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Veronika Pehe Socialism Remembered: Cultural Nostalgia

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Veronika Pehe Socialism Remembered: Cultural Nostalgia Veronika Pehe Socialism Remembered: Cultural Nostalgia, Retro, and the Politics of the Past in the Czech Republic, 1989-2014 UCL Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2 I, Veronika Pehe, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 Abstract This thesis explores the political dimensions of representing history through literature, film, and television, offering a wide-ranging analysis of the cultural responses to the period of state socialism in the Czech Republic after the collapse of the former Eastern Bloc. Unlike in Germany, where the memory of the period from the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall has largely been discussed in terms of nostalgia, in the Czech case there is little evidence for nostalgia for either the utopian impulse of the socialist project or its everyday aspects. This research thus challenges nostalgia as one of the main paradigms for the remembrance of the socialist period in the former Eastern Bloc and demonstrates that in the Czech context, an aesthetic fascination with the past is not at odds with, but in fact reinforces an anti-communist rejection of the politics of socialism. My contention is that the object of remembrance in cultural production in the Czech Republic is not the period of state socialism itself, but rather a narrative of its overcoming through resistance and heroism. The retrospective handling of the past through cultural texts and practices hinges on a narrative of progress from the period of socialism to liberal democracy, which ultimately serves to legitimate the present political order. To capture this dynamic, I propose a new definition of “retro” as a relationship to the past devoid of emotional longing, which is predicated on a position of superiority to the past while enabling a vicarious enjoyment of its aesthetics. The project’s wider relevance beyond its immediate regional context is a contribution to the understanding of how popular culture and its circulation in the public sphere acts as one of the major structuring forces of collective memory and uncovers the different political agendas to which this memory is harnessed. Combining approaches from literary and film studies with historical and sociological investigation, and close readings of representations with a discourse analysis of public debates, this thesis presents a cultural history of the Czech post- socialist relationship to the socialist past. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgments 6 List of illustrations 8 Abbreviations 9 Chapter 1. Introduction: returning to the past 11 1.1 From nostalgia to retro 21 1.2 The trouble with the Ostalgie debate 28 1.3 Narrative, memory, ideology 35 1.4 Narrating socialism: a historiographical framework 40 Chapter 2. Painting the past black and white: the rhetoric of anti-communism after 1989 48 2.1 Dissidents, monetarists, and the discourse of the new elites 57 2.2 Dealing with the past institutionally: the case of lustration 65 2.3 Making heroes out of victims: the KPV and the work of Jiří Stránský 69 2.4 Artistic interventions in the anti-communist landscape 75 2.5 Anti-communism’s shifting object 82 Chapter 3. The nostalgic moment of 1999: Michal David, Major Zeman, and Pelíšky 87 3.1 Ways of speaking: representing socialism in the 1990s 91 3.2 The controversies of cultural continuity 105 3.3. The past revisited versus the past recreated: Major Zeman and Pelíšky 112 Chapter 4. Colourful times of small-scale resistance: representing socialism as comedy in the 2000s and 2010s 129 4.1 Irena Dousková’s jolly anti-communism 133 4.2 Petty heroism: overcoming the narrative impossibility of Normalization 136 4.3 Retro as a postmodern mode: Rebelové and Vyprávěj 151 4.4 The Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 as grand narrative 169 Chapter 5. Changing memory landscapes: from small stories to grand narratives 176 6.1 Battles for the past: from ÚSTR to Third Resistance 179 6. 