The demand for a holistic view of society, the desired social novel, was supposed to bring a “clarifi cation” of the motivation of the nation that had identifi ed with the reform movement and infl uenced even the nature of the roles of the social strata in the year 1968.
The traditional communist opposition of the working strata and the surviving remnants of class enemies, former bourgeoisie, playing, according to offi cial com- munist doctrine, consistently positive or negative roles in historical development, had to take shape also in this period. A new image, however, awaited those strata whose role was much more problematic. Because of the role played in 1968 by the intelligentsia, personalities from the fi eld of science, culture and art, as well as by individuals traditionally representing national elites and possessing authority, it was not possible to ignore the topic.
In contrast to social novels, mainly of the latter half of the 1950s, that were con- sidered to be a model in their time (for example Otčenášek’s Občan Brych [Citizen Brych]),48 the main goal of “normalisation” prose depicting characters based on
members of the intelligentsia was not to present the image of their mental develop- ment or transformation, but to discredit them by using often the most trivial means. The general popularity of the intellectual protagonists of the Prague Spring offered the use of indirect methods when the literary characters, caricatured needless to say, had various different allusions to actual and real people (the most typical case was Pludek’s Vabank with its main characters showing Vašek Bobek as Václav Havel, Jan Havran as Pavel Kohout, Sváťa Linda as Milan Kundera, Míša Taub as Gabriel Laub, and the like; Jiří Procházka used a similar approach in his cycle where Professor Holý represented Václav Černý, and so on). From the point of view of “normalisation” prose, the “reviving process” placed these characters, often writers, into the role of moral leaders without justifi cation (“they think they are making a new National Revival”).49 This was to underline also their dubious personalities
and questionable morals, refl ected in particular in the fi eld of sexuality, desire for money and fame, and the already mentioned “changing of coats” and instability. The characteristics of the goals that motivated their political ambitions, were again presented in the most trivial and most easily understood manner, mostly to refute
47 NOHEJL, B.: Velká voda, p. 175.
48 OTČENÁŠEK, Jan: Občan Brych [Citizen Brych]. Československý spisovatel, Praha 1955.
The novel was published three times during “normalisation” (1978, 1983, 1986). 49 PECHÁČEK, L.: Červená rozeta, p. 128.
the image of the “ideals of the Prague Spring.” The intelligentsia were shown to have the most mundane material interests, which, through infl uence and power, could be realised on a higher, international level: the trip to Zurich of the main hero-poet from Červená rozeta, for example, was to be a cover-up to “take something away and to bring something with him”50; in Vabank, the writer Míša Taub had “a little
business deal here, a little business deal there […] something put aside in hard currency in his bank account in West Germany or Switzerland, Tuzex coupons in Czechoslovakia.”51 A popular motif regularly stressed was superiority and arrogance:
in Červená rozeta, Docent Kramoliš, and the circle of artists he controlled, desired to become the “grey eminence creating history.”52 These characters also longed for
fame, admiration and most of all for power: their intentions were characterised by an adversary in Vabank with the words “one wants to become a minister, the other the director of anything at all, the third a diplomat and the fourth perhaps an artist of merit.”53
The logical reaction to this image of the intelligentsia was rejection. The “corrup- tion” of their moral profi le would be renounced by the “healthy layers of society.” “Our intelligentsia should found its own country.”54 The image of the “healthy core
of the nation” sprang from the older, traditional vision of rural purity, loyalty and stability. This was represented by the now collectivised village and its population, its “own intelligentsia” included: “The rural intelligentsia takes everything serious- ly and is basically more stable than the intelligentsia of our cities. […] In the coun- tryside, nothing goes out of fashion that quickly, nothing becomes ordinary that quickly, nothing is denigrated so quickly in the name of some vague possibilities; nothing turns inside out so quickly.”55
In the literature under review, the traditional image of the village, therefore, gained the ideologically necessary characteristics: traditionalism presented as distrust towards “novelties,” which gradually passed into being apolitical, thus determining the village as a place where only “real problems” relating to the well- being of the nation were addressed. For this reason, there was no time or willing- ness to devote to “pseudo-problems” which reach the village only remotely from Prague and, consequently, the population succumbed to a lesser extent to politi- cal “temptations.” The Chairwoman of the Agricultural Cooperative Plánice (the Czech abbreviation being JZD Plánice) Anka Šandová from Procházka’s Hrdelní
pře [Hanging Case] told Major Zeman: “You really fool around in Prague, that is
for sure. […] We here, in the countryside, have no time for your Prague hysteria and craziness […] we must work hard so that next spring, when you calm down
50 Ibid., p. 118.
51 PLUDEK, A.: Vabank, p. 178.
52 PECHÁČEK, L.: Červená rozeta, p. 148. 53 PLUDEK, A.: Vabank, p. 137.
54 ŘÍHA, B.: Doktor Meluzin, p. 42. 55 Ibid., p. 111.
