B. MODELO DE CURA BASADO EN BIOFILM
3. Limpieza pasiva
It is no exaggeration to call the impact of so-called “normalisation” on research into recent history devastating. Most of a whole generation of historians was forced out of academic life, or, at best, shifted into unimportant positions and compelled to change their research interests. As a leading fi gure in Czechoslovak de-Stalinization, Karel Kaplan was one of the historians most affected. Eventually, in 1976, he escaped from the situation by emigrating to West Germany. His departure was connected
with the now already legendary smuggling out of a great many archival materials, on which he based his research in exile in Germany.20
Once in exile, Karel Kaplan was able to start capitalising on years of thorough archival research. He used the knowledge he had built up in the 1960s in a long series of titles published either in foreign-language translations or in Czech by exile publishing houses. Kaplan also engaged in a great deal of journalistic activity, taking part in broadcasts for the stations Radio Free Europe and Voice of America and writing for exile periodicals, above all Pelikán’s Listy.
The start of his career in exile also had a certain symbolic side. Kaplan’s fi rst major foreign-language title was an unusually personal one – a kind of confession of a party functionary and historian against a background outline of some mile- stone events in Czechoslovak history after 1945. Published in French, his Dans les
archives du Comité Central: 30 ans de secrets du Bloc soviétique may be regarded as
a work marking the fi nal closure of one period of Kaplan’s personal and professional life.21 This had started with the entry of the young Communist into the offi cial
structures of the KSČ and ended with the emigration of the historian-dissident, inseparable in the eyes of the ruling elite from the “subversive” developments of the latter half of 1960s.
During almost fi fteen years of work in exile, Karel Kaplan showed an ability to fi nd research subjects that when worked up and published provided previously unknown information on the diffi cult recent past and threw light on places strictly guarded by the ideological apparatus. Thanks to Kaplan, West Europeans with an interest in the history of the so-called Eastern Bloc were given an insight into the practical functioning of the ruling Communist Party and real disposition of political power in Czechoslovakia.22 Kaplan also provided the Western public with books on politi-
cal repression in one of the Soviet satellites that were based on authentic archival material.23 One of his major themes was the analysis of the takeover of power by
20 There was an article on Karel Kaplan and the smuggling of party archival materials out of Czechoslovakia in Time magazine on 9 May 1977: “Secrets from the Prague Spring” (avail- able at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947905-1,00.html, download- ed 30 September 2008).
21 KAPLAN, Karel: Dans les archives du Comité Central: 30 ans de secrets du Bloc soviétique. Par-
is, Albin Michel 1978. This title – unfortunately not translated into Czech – is discussed in an analysis of the Czechoslovak historiography of communism by the French historian Mu- riel Blaive (BLAIVE, Muriel: Promarněná příležitost: Československo a rok 1956 [A Wasted Opportunity: Czechoslovakia and the Year 1956]. Praha, Prostor 2001, pp. 165–169). 22 KAPLAN, Karel: The Communist Party in Power: A Profi le of Party Politics in Czechoslovakia. Lon-
don, Boulder 1987. On this theme, Kaplan also published a series of fi ve instalment editions in German as part of the series “Berichte des Bundesinstituts für ostwissenschaftliche und interna- tionale Studien” (see IDEM: Anatomie einer regierende kommunistischen Partei, Vol. 1–5. Bonn, Bundesinstitut für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien 1983–1989).
23 IDEM: Die politischen Prozesse in der Tschechoslowakei 1948–1954. München, R. Olden- bourg 1986. Kaplan’s titles on the trial of Rudolf Slánský came out in several languages, most recently in English in 1990 (IDEM: Report on the Murder of the General Secretary. Columbus, Ohio State University Press 1990).
the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.24 The breadth of subjects on which he
published and sheer number of titles give an idea of the importance of Kaplan’s activities as a historian in exile. It cannot be emphasised enough that his books with their strictly factual content were based on archivalia in inaccessible Prague funds and so offered a previously unknown view into the interior of Czechoslovak political reality. Many of these publications became the basis for today already classic Kaplan’s titles published in Czech after 1989.
In the case of the Czech editions of his texts, Karel Kaplan adopted the same strategy as with his translated titles: he used authentic source material to draw a picture of the postwar development in Czechoslovakia entirely at odds with the image of the “people’s democracy” and the building of socialism presented by “nor- malisation” historians and journalists. In addition to a series of articles and studies, we should, above all, mention three books. The fi rst two, Zpráva o organizovaném
násilí [Report on Organised Violence] (co-authored by the historian and journalist
Vilém Hejl) and Nekrvavá revoluce [The Bloodless Revolution] are known to readers from their later Czech editions of the fi rst half of the 1990s and both are among standards of Kaplan’s bibliography.25 The book that has attracted the greatest atten-
tion, however, is Mocní a bezmocní [The Powerful and the Powerless]26 which has
not yet been published in the Czech Republic. Kaplan himself has quite a reserved attitude to it,27 but the author of this article is not alone in considering Mocní a bezmocní to be one of the best on the long list of Kaplan’s works. This is because
the reader fi nds something in the text he would like to see much more often in Kaplan’s writings – the combination of the view of an erudite historian with the perspective of an involved witness. This set of portraits of important communist functionaries is based not just on archive materials but on many personal meetings and back-stage information. It offers an immensely fascinating excursion into the world of the party elite, not to speak of the very interesting portraits of individual leading Communists. Unique in the context of Kaplan’s output, this book suggests that the author, otherwise known for his very systematic choice of themes, still has considerable unused potential as regards the courage to express himself more as a witness, and publish more of his personal memories. These memories are
24 E.g. IDEM: Der kurze Marsch: Die kommunistische Machtübernahme in der Tschechoslowakei 1945–1948. München, R. Oldenbourg 1981. IDEM: The Short March: The Communist Takeo- ver in Czechoslovakia 1945–1948. New York, Palgrave Macmillan 1987.
25 HEJL, Vilém – KAPLAN, Karel: Zpráva o organizovaném násilí [Report on Organised Vio- lence]. Toronto, Sixty-Eight Publishers 1986 (Praha, Univerzum 1990); KAPLAN, Karel:
Nekrvavá revoluce [The Bloodless Revolution]. Toronto, Sixty-Eight Publishers 1985 (Pra-
ha, Mladá fronta 1993).
26 DEM: Mocní a bezmocní [The Powerful and the Powerless]. Toronto, Sixty-Eight Publish-
ers 1989.
27 In an interview with Pavel Paleček, Kaplan commented on the book: “If I had wanted to, I could have written a mass of sensational things, but I did not do it. After the revolution, I did not allow the publication of my book Mocní a bezmocní precisely because it was a rath- er light-weight kind of literature.” (PALEČEK, P.: Exil a politika, p. 72.)
certainly highly personal and not non-partisan, yet they are very important for our knowledge of the backstage politics of the KSČ.