{"id":9808,"date":"2022-07-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aspeninstitutece.softmedia.cz\/article\/2022\/history-in-color\/"},"modified":"2024-09-30T18:53:09","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T16:53:09","slug":"history-in-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/article\/2022\/history-in-color\/","title":{"rendered":"History in Color"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plenty of books pretend history is some kind of Hollywood film. There are good guys, bad guys \u2014 and, yes, they are usually guys \u2014 action sequences and sudden plot twists. You have heard the stories. Winston Churchill does battle with Adolf Hitler as the rest of the world watches. An intransigent Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe on a desk at the United Nations. A few years later, Ronald Reagan gives a speech and the Berlin Wall magically crumbles.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Caricatures of famous figures shape our views of historical events, but they don\u2019t do much to explain what it was like to live through them. We can learn something about the Velvet Revolution from the likes of V\u00e1clav Havel, but what ever happened to that greengrocer he once eloquently wrote about in \u201cThe Power of the Powerless\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

The not quite world famous, but far from average, Slovak journalist and critic Agne\u0161a Kalinov\u00e1 falls somewhere in the middle. Though she may not be among the most consequential people in the history of Czechoslovakia, if the book-length interview \u201cMy Seven Lives\u201d is any indication, she could be among the more interesting. Newly translated into English by Julia and Peter Sherwood, the text unfolds as a conversation between the publisher Jana Jur\u00e1\u0148ov\u00e1 and the journalist Agne\u0161a Kalinov\u00e1. Adding to the intrigue is that Julia Sherwood, or Julka as she is called throughout the text, is Agne\u0161a\u2019s daughter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The language is smooth enough to make it feel like the entire talk had actually occurred in English. The book is divided into seven sections, each corresponding with Agne\u0161a\u2019s so-called \u2018lives\u2019: early childhood in the First Czechoslovak Republic, World War II and the Holocaust, the postwar Stalinist consolidation of power, the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion, Normalization, a 12 year period in exile and, finally, the rebirth of a democratic Czechoslovakia and the formation of an independent Slovak Republic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Born in 1924, to a Jewish family in Pre\u0161ov, Agne\u0161a\u2019s story is doubly unusual for English language readers. Not only does it recount life in Slovakia during a period where Czech narratives predominate, but Kalinov\u00e1\u2019s early roots in especially overlooked Eastern Slovakia. In Agne\u0161a\u2019s telling, pre-war Pre\u0161ov was populated by cultured bookstores, movie theaters and frequent visits from touring orchestras and theater companies. Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, as well as orthodox and reformed Jews, mingled with one another. \u201cThis colorful mix of people coexisted in the city in peace and, at least, apparent harmony,\u201d she recalled.<\/span><\/p>\n

As war approached, Agne\u0161a was forced to flee her hometown and shelter in a Budapest convent, where she managed to survive the Holocaust before returning to Slovakia. Contrary to the prevailing narrative, anti-semitism did not necessarily retreat with the Nazis, and in one illustrative anecdote Agne\u0161a recalls beginning work at the weekly newspaper <\/span>Kult\u00farny \u017eivot<\/span><\/i> when the the infamous Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd trial of 1952 began.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As Soviet security advisors asserted more direct control over the Czechoslovak StB in the wake of the war, political purges accelerated.<\/span><\/p>\n

So-called Titoists, Trotskyites, and bourgeois nationalists were the first to go. As of the spring 1951, the Soviets directed Prague to root out supposed Zionists\u2014a code word for Jews.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even Rudolf Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd, the Communist Party\u2019s second-in-command, was not immune.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knew Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd was an atheist and that neither he nor his father had ever claimed to be Jewish, so all that talk of his \u2018Jewish origin\u2019 was obviously an explicit reference to his non-Aryan racial origin,\u201d Agne\u0161a recalled. \u201cThey might just as well have applied the tried-and-tested Nazi model of the Nuremberg laws, and said that he was of Jewish race, since all four of his grandparents had been Jewish.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A spate of similar arrests followed, and the resulting trials were broadcast on the radio between November 20 and 27, 1952. Eleven of the fourteen accused in the Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd trial were Jewish. The indictment alone took three hours to read, with the defendants accused of being \u201cTrotskyists-Titoists-Zionists, bourgeois nationalists and enemies of the Czech people,\u201d alleged to be working \u201cin the service of American imperialists and under the leadership of Western intelligence services.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

All fourteen were convicted. Three received life sentences. The rest were executed. In a surreal twist, the Communists argued that the Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd episode showed their love for Jewish people. \u201cNormally bankers, industrialists, and former kulaks don\u2019t get into our party,\u201d Czechoslovak President Klement Gottwald said. \u201cBut if they were of Jewish origin and Zionist orientation, little attention among us was paid to their class origins. This state of affairs arose from our repulsion of anti-Semitism and our respect for the suffering of the Jews.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Spring in Bratislava<\/b><\/h2>\n