[…] there will be something to eat!”56 In Malacka’s novel Pod bílými kopci57 [Under
White Hills], the main plot was about the struggle of a village against the inten- tions of the political leadership of 1968 which wanted to swamp and destroy the large agricultural potential of fertile land and create a dam in its place that would benefi t foreign tourists. The defeat of the “reformists” meant not only the rescue and salvation of the village, but also the subsequent development of its economy.
Another layer often depicted in this kind of prose and which gained a new role were young workers or soldiers, working youth in general. Some authors picked members of the young generation as the main heroes in their works; others made use of the methods of a developmental novel when recapitulating the life of middle- aged characters. The majority of them represented maturation and the gradual mental transformation of characters in a wider social, cultural and historical context. The year 1968 meant a “life test” for the young protagonists; their correct politi- cal stance implied both their personal and political adulthood in a similar manner as war and liberation had for the older generation. Depicting the working youth brought a guidance model for the identifi cation of the “new generation” with the “new regime” and its political course.
The topic of generational struggles between parents and children, typically a quest on the part of the parents to fi nd where they had gone wrong in the upbringing of their children, served as a means to explain why so many young people joined what was considered to be the wrong side: “What have we neglected while raising our children, how did we cause that they fl ock like a mindless herd after such profane slogans. How did we rear them if they can be so easily exploited?”58 – “However,
you forgot to talk every now and then with your own children and now they think you have done too little.”59
The portrayal of students (in accordance with their real, from the contemporary point of view, unacceptable, role in 1968) was almost exclusively negative: they were fi ckle, lacked psychology of any kind, their opinions on their surroundings did not become central topics and their activities were only connected with dem- onstrations, resolutions and provocations. Their political naivety was mixed with fanaticism, a propensity for violence and a desire for power in the literature under review (“his eyes sparkle because of the feeling of power and […] manipulation”).60
All in all, it was written, the nation, which fell for false illusions despite the rela- tively high living standards (“all of a sudden, people fall for a strange infatuation; it comes upon them like fl u, with their greasy mouths sitting in their soft arm- chairs in front of the screen they listen with satisfaction to talk about the misery they had fallen into”),61 was presented as a manipulated crowd who longed for
56 PROCHÁZKA, J.: Hrdelní pře, p. 154.
57 MALACKA, Emil: Pod Bílými kopci [Under White Hills]. Brno, Blok 1975.
58 KOLÁROVÁ, Jaromíra: Můj chlapec a já [My Boy and Me]. Praha, Československý spisova- tel 1974, p. 284.
59 NOHEJL, B.: Velká voda, p. 152. 60 KOPECKÝ, F.: Svědomí, p. 67.
effortless comfort: “I heard that now we would live in that Holland or wherever. People from overcrowded countries will work for us and we will direct the whole thing […] I have never even dreamt that I would command someone one day.”62
On top of that, these masses were presented as controlled by naïve ideas: the hope that money and the desired well-being would be provided by the West. Manipulated members of cooperatives wanted to stop growing economically important crops and were eager to devote themselves to the luxury needs of the West (calves for export, a dam for foreign tourists); others expected to be lent money; all this could be found in the “normalisation” prose dealing with the Prague Spring.
The basic falsity of the highlighted naivety was shown in the unwillingness to see the “real” goals of the West. Older ploys and subjects making use of Western agents who wanted to destroy socialism were no longer convincing and so tradi- tional anti-German sentiments were stirred up instead: Germans represented the West, especially those from the Sudetenland who wanted their Czech cottages and country-houses back, which they still considered to be their own; they intended to return and tried to persuade the Czechs that: “Once the relationship between Deutschland and Tschechei is settled, the grave mistake of expelling the former inhabitants will be erased.”63