2 The dramatic turn: the literary and cinematic search for heroes 192 6.3 Epilogue. Towards a plural memory: České století 212 Conclusion: socialism remembered 220 Sources and Literature 228 Primary sources 228 Archives and online databases 233 Media sources 234 Bibliography 236 5 Acknowledgments During my PhD, I have had the luck to be surrounded by many people who have helped me along the way. My thanks go first and foremost to my supervisors. Peter Zusi’s guidance has been inspiring me since my undergraduate days and it is largely due to his enthusiasm and good cheer that any crises during the course of this research were always quickly averted. I am equally grateful to Kristin Roth-Ey for her insightful and motivating comments and advice on how to straddle the boundaries between cultural studies and history. This research would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and UCL-SSEES. I am also grateful to the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, where I spent six months writing this thesis as a Jan Patočka Junior Visiting Fellow and would like to thank the UCL Doctoral School for supporting a three-month visit to Yale University that I undertook in 2013. Throughout the programme, I have benefitted from the advice, guidance, and kindness of a number of senior scholars. Petr Bílek’s input in the early stages of this project was indespensible to shaping the course of my research. I would further like to thank Miroslav Vaněk, Muriel Blaive, Chad Bryant, Jan Kubik and Tim Beasley-Murray, as well as Michael Denning and the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture for making me think outside of the confines of my dissertation and opening up new avenues of thought. Discussing my work with my peers has been equally important. Special mention goes to Rosamund Johnston, whose sharp observations and trans-Atlantic friendship provided encouragement and motivation not only on academic matters. Warm thanks are also due to the many friends and colleagues who have inspired me with their ideas, kindly read samples of my work and gave feedback, looked up references and recommended readings, proofread and edited, offered advice, or simply provided good company in the office and outside of it, including Andrei Sorescu, Ilya Afanasyev, Anna-Cara Keim, Jack Reilly, Natasha Wilson, Sune Bechmann Pedersen, Felix Jeschke, Kristýna Peychlová, Josef Šebek, Jakub Homolka and many others at SSEES and beyond. 6 The stories my parents recounted about living in socialist Czechoslovakia have been part of the reason I became interested in studying the memory of socialism in the first place. I hugely appreciate the unwavering support of my mother, whose recollections have been a source of inspiration. I am indebted to the work of my father, who probably knew I would write this thesis well before I did. His insights as a political commentator and analyst have been directly relevant and helpful to me throughout the project. Not only has he been an excellent informal “press monitor”, keeping me on top of current debates in the Czech media, but, given the gradual convergence of our research interests, his ideas have often found their way into this thesis. I am also happy to have the friendship of Thea Favaloro and my sister Isabella, who I’m sure will go on to do more exciting things than me. In addition, I would like to thank my friends and colleagues in Krytyka Polityczna for showing me that there is a world beyond academia and Ian Mikyska and Kryštof Vosátka for making my last months of living in London such a delightful experience. 7 List of illustrations Figure 1. The door of Café Kaaba, Prague. Photo by Prokop Jelínek……………………………….11 Figure 2. Museum of Communism, Prague. Promotional postcard…………………………………25 Figure 3. Šakalí léta (Jackal Years). Jan Hřebejk (director, screenwriter) and Petr Jarchovský (screenwriter). Czech Republic, 1993. Screenshot……………………………………….98 Figure 4. Šakalí léta (Jackal Years). Jan Hřebejk (director, screenwriter) and Petr Jarchovský (screenwriter). Czech Republic, 1993. Screenshot……………………………………….99 Figure 5. Kolja (Kolya). Jan Svěrák (director) and Zdeněk Svěrák (screenwriter), 1996. Screenshot………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...102 Figure 6. Pelíšky (Cosy Dens). Jan Hřebejk (director) and Petr Jarchovský (screenwriter), 1999. Screenshot……………………………………………………………………………………………………….119 Figure 7. Pelíšky (Cosy Dens). Jan Hřebejk (director) and Petr Jarchovský (screenwriter), 1999. Screenshot……………………………………………………………………………………………………….122 Figure 8. TřiCet přípaDů majora Zemana (The Thirty Cases of Major Zeman). Jiří Sequens (director, screenwriter), Czechoslovak Television, 1974-1979. Screenshot………………….126 Figure 9. Občanský průkaz (The Identity Card). Ondřej Trojan (director) and Petr Jarchovský (screewriter), 2010………………………………………………………………………………….145 Figure 10. Pupendo. Jan Hřebejk (director) and Petr Jarchovský (screewriter), 2003. Screenshot………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...148 Figure 11. Rebelové (The Rebels). Filip Renč (director, screenwriter) and Zdeněk Zelenka (screenwriter), 2001. Screenshot……………………………………………………………………………….157 Figure 12. Vyprávěj (Tell Me a Story). Biser Arichtev (director) and Rudolf Merkner (screenwriter), Dramedy Productions/Czech Televison, 2009-2013. Screenshot.. ............. 159 Figure 13. Vyprávěj (Tell Me a Story). Biser Arichtev (director) and Rudolf Merkner (screenwriter), Dramedy Productions/Czech Televison, 2009-2013. Screenshot………….160 Figure
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