Jacques Rupnik: The Other 1968 - Three Readings of Prague Spring

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Introduced by Tim Borstelmann, E.N. and Katherine Thompson Professor of History, Jacques Rupnik presents "The Other 1968 - Three Readings of Prague Spring" for Prague Spring 50. Saturday, April 7, 2018 - 5:00 - 6:15 pm https://praguespring50.unl.edu

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[99:59:59.999]Born in Prague
[99:59:59.999]in 1950 professor Jacques Rupnik was trained in history and political science at the University of Paris and at Harvard
[99:59:59.999]University he holds an MA from Harvard and a PhD from the Sorbonne
[99:59:59.999]He is a former research associate at Harvard's Russian research center and Eastern Europe analyst for the BBC World Service
[99:59:59.999]Professor Rupnik based in Paris since 1982 when he joined the CER eye the Sandford the research
[99:59:59.999]Internacional at cos po one of the world's leading universities, of course, he served as an adviser to the president of what was then Czechoslovakia?
[99:59:59.999]Vaclav Havel he has also served as the director of the
[99:59:59.999]International Commission for the Balkans of the Carnegie Endowment for international peace and he was a member of the independent
[99:59:59.999]international commission on Kosovo and Coe drafter of their Kosovo report in
[99:59:59.999]2000 in the past decade professor root Nik has held visiting professorships at Harvard as well as at several European universities and
[99:59:59.999]he has published numerous books and scholarly articles on such topics as the history of the
[99:59:59.999]Czech Communist Party the
[99:59:59.999]Balkans
[99:59:59.999]totalitarianism
[99:59:59.999]1989 as a world political event
[99:59:59.999]Czech and Slovak roads to the European Union and the geopolitics of democratization
[99:59:59.999]His 1989 book entitled
[99:59:59.999]The other Europe was translated into a dozen languages as a companion volume to a major documentary
[99:59:59.999]film for British television on post-war Eastern Europe
[99:59:59.999]Professor Rupnik
[99:59:59.999]the topic of the other
[99:59:59.999]1968 three readings of Prague Spring
[99:59:59.999]Friends, I give you professor Jacques Rupnik
[99:59:59.999]Thank you, thank you very much for this kind introduction
[99:59:59.999]and for reminding everybody that I
[99:59:59.999]wrote a book about the history
[99:59:59.999]of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
[99:59:59.999]This is my Book of Laughter and Forgetting,
[99:59:59.999]and anyways, thanks for inviting me here.
[99:59:59.999]This has been a wonderful event,
[99:59:59.999]and given that this has been a long week
[99:59:59.999]we just spoke with James and perhaps we'll try
[99:59:59.999]instead of giving the lecture as I initially intended to,
[99:59:59.999]I will give a sort of an abridged main points of it
[99:59:59.999]and then we can continue in the form of a conversation.
[99:59:59.999]I think this is more appropriate for after a week of,
[99:59:59.999]of lectures and discussions here.
[99:59:59.999]Anniversaries and commemorations as we know
[99:59:59.999]usually tell us more about those who commemorate
[99:59:59.999]than about the events that are being commemorated.
[99:59:59.999]What is interesting to me this year
[99:59:59.999]is that there is a huge amount of
[99:59:59.999]discussions, events, films
[99:59:59.999]about '68 in the west,
[99:59:59.999]and rather little relatively speaking about
[99:59:59.999]in the Czech Republic itself, about the Prague Spring.
[99:59:59.999]Admittedly it's not easy to commemorate
[99:59:59.999]a project that crashed disastrously
[99:59:59.999]and you therefore commemorate the invasion,
[99:59:59.999]I think it was referred to yesterday.
[99:59:59.999]But the '68 events, if they are commemorated
[99:59:59.999]and they are, are part of a more general
[99:59:59.999]this year commemoration of the momentous eights
[99:59:59.999]in Czechloslovak history, and the minister of culture
[99:59:59.999]in the Czech Republic I think recorded some 143 events
[99:59:59.999]where this is going to be commemorated.
[99:59:59.999]I can't think of a single historian
[99:59:59.999]that you would meet in Prague who hasn't just been
[99:59:59.999]or is not about to take part in one of those,
[99:59:59.999]and even a taxi driver who was taking me
[99:59:59.999]after New Year's to the airport was saying you know,
[99:59:59.999]fasten your seatbelt.
[99:59:59.999]This is a year with an eight.
[99:59:59.999]So the year with an eight, that means that yeah,
[99:59:59.999]there are some risks entailed.
