As the communist “iron logic of history” could not lead to a “crisis development,” it was necessary to present the situation of the year 1968 as the result of a reversal, a departure from the rightful development (the following formulation appeared in one of the novels under scrutiny: “a mysterious spiral clinked to warn those who wanted to turn it back about its relentless functioning”).64
The refl ection of events portraying the “crisis period” began, as a general rule, with January 1968 (Vabank and Červená rozeta being the exceptions as they took into account also the fourth congress of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers of 1967; the 1960s represented a time of political timelessness in “normalisation” prose). With regard to the ordinary addressees and the retrospective confrontation be- tween real experiences and the new interpretations, the transformation of the social atmosphere was looked upon from below or from the lowest (local) level of party leadership (from the point of view of the chairman of the local national com- mittee, the secretary of the district committee of the Communist Party of Czecho- slovakia – the KSČ, the chairman of a JZD and so forth). The description of the situation was vague, based on the feelings and moods of society, fuelled by “word of mouth” and naïve surmises. The sketch of actual events was evoked directly or allusively: the January secession of the Central Committee of the KSČ, the crea-
62 KLEVIS, V.: Toulavý čas, p. 156.
63 NOHEJL, B.: Velká voda, p. 156. 64 KOVANDA, Z.: Palec na spoušti, p. 199.
tion of the Club of Politically-Engaged Non-Party Members [Klub angažovaných nestraníků – KAN], the publication of the manifesto “Two Thousand Words,” almost always the functioning of Klub 231; as for actual people, only Alexander Dubček was named as the symbol of the Prague Spring. Protagonists of the reform move- ment and their sympathisers were labelled as “human faces” or “progressives” in the analysed novels; their opponents, who did not agree with the “crisis development,” were pejoratively labelled as “dinosaurs” (“konzervy” in Czech), “dogmatists” or “commies” (“komouši” in Czech).
The story-building corresponded to the logic of the chosen ideological key. The fi rst sign of crisis, taking the form of some sort of illness that attacked society bit by bit and was gradually becoming part of it (“My nation is not immune to any contagion”),65 was confusion and chaos, initially characterised by the uncompre-
hending questions of the confused public (“As for them, these progressives, what do they actually want?”)66; “a strange uncertainty that had tied tongues for many
months” appeared.67 Elsewhere, “organisers” “mixed everything thoroughly and
people do not recognise what is black and what is white,”68 and, consequently, they
fell into greater and greater uncertainty: “Nothing is in its place and people fi nd themselves in chaos. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, and also no one knows who is who.”69 – “One begins to be somewhat lost. I, for instance, sometimes
do not understand the newspapers, or television. What do they want?”70
Special emphasis was placed on the role of the media which became one of the culprits in spreading “anti-socialist moods” among society and the ensuing sympa- thies towards the “reviving process”: “People want it – OK, but is everything people want right? They irk and provoke them, start them off – on the radio, television and newspapers.”71
The image of initial uncertainty then gained a negative coloration and gradually passed into fear (in Vabank, the protagonist warned about an artifi cially created “psychosis of fear,” in Zádrhel, one reads that “people know nothing and are afraid of them”),72 provocations led to attacks, sedition and slander and escalated into
complete hysteria and blind infatuation. Another frequent motif was life in debt after which “a hangover comes when you wake up,”73 false games and fraud: “This
foolish, hysterical spring had no end. It rolled over back and forth and reared up as a young wild horse, kicked around senselessly with its hooves, hurt the innocent and sometimes killed cruelly […] it fi lled farmers with anxiety as well as those