Given the earlier years of anti-semitic insanity, Agne\u0161a does seem as if she were particularly\u00a0 shocked by the Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd trial itself, but soon enough she learned the role that cultural critics like herself might be expected to play in this new system. \u201c[W]riters, people in the arts and politics, scholars, and academics competed with each other in spewing out declarations that condemned the \u2018dangerous and perfidious traitors\u2019 Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd, [Vladim\u00edr] Clementis, and others, and distanced themselves from them in righteous indignation,\u201d she remembered. \u201cWe in <\/span>Kult\u00farny \u017eivot<\/span><\/i> also had to publish these \u2014 as we called them \u2014\u2018responses.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These were difficult days, and Agne\u0161a recalled muddling through. Coping, even surviving, was effort enough. \u201cNever before and never after did we throw such splendid parties as in the years following the Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd trial,\u201d she said. \u201cWe would fix some nice food, listen to music, and dance. We played records on the gramophone \u2014 new pop songs, older jazz tracks. There was nowhere to go out in those days, but we were young and wanted to have a good time. So we had these parties through the most horrible times.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By then, Agne\u0161a was married to another Slovak public intellectual, the writer J\u00e1n Ladislav Kalina (or Laco as she calls him throughout the book), and they had a daughter (the aforementioned Julka). Although it would take a number of years, it would gradually \u2014 and temporarily \u2014 get better in Czechoslovakia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through it all, Agne\u0161a<\/span> continued to write, with a renewed focus on film. As she traveled to attend film festivals, she met journalists from abroad \u2014 developing a cosmopolitan sensibility that might have otherwise been difficult in Bratislava.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The changing leadership at <\/span>Kult\u00farny \u017eivot <\/span><\/i>worked to \u201ccarve out a little more freedom of expression\u201d and this paralleled liberalizing trends elsewhere in Czechoslovak society. In 1963, Kalinov\u00e1 interviewed Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Her work as a film critic took her to San Sebastian, Bologna, Milan, Venice and Greece. \u201cEven today people sometimes still tell me that I was privileged because I was able to travel, but I really resented the fact that the ability to travel and poke my nose outside our backyard should be seen as an act of generosity,\u201d Agne\u0161a told Jana Jur\u00e1\u0148ov\u00e1. \u201cI was permanently furious at the regime for making it difficult for me to travel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Agne\u0161a was preparing to go to the Venice Film Festival when the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. As a half-million troops (Russians, Poles, East Germans, Hungarians, and Bulgarians, with Romania refusing to take part) started entering Czechoslovakia at 1:00 a.m. on August 21, the Czechoslovak government made a radio announcement. The invasion \u201ctook place without the knowledge of the government,\u201d but they urged people to \u201cremain calm\u201d and not to \u201cresist the advancing armies, because the defense of the state borders is now impossible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Agne\u0161a watched the invasion from Bratislava. \u201cDown the embankment, just a stone\u2019s throw from our block, there were tanks rolling past,\u201d she recalled. The next day, Agne\u0161a walked the streets. \u201cA tank stood on the corner by the <\/span>Pravda <\/span><\/i>publishing house, a soldier sat at the steering wheel unperturbed, looking at the people who shouted at him alternately in Russian and Slovak, asking what he wanted, what they came for.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Within days, Laco and <\/span>Agne\u0161a<\/span> fled to Austria in what became a dry run for a more permanent emigration. But Laco believed that Czechs and Slovaks might yet resist the occupiers \u2014 so he decided to go back.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Agne\u0161a considered staying in Austria with Julka, but ultimately returned to join her husband. \u201c[D]eep down I\u2019ve never stopped thinking that emigration would have been the right decision, that we should have gone through with it and left everything behind, despite the deep bonds that tied me to life in Slovakia, in Bratislava,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Enough is Enough<\/b><\/h2>\n