[99:59:59.999]and I think it was in this context of the eights
[99:59:59.999]that perhaps we can approach this.
[99:59:59.999]It refers to of course if you put it in that context,
[99:59:59.999]to certain anxieties that are today expressed about the past
[99:59:59.999]and the number eight lends itself rather well to that
[99:59:59.999]because yeah, we know the figure eight,
[99:59:59.999]but if you put it this way it's a sign of infinite.
[99:59:59.999]And the...
[99:59:59.999]If you put it horizontally, it also can refer to
[99:59:59.999]what is known as the Mobius strip
[99:59:59.999]which is a surface with only one side and one edge.
[99:59:59.999]It can be made using a strip of paper,
[99:59:59.999]gluing the two ends with a half twist.
[99:59:59.999]So the twisting is possible in two directions,
[99:59:59.999]and there are therefore two different
[99:59:59.999]mirror image Mobius strips.
[99:59:59.999]A bug crawling on the,
[99:59:59.999]on the Mobius strip would therefore go twice
[99:59:59.999]on the same place before returning to the starting point,
[99:59:59.999]and this is what the Jacques Lacan,
[99:59:59.999]the psychoanalyst has written about
[99:59:59.999]and he considers this double loop
[99:59:59.999]as the revelation of the anxiety of repetition.
[99:59:59.999]Well I don't want to go into any further
[99:59:59.999]into this explanation, but of course when you talk about
[99:59:59.999]'68 and the defeat, and the capitulation of Dubcek
[99:59:59.999]et cetera et cetera, inevitably you are always put
[99:59:59.999]into the context of '38, '48, the previous dramas.
[99:59:59.999]This is the context in which this has been read.
[99:59:59.999]I will...
[99:59:59.999]Not deal with the other eights.
[99:59:59.999]I will focus of course on the one that we are
[99:59:59.999]concerned here today, but I see it's important to remind
[99:59:59.999]that this is in this context that it is
[99:59:59.999]considered in the Czech Republic today.
[99:59:59.999]Just to refer to the way it was understood at the time,
[99:59:59.999]a couple of months after the August invasion,
[99:59:59.999]two English professors of international relations,
[99:59:59.999]Adam Roberts and Philip Windsor wrote
[99:59:59.999]the following opening sentence
[99:59:59.999]to their study of the Czechloslovak spring.
[99:59:59.999]"Czechloslovakia 1968 represented
[99:59:59.999]"an important moment in human history.
[99:59:59.999]"It did not represent an important international crisis."
[99:59:59.999]And this was I think the
[99:59:59.999]reason why an event that was very quickly blown over
[99:59:59.999]by what was considered to be an incident
[99:59:59.999]in the emerging east-west detente
[99:59:59.999]and the real tragedy and trauma this has represented,
[99:59:59.999]not just for the Czechs but for those who cared for
[99:59:59.999]certain ideas and for certain
[99:59:59.999]possibilities of change in Europe.
[99:59:59.999]I suggest to you very briefly,
[99:59:59.999]because this is what we agreed with James.
[99:59:59.999]Instead of giving the lecture as I intended,
[99:59:59.999]I will give three main points of it
[99:59:59.999]and then we can continue in the form of the discussion.
[99:59:59.999]I think this format is much more congenial
[99:59:59.999]and certainly much more preferable for me as well.
[99:59:59.999]So therefore I prefer I would briefly look
[99:59:59.999]at the way the Prague Spring debate
[99:59:59.999]has been seen in the Czech context,
[99:59:59.999]or the Czechloslovak context.
[99:59:59.999]How it features in the central and east European context,
[99:59:59.999]and then about the east-west contrast,
[99:59:59.999]misunderstanding, call it whatever you want.
[99:59:59.999]So first.
[99:59:59.999]The Prague Spring is not what you get in the textbook,
[99:59:59.999]starting on fifth of January
[99:59:59.999]with the election of Alexander Dubcek,
[99:59:59.999]ending with the 21st of August and the Soviet invasion.
[99:59:59.999]No, the Prague Spring is a process
[99:59:59.999]where converged number of
[99:59:59.999]crises of the system at the time.
[99:59:59.999]one has to do with the economy,
[99:59:59.999]and this is the Ota Sik reforms.
[99:59:59.999]He is the author then of a book called The Third Way.
[99:59:59.999]The Czechloslovak question and federalism as it is emerging,
[99:59:59.999]and the third one and possibly the most important
[99:59:59.999]is the emancipation of the whole sphere of culture
[99:59:59.999]from the realm of communist ideology at the time,
[99:59:59.999]and that process was of course a gradual one,
[99:59:59.999]but that emancipation of the sphere of culture,
[99:59:59.999]the culture of background to the Prague Spring
[99:59:59.999]is something absolutely crucial
[99:59:59.999]if you want to understand why it matters.