65 KOLÁROVÁ, J.: Můj chlapec a já, p. 284. 66 HRABAL, K.: Zádrhel, p. 73.
67 KOVANDA, Z.: Palec na spoušti, p. 47.
68 PLUDEK, A.: Vabank, p. 183.
69 HRABAL, K.: Zádrhel, p. 118. 70 MALACKA, E.: Pod Bílými kopci, p. 38. 71 KOPECKÝ, F.: Svědomí, p. 56.
72 HRABAL, K.: Zádrhel, p. 133.
who were able to imagine where all this could lead to.”74 Authors also used other
metaphors, not only the “wild horse,” to present the ongoing events: In Kostrhun’s
Svatba ve vypůjčených šatech [A Wedding in Borrowed Clothes], the metaphor of
a wedding was used. In this case, drunken wedding guests raped the bride; in ad- dition, the image of a fallen house for which for “ten years we worked hard and saved money, fi ve years we lived there and spent money, fi ve months we tinkered around its bases and in fi ve seconds, everything fell down.”75 The very titles of the
novels were metaphorical: Vabank [Gamble], Velká voda [High Water], Zádrhel [Bottlenecks], Hrdelní pře [Hanging Case], Přezrálé léto [Overripe Summer], Svatba
ve vypůjčených šatech [A Wedding in Borrowed Clothes], Palec na spoušti [Thumb
on the Trigger]; their protagonists were branded as Stagehands [Kulisáci], Clowns [Klauni], Foxes Changing Their Fur [Lišky mění srst].
The stories reached the critical point of escalation where traditional and time- tested patterns that highlight the polarisation between good and evil were used. Confusion, chaos, the atmosphere of fear, hysteria and demagogy even led to real danger for those who did not agree with the political developments and were loyal to the Marxist line of the Communist Party. Positive characters suffered and were persecuted for their opinions. The motif of the persecution of “loyal Communists” and their “hunting” was put in the context of a similar pursuit in the pre-February period and especially during the Second World War; this was sometimes empha- sised by using the same oppressor in both periods, only now the oppressor sup- ported the “reviving process.” The persecution likewise formed a parallel with the fi rst post-February years: in the same way Communists then had to face members of the “reactionary strata,” agents or, in contrast, over-zealous Communists. It is a paradox that the forms of persecution would be known to the reader from the way the Communist Party itself enforced its will.
Little by little, in the prose under scrutiny, “loyal” Communists were removed from their posts or dismissed from employment. This “hunting,” however, had much more insidious forms as even children and other relatives were subjected to insults (the daughter of Major Zeman, for instance, was ridiculed by her classmates and was accused of her father’s alleged crimes; in Vabank, students did not want to be taught by the wife of a dogmatic Communist). Roles were being reversed even in the depiction of the coercive means the “progressives” used in 1968 to obtain consent for their politics, to obtain signatures on resolutions and proclamations or to force people to join the newly-established organisations against their will: “I had to sign it. […] Otherwise they would kick me out from state service once their freedom took place,” the main hero from Nohejl’s Velká voda commented on such practices.76 The heroine of one such novel even had to lock herself in the toilet
74 Ibid., p. 131.
75 KOSTRHUN, Jan: Svatba ve vypůjčených šatech [A Wedding in Borrowed Clothes]. Praha, Československý spisovatel 1989, p. 78.
when she was chased while being forced to sign “Two Thousand Words.”77 Cases
with fatal consequences were to be a tragic memento: Colonel Kalina of the novel
Hrdelní pře died in 1968 because “his own people […] thrust a dagger into his
heart, wickedly from the back – and his heart did not make it.”78 In another book,
“a young man poisoned himself with gas. He left a letter for his mother stating that he could not stand the things that were being said and written about his father.”79
The summer of 1968 represented the point of escalation in the plots and an open crisis: protagonists had to face physical violence and delinquency, while the political and social development possessed features of a burgeoning civil war. The function of these motifs was to give a certain shape to the term counterrevolution, enforced by the offi cial “normalisation” propaganda, for which it was not possible to fi nd a parallel in the national historical development. The “counterrevolution” in Hungary in 1956 served as a certain prototype: in Zádrhel, a novel where the situation possessed the most visible signs of a civil war as it progressed into open fi ghting, the main character was a witness to how “honest Communists are being kicked out and face threats. They are even being beaten up in the streets as in the old days. If this goes on, they will be hanging on lamp-posts soon as happened in Hungary.”80 The danger of open fi ghting was shown by depictions of brawls, blood,
and stones hurled at windows. The situation was thus described in Palec na spoušti: “And rumours about lists of Communists with a lamp-post marked next to their names – and rumours about secret weapons were perhaps more true than anyone was ready to believe. War? Counterrevolution left its hiding places and moved into open attack!”81 Indeed, these two novels, the most engaged and most belligerent,
opened space for another motif that the other books tried to avoid: pleading for help to the Soviet Union.