Lessons from the Crisis Development the Picture of the Prague Spring in “Normalisation Prose”

Lessons from the Crisis Development The Picture of the Prague Spring in “Normalisation Prose” Alena Fialová (Šporková) Every historical event is fi rst stored in the memory of the individual as a personal experience, then is captured and simultaneously interpreted in the media, and then is fi rmly anchored in different types of texts: among others, in works of art. Under the infl uence of these interpretations, the picture of a historical event is created in the public’s awareness, which takes the form of steady, simplifi ed pat- terns. A specifi c way for their formation is capturing historical events in literature; in contrast to scientifi c methods, it does not claim to offer factual accuracy and completeness; however, due to its accessibility to a wider circle of readers and its aesthetic and emotional effects, it has a much greater chance of integrating the interpretations and evaluations into the general consciousness of society. The image of history, captured in artistically impressive works that have managed to gain wide popularity, can become part of the general memory of the nation, which is the condition for self-refl ection of every single national community and as such participates in forming its identity. Creating a new identity, which would be adopted by the whole society, was the aim of the representatives of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Attempts to enforce their own concept of history (which in itself indirectly included the image of their present) was based on the belief that communist ideology was a historical necessity, in other words “the iron logic of history,” which was to lead inevitably to the ideal of a classless communist society, realisable after the revolutionary seizure of power by the working class under the leadership of the Communist Party. 78 Czech Journal of Contemporary History, vol. II After the Communist Coup of February 1948, the ideologised interpretation of history was meant to incorporate these changes into the context of national history and the “revolutionary traditions of the nation” and, therefore, legitimise and glorify them.1 For this reason, communist propaganda sought to massively reinforce the general public’s awareness of the offi cial interpretation of history, among other things, by using aesthetically impressive and compelling works of art in order to create an idealised self-image. Art-works were not only to offer the “correct” interpretation of history, but also to contribute to its general acceptance, and thus to the identifi cation of society with communist thought. Emphasis on positive and negative sides of the socialist present and the paths which led to it in national history were to set an appropriate interpretation of specifi c events, including a system of causes and consequences (in fi ction amplifi ed by literary means – the choice of protagonists and their characteristics, preferences for certain motifs, use of fi gurative designs, specifi c narrative strategies, and the like); and, fi nally, literature was to offer indicative solutions to “critical” moments. The communist image of history therefore consisted of mandatory schemata, its own Marxist philosophy (class struggle, the role of social classes in the historical development and so on), and it also applied them to particular human lives, their environment and historical events – in some cases continuity with the current situation was stressed, in other cases its signifi cance was suppressed. The depiction of recent history had a specifi c status, evolving from the time of the communist seizure of power, which was perceived as a time “in which the roots of the future, today’s and tomorrow’s things were put down,”2 and as the beginning of a new era. Given the need to confi rm the new, ideologically compliant interpretation of history, offi cial authorities recognised the value of the genre of the social or socio-historical novel that recorded these events as well as the orientation of the individual in a broader context. For this reason, writers were encouraged over and over again to create a “representative” piece of work that would “truly” capture the historical developments containing important milestones in the recent past, perceived as a victory which paved the way for an ideal future. Socialist-realism literature of the early 1950s attempted to offer the desired epic works which were to demonstrate the communist seizure of power as the inevitable consummation of the historical development in all its complexity. Key moments that were presented as those that shaped the current situation were highlighted; the experience of the economic crisis of the 1930s, the Munich events, and especially the Second World War culminating in the liberation of the country by the Red Army 1 For more information about the problem the legitimacy of power and historical traditions in the communist regime, see KOPEČEK, Michal: Ve službách dějin, ve jménu národa: His- torie jako součást legitimizace komunistických režimů ve střední Evropě v letech 1948–50 [In the Service of History, in the Name of the Nation: History as a Part of Legitimisation of Communist Regimes in Central Europe 1948–1950]. In: Soudobé dějiny, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2001), pp. 23–43. 