By now there is a large literature available in English on the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and its aftermath. Nevertheless, Milan Simecka’s The Restoration of Order, written eight years ago and circulated by Czechoslovakia’s Samizdat, has only recently been translated …
By the time he was 45 years old, the Czech novelist Josef Skvorecky had survived a dizzying succession of political systems: Masaryk’s democratic republic, the Nazi protectorate, the postwar social democratic republic, Stalinist rule after the 1948 coup, the humanist …
Protest against oppressive regimes can take a dramatic form: demonstrations, work stoppages, hunger strikes, even self-immolation. But a softly-spoken, “No, I will not,” can also constitute an act of dissent. In Jiri Grusa’s case, such a refusal provides the foundation …