[99:59:59.999]If it was just for these eight months
[99:59:59.999]with the botched attempt to reform a communist regime,
[99:59:59.999]you could simply shrug and said you know,
[99:59:59.999]this is of interest to people
[99:59:59.999]who are interested in communism.
[99:59:59.999]People like myself who have written a book about it,
[99:59:59.999]but no the reason why people are still interested in that
[99:59:59.999]because the sixties were something important,
[99:59:59.999]and you had then of course related to that
[99:59:59.999]interpretations of the Prague Spring that took that on board
[99:59:59.999]as the triumph, if you want,
[99:59:59.999]of the Czech culture over the communist structure.
[99:59:59.999]It gradually in the society
[99:59:59.999]that was a culture that resonated in the society
[99:59:59.999]and that eventually, under special circumstances in 1968,
[99:59:59.999]could come to the fore.
[99:59:59.999]Gordon Skilling, a Canadian political scientist
[99:59:59.999]and historian has written a book
[99:59:59.999]about 1968 called The Interrupted Revolution.
[99:59:59.999]This is the, probably the most,
[99:59:59.999]yeah accomplished book on the subject.
[99:59:59.999]And he defended a thesis which of course is highly debatable
[99:59:59.999]but it relates to the previous one I mentioned,
[99:59:59.999]and it's more or less about the endurance
[99:59:59.999]of Czech democratic political culture,
[99:59:59.999]which goes back to the,
[99:59:59.999]has roots in the late 19th Century.
[99:59:59.999]Of course the founding moment, the inter-war period,
[99:59:59.999]then the brief democratic interlude to 1945, '48
[99:59:59.999]and somehow '68 in his eyes,
[99:59:59.999]or the sixties if you will,
[99:59:59.999]is an attempt to reconnect with that.
[99:59:59.999]So this is a thesis about the importance
[99:59:59.999]of political culture that is there in society
[99:59:59.999]and that eventually is there
[99:59:59.999]within the communist party membership itself.
[99:59:59.999]That was part of Gordon Skilling's thesis.
[99:59:59.999]I met him when he was writing the book.
[99:59:59.999]I was a mere student then,
[99:59:59.999]and we had then discussions about his title,
[99:59:59.999]The Interrupted Revolution.
[99:59:59.999]I was telling him you know what revolution?
[99:59:59.999]But for him, the logic of the kind of reforms
[99:59:59.999]that were being undertaken,
[99:59:59.999]starting with the abolition of censorship and the whole,
[99:59:59.999]meant fundamental change
[99:59:59.999]and this was impossible to sustain in a communist regime
[99:59:59.999]and therefore it had a kind of revolutionary dimension.
[99:59:59.999]I'm not going to dwell on that argument.
[99:59:59.999]That is a long gone debate,
[99:59:59.999]but the thesis about Czech democratic exceptionalism
[99:59:59.999]was clearly related to all the literature
[99:59:59.999]about the Prague Spring.
[99:59:59.999]The other interesting debate about '68
[99:59:59.999]opposed two probably best known Czech writers
[99:59:59.999]internationally, and that's Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera.
[99:59:59.999]And I think it's worth to revisit the debate
[99:59:59.999]simply for...
[99:59:59.999]Because it acquires with the time certain,
[99:59:59.999]different perspectives than when it actually took place.
[99:59:59.999]Kundera wrote a piece saying basically
[99:59:59.999]the Prague Spring is a momentous event
[99:59:59.999]because its significance goes beyond this country,
[99:59:59.999]or even beyond this region.
[99:59:59.999]This attempt at...
[99:59:59.999]This distancing itself or breaking away
[99:59:59.999]from Soviet style communism, and at the same time
[99:59:59.999]taking distance from western capitalist system,
[99:59:59.999]that ideal of combining democracy and socialism
[99:59:59.999]is a unique thing, and although it has been defeated
[99:59:59.999]it remains an important ideal
[99:59:59.999]and he goes on to say you know we are even greater in defeat
[99:59:59.999]than we are during the Spring itself.
[99:59:59.999]Well that is a highly debatable proposition.
[99:59:59.999]Anyway, this is Czech uniqueness again,
[99:59:59.999]you know like in the 15th Century Reformation.
[99:59:59.999]Again, we had to be defeated but that's because we were
[99:59:59.999]ahead of the times, so to speak.