2 DOSTÁL, Vladimír: Minulost stále přítomná [The Past Still Present]. In: Tvorba, Vol. 7, No. 5 (1975), p. 8. Lessons from the Crisis Development 79 and the subsequent “victory of socialism” were therefore emphasised. In contrast, the so-called social novel of the second half of the 1950s and the 1960s tried to avoid such ideological constructions and focused on the individual and his or her uneasy orientation to historical events, which later changed even further with the portrayal of a demonstrative probing of the dichotomy between individual destiny and relentless history. The idea of a social novel that would capture the identifi cation of the individual with social changes re-appeared in the 1970s and 1980s and brought in a new wave of novels with the themes of war and the so-called “Victorious February.” However, another landmark was added presenting another turning point in the development of the socialist state: the events of 1968, the so-called Prague Spring terminated by Soviet occupation. Literature, from the perspective of agreeing with the “normalisation” of reali ty, wanted to refl ect on these events, referred to them as “counter-revolution,” and attempted to fi nd an ideologically suitable explanation of why the “logic of history” had come to this “critical” point. It had to co-create and consolidate the new interpretation of recent events, still vivid in the memory of most of society, and thus help the acceptance and legitimisation of the ongoing “new course.” The question of the continuity and discontinuity of the present with the events of the “crisis years” and the previous periods was problematic. The return of “normalisation” to the ideals and values of the 1950s even meant a more or less direct polemic with the literature of the 1960s. “The motif of the inconsistency of the human with society and history was emphasised in every possible way,” compared to previous and subsequent stages.3 The goal of this paper is to analyse engaged social prose from the period of the 1970s and 1980s which refl ected the Czechoslovak events of 1968.4 It focuses on schematic and model solutions typical of the “normalisation” interpretation of these events used by the representatives of the communist regime in order to enforce a binding interpretation of history (i.e. in accordance with the document Lessons from the Crisis Development in the Party and Society after the 13th Congress of the KSČ [the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia]) as portrayed in fi ction. This ideological re-interpretation of history was accepted only formally despite all the efforts made on the part of the Communists; indeed, it failed to integrate into wider public awareness. This says something about the application of ideological legitimation structures, the changes and new requirements of the “normalisation” regime and its attempt to adapt history to its own needs. 3 DOKOUPIL, Blahoslav: K vývojovým proměnám prózy s tematikou Února [About the Develop- mental Changes of Prose with the Topic of February]. In: Česká literatura, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1982), p. 160. 4 The author has published a monograph and devotes a whole chapter to the problem in it. FIALOVÁ, Alena: Poučeni z krizového vývoje: Poválečná česká společnost v refl exi normalizační prózy [Lessons Learnt from the Crisis Development: Postwar Czech Society in the Refl ection of Normalisation Prose]. Praha, Academia 2014, pp. 239–256. 80 Czech Journal of Contemporary History, vol. II The topic of the year 1968 also appeared in unoffi cial samizdat and exile literary works (for example, in the novels Mirákl [Miracle] by Josef Škvorecký, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Z deníku kontrarevolucionáře [From the Diary of a Counter-Revolutionary] by Pavel Kohout or Štěpení [Cleavage] by Karel Pecka and more).5 Keeping in mind that this is a topic that would require a separate analysis, I deliberately omit these works and focus solely on the offi cial publication space of “normalisation” Czechoslovakia. The Literary-Historical Context Literary works that would be open to the topic of the Prague Spring and the subsequent occupation were not published in large numbers in the 1970s and 1980s (in fact, there are only sixteen analysed works from the period under scrutiny). In terms of genre, the plots combine psychological, adventure, detective and socialism- building themes. Typically, when it came to length, these were rather short novels, not the desired, extensive social novel that, in fact, never came into being. The books being reviewed were published in two waves: initially, they appeared in the fi rst half of the 1970s (between 1973 and 1975), that is in the years that could be labelled as the “return of Socialist Realism to its original starting posi- tions” (Hana Hrzalová),6 when the “crisis years” represented “a still not cooled experience” (Vladimír Dostál).7 The second phase took place in the early 1980s (1981–1985) when the topic was viewed with a certain historical distance.

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