In the period of <\/span>Normaliz\u00e1cia<\/span><\/i> that<\/span> followed, Laco lost his job. Somebody broke into their apartment and the couple later found a listening device under their floorboards. When a neighbor tuned their radio, in hopes of listening to an Austrian radio broadcast, they inadvertently picked up a live feed of Agne\u0161a and Laco talking. \u201cDeep holes had been dug in the concrete and in the hollow lay this Bakelite device about the size of a man\u2019s palm, and four long cables,\u201d Kalinov\u00e1 recalled. Rather than destroy the device, Agne\u0161a and Laco decided to keep it in place so as to avoid alerting the authorities. Thereafter they would speak with caution in their own home. And yet, that was not enough.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In February 1972, Laco and Agne\u0161a were arrested anyway. As international journalism organizations took up their cause, Kalinov\u00e1 was released in time for Easter, but Laco was left to linger in prison for a full year \u2014 damaging his health and, perhaps, contributing to his premature death a few years later. Laco\u2019s biggest transgression seems to have been publishing a book, \u201cOne Thousand and One Jokes.\u201d Never known for their sense of humor, the average apparatchik no doubt took offense to jokes like:<\/span><\/p>\n

One man runs into a friend of his and says, \u2018I have known you for 10 years and I have <\/span> been wondering about the same mystery for the full 10 years.\u2019<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018What\u2019s the mystery?\u2019 The second man asks.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Who wears your shirts when they’re clean?\u2019<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Still reluctant to leave their home country, the family muddled along for several more years. But when Julka was blocked from attending university, they<\/span> decided it was finally time to go. \u201cSo one day I just said: I want to get the hell out of this place, I can\u2019t stand it here any longer,\u201d Agne\u0161a recalled. \u201cI find it oppressive, all these slogans and propaganda everywhere, it\u2019s everywhere on the radio and television, I just can\u2019t take it anymore physically. It\u2019s beneath my dignity to stay here and be treated like this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The family made their way to Munich. <\/span>Agne\u0161a<\/span> got a job working at Radio Free Europe. Laco signed a contract with a German publisher, for a second, more politically charged, edition of his joke book.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He began writing comedy sketches for Bavarian radio, but soon fell ill. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until much later that we learned that loss of taste was a typical symptom of liver disease,\u201d Agne\u0161a recalled. \u201cBut his problem was even worse.\u201d Laco had a tumor in his large intestine, and in 1981, he died.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Julka studied in Germany while Agne\u0161a\u2019s role at Radio Free Europe grew \u2014 her \u201cdistinctive voice, instantly recognizable\u201d as interviewer Jur\u00e1\u0148ov\u00e1 puts it. The last of Agne\u0161a\u2019s seven lives began in 1990 and ran to 2014, when she died just shy of 90 years old. Following the Velvet Revolution \u201cevery meeting\u201d felt like\u00a0 \u201ca joyful reunion,\u201d Agne\u0161a said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly 100 years after her birth, Agne\u0161a Kalinov\u00e1\u2019s story serves as a bridge to an entirely transformed Central Europe. Born in the First Republic, Agne\u0161a met current Slovak MEP Michal \u0160ime\u010dka, when he was just a toddler. Her memories bring color to what might otherwise appear black and white images. As detailed as any primary documents, personal as any memoir, this book is far more than the sum of its parts. In a conversation guided by Jur\u00e1\u0148ov\u00e1, and translated for English speakers by the Sherwoods, Agne\u0161a\u2019s personal account of events helps tell the story of twentieth century Central Europe. Stalin makes a cameo, but does not get any more attention than he deserves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After the Velvet Revolution, Agne\u0161a made her first trip back to Bratislava in January 1990. Traveling from Munich via Vienna by car, she drove the final stretch on her own. After dropping a colleague off in the Austrian capital, she was left alone with her thoughts. \u201cI was so worked up I couldn\u2019t contain myself in the car,\u201d Agne\u0161a recalled. \u201cI was glad that I haven\u2019t driven alone because having a passenger forced me to pretend that I was cool about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Still tense, Agne\u0161a arrived to her hotel, presented her passport to check-in, and the receptionist said: \u201cWelcome, Mrs. Kalinov\u00e1, how is Julka?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

My Seven Lives: Jana Jur\u00e1\u0148ov\u00e1 in Conversation with Agne\u0161a Kalinov\u00e1<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Julia Sherwood and Peter Sherwood<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Purdue University Press<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

406 pp<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly 100 years after her birth, Agne\u0161a Kalinov\u00e1\u2019s story serves as a bridge to an entirely transformed Central Europe. The book is divided into seven sections, each corresponding with the journalist\u2019s so-called \u2018lives\u2019 and her memories bring color to what might otherwise appear as black and white images. In a conversation guided by Jur\u00e1\u0148ov\u00e1, and translated for English speakers by the Sherwoods, Agne\u0161a\u2019s personal account of events helps tell the story of twentieth century Central Europe \u2013 states Benjamin Cunningham in a review of My Seven Lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":8520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[142,110,146,147],"class_list":["post-9808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nezarazene","tag-book-review","tag-central-europe","tag-communism","tag-czechoslovakia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10775,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808\/revisions\/10775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}