Censorship in communist Czechoslovakia

1. Censorship in communistCzechoslovakia • April 1953: setting up of Office for the Supervision of the Press • In the 1960s, system lost its ideological ardour • Censorship office abolished in June 1968 • September 1968: Czech, Slovak Offices for Press and information created, but: • PRELIMINARY CENSORSHIP WAS NOT REINSTATED

2. Censorshipbeforeandafter 1968: • From the late 1950s and in the 1960s, journalists could play cat and mouse with the censors • Antonín Máša: “In the 1960s, censorship was no longer ideological.” • After the Soviet invasion: individual journalists and editors-in-chief became responsible for what they published

3. Harsh new era after Soviet-led invasion: Václav Havel: “Ominous new world appeared, ruthless, gloomy, Asiatic and hard.”

4. The regime after 1970: • Virulent, aggressive, ideologically extremist • Third raters were given power • They were aware their power was illegitimate and no one believed the regime’ s ideology any longer • The new rulers exercised power to excess

5. Timescale: • Husák´s “normalisation” did not take off until two years after 1968, spring to summer 1970 • Prior to that: Zprávy, Tribuna – “The Leninist Union of Youth” – viewed by majority society as doctrinaire and weird • As the result of the purges, their attitudes were forced on majority society

6. Relevance to the concept of censorship? • The traditional fight between censor and writer/journalist ceased to exist • After the mass purges, there was no one to try to bypass the censor • The new writers were now more ideologically zealous than the censors

7. Why the thorough turnabout? • Václav Žák: Extreme measures are always taken in the Czech community after a regime change • The majority accepted a modus vivendi with Husák´s regime “out of their sense of shame”

8. The regime change was profound and effective • The population accepted it without a murmur of dissent • The sacked reformers were isolated from mainstream society • The 1970 demographic change contributed? People with experience of interwar democracy left the public sphere by this time • No one was trying to outwit the censors, everyone had given up

9. The regime and the media • Paradox: The western media had a total information monopoly in Czechoslovakia from 1970 onwards. • People kept themselves informed, but did nothing • “No action is possible as long as the nation is a colony of Russia” • 1977: Charter 77 manifesto had 242 signatories; by 1989 their number had increased to 1886 (Czechoslovakia had 15 million inhabitants)

10. The aim of the regime: to paralyse the intellectual elites • The Nazis first to know that intellectuals were a danger to totalitarianism • Under Husák´s communism: intellectuals either shut up or was moved to a dissident ghetto • Lines of communication beween intellectual “head” of the nation and its body were cut

11. Normalisation media and journalistic practice • From 1970 : the media ran emotional campaigns, for something or against something • Shrill ideological language blotted out public discourse • No one believed what was being said, not even those who were saying it • What mattered was that rituals were being carried out

12. New concept of communism: • Igor Hájek, used to the 1960s: “A communist is a naive, slightly idealistic person, reformist, means well.” • Jan Čulík, having lived through the first seven years of Husák´s normalisation: “A communist is scum of the earth.” • The latter concept has survived in the Czech mainstream media.

13. Action against the reformists • All reformist organisations (Czech Writers Union) disbanded in the early 1970s • Independent literary and cultural periodicals were banned • Hundreds of thousands of books removed from public libraries • 400 writers became non persons • Hundreds of thousands of academics, politicians, journalists lost their jobs

14. Samizdat culture • The banned writers copied out their own books on the typewriter in up to 70 copies • Heyday of samizdat publishing in late 1970s and in 1980s • Works republished by Czech emigré publishers in the West (up to 2000 copies)

15. Clearbluewaterbetweendissidentsandpermittedliterature • No censorshipissues – theworkofdissidentswas not published in Czechoslovakia • A fewexceptions: writers in thegreyzone: Text by Hrabal (expurgated by author), Jiří Šotola, Miroslav Holub, Jan Skácel • Nobel Prizelaureate Jaroslav Seifert wastaught in schools, but his latestworkwassuppressed

16. Impactof independent publishinganddissidentactivity on wider society? • Official media gave saturation coverage to Charter 77 manifesto in the first quarter of 1977 • The whole nation was forced to sign an Anti-Charter 77 document (Havel´s current wife was among its signatories) • Why did famous actors near retirement age sign this? • In line with the tradition of customary “loyalty rallies” by the Czech cultural elites: YouTube - Národ sobe

17. Impact of independent literature • Was relatively small • The “headless body” of the Czech society developed a distinctive culture of subjugation • Typical features: conformism, consumerism, self-interest, avoidance of the public sphere and avoidance of politics • These values prevailed in Czechoslovakia after 1989, not the values of the dissident community

18. Major Zeman: a highly popular TV series

19. Highly popular: • Re-interpretation of postwar Czechoslovak history to show Stalinism in a favourable light • Treacherous intellectuals • Zeman: epitome of a true Czech and a communist

20. To recap: • There was no official censorship in Czechoslovakia after 1970 • Those who suppressed ideas by spreading ideological jargon did this willingly, although they did not believe in what they wer doing • Czechoslovak population enthusiastically supporter the 1968 Prague Spring • Within two years of its defeat, it adjusted itself happily to the Husák postinvasion regime