From: dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Subject: Re: Jan Kavan
Keywords: Kavan, dissident, Czech
Reply-To: dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 08:09:27 GMT

Robert Ehle writes:
|> There is an article about Jan Kavan, a former "oppositionist and
|> activist-in-exile," in the October 19 New Yorker, and a follow-up to
|> that article in the November 2 issue. I'm sorry to have missed the
|> October 19 article, but the follow-up has convinced me to look back
|> for it.

   I've read both the original article and the follow-up.  The original
   article was well written and researched.

|> Kavan returned to Prague from exile in London in the fall of  '89, was
|> greeted with open arms, and later won a seat in Parliament. But he was
|> later accused as an agent of the StB (the Czech communist state
|> security), and in a trial by the Independent Commission which lacked
|> any semblance of due process, was unable to have his name cleared. Jan
|> Kavan is only one of a number of people, according to this follow-up
|> article, who have been accused of collaberation. Another is Zdena
|> Skvorecky, co-founder with her novelist husband, Josef, of the
|> Toronto-based 68 Publishers, "perhaps the foremost publisher of
|> authentic Czech literature anywhere in the world." 
|> 
|> Lawrence Weschler, the author of the article, compares Kavan's case to
|> the Dreyfus case in France. He smells a whiff, at least of
|> anti-Semitism, and much more than a whiff of  "scapegoatism" (my word,
|> and very clumsy), that he ascribes to a populace with its own bad
|> conscience about decades of acquiescence.

   In the follow-up article, two things asserted by the author seemed 
   to me to rest on a shaky footing--first, the mention that "a distinct
   whiff of anti-Semitism has wafted into the social revulsion against
   Kavan", and second the prophecy that Kavan's case will become the
   Czech equivalent of the Dreyfus affair. 

   The author does not say where does the anti-Semitism enter into the
   Kavan picture, he only states that it does.  While I have no doubts 
   that anti-Semitism still figures among the ills of the Czech society,
   I have yet no reason to see it as an important motivation factor in 
   the persecution of Kavan.  Better explanation of why it is going on 
   was given by the author himself--it is politics pure and simple, since 
   this way the new guard can get rid of both the 60's reformists (not too 
   hard, as they were a failure) and the dissidents (who associated with 
   the reformists in the quixotic-seeming Charter 77, and who may be quietly
   detested by the silent majority for having had the guts to speak out).

   As to the comparison with Dreyfus, Kavan is too complicated a figure to
   serve as a launching point against the `lustrace' process.  Kavan is only 
   one out of many who have been marked as collaborators yet spent most of 
   their lives doing more for freedom back home then all their accusers put
   together (the case of Zdena Skvorecka being an excellent example).  

   The interest of such a magazine as the New Yorker will hopefully make
   the Czechs re-examine the whole issue with Kavan and the others.  But 
   from what I have read so far, `lustrace' are not very much on the mind
   of the populace these days anymore--the new Czech state and the state
   of the economy will preoccupy the people for quite a while.  So unlike
   the Dreyfus affair, the Kavan affair might be, unfortunately, soon
   forgotten.
 
|> I'd be very interested to hear what anyone - but especially what any
|> Czech or Slovak - has to say about this article.  I've only recently
|> started reading Carolina; have they carried this story at all?

   Let me note that while I'm Czech, I have not lived back home for years,
   and so my opinions should be taken with that in mind.  I too am very
   interested to hear what anyone else hasto hear to say about the events.

 		
|> 				Rob Ehle
|> 				Stanford University Press
|> 				ehle@leland.stanford.edu

 - David
Newsgroups: soc.culture.czecho-slovak