Havel, had not been political thinkers at all. Such opinion is based on the view that only a small group of individuals is thinking in political terms and capable of publishing scientific analysis. Because the dissidents had not been political thinkers, it would be pointless to publish scientific studies of their political thought.35