[99:59:59.999]He doesn't put it that way.
[99:59:59.999]That's my
[99:59:59.999]facetious comment on it.
[99:59:59.999]Havel replies to this by saying
[99:59:59.999]yes, the Spring was great
[99:59:59.999]and thanks for that, and it was wonderful,
[99:59:59.999]and the restoration of all the freedoms and civic rights,
[99:59:59.999]et cetera et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]Great, last time we had it was 30 years ago
[99:59:59.999]and most civilized countries in Europe
[99:59:59.999]actually consider this as normal.
[99:59:59.999]So we were simply correcting the abnormality
[99:59:59.999]of our situation, reverting to normal.
[99:59:59.999]And it's the word normal, as opposed
[99:59:59.999]to the normalization that followed of course,
[99:59:59.999]that is of interest perhaps, of lasting interest.
[99:59:59.999]What is it that in '68,
[99:59:59.999]was understood as normal,
[99:59:59.999]and what is it we today maybe understand
[99:59:59.999]as normal part of democracy
[99:59:59.999]or liberal democracy of the time?
[99:59:59.999]This was the Czech debate about '68.
[99:59:59.999]For a long time I think everybody thought,
[99:59:59.999]including myself of course, and I still think that
[99:59:59.999]yeah, Havel had clearly showed that not,
[99:59:59.999]well not only this was not such a
[99:59:59.999]great exceptional Czech invention, but also the defeat.
[99:59:59.999]Kundera says we are great in defeat.
[99:59:59.999]Well, the ideals are maybe great,
[99:59:59.999]but at the same time we are
[99:59:59.999]plunging in this totalitarian tunnel
[99:59:59.999]and God knows when we're going to see
[99:59:59.999]the light at the end of that tunnel.
[99:59:59.999]So no Messianic, no megalomania
[99:59:59.999]which was sort of a part of the,
[99:59:59.999]part of the Kundera argument.
[99:59:59.999]I think if you reread the Kundera piece today,
[99:59:59.999]especially the second reply to Havel,
[99:59:59.999]you see that some of the questions that he asks
[99:59:59.999]about what is normal precisely
[99:59:59.999]is I think relevant for today,
[99:59:59.999]or at least for the developments after '89.
[99:59:59.999]What is it actually you are reverting to
[99:59:59.999]when you get rid of the communist system?
[99:59:59.999]Okay that was the Czech debate,
[99:59:59.999]and it is sometimes worth revisiting.
[99:59:59.999]I said I will be quick, so I must speed up.
[99:59:59.999]The second, I can be really quick on the second part
[99:59:59.999]because that's well trodden path,
[99:59:59.999]and that's about the central
[99:59:59.999]and east European dimension of it.
[99:59:59.999]This is 1968 Prague Spring of the supreme stage
[99:59:59.999]of reformism in eastern Europe.
[99:59:59.999]Okay, nowhere have the reforms of the post communist era
[99:59:59.999]gone as far and nowhere were the limits tested that way,
[99:59:59.999]and of course the crushing of those reforms
[99:59:59.999]meant basically as Leszek Kolakowski put it,
[99:59:59.999]this marked the clinical death of Marxism in eastern Europe
[99:59:59.999]under the tanks, under the Russian tanks in Prague.
[99:59:59.999]So that's, that is one part.
[99:59:59.999]It is the end of the discussion about how to reform,
[99:59:59.999]how to reform the system.
[99:59:59.999]It returns with a vengeance 20 years after
[99:59:59.999]with Mikhail Gorbachev.
[99:59:59.999]Zdenek Mlynar Was referred to in the previous discussion.
[99:59:59.999]The translator of Zdenek Mlynar
[99:59:59.999]is present and we salute him.
[99:59:59.999]It's Paul Wilson, but in case you,
[99:59:59.999]you did translate him no?
[99:59:59.999]If I understood you correctly.
[99:59:59.999]You didn't, Mlynar's book, you did okay.
[99:59:59.999]So Mlynar was a classmate of Gorbachev
[99:59:59.999]at the university.
[99:59:59.999]They were roommates, they were close friends
[99:59:59.999]and the, he was a member of the bureau
[99:59:59.999]of the Czechloslovak communist party in '68.
[99:59:59.999]That connection between
[99:59:59.999]the Prague Spring and Gorbachev mattered
[99:59:59.999]for the kind of ideas Gorbachev was developing
[99:59:59.999]20 years too late and in a botched manner
[99:59:59.999]and Perestroika as we know turned into Catastroika
[99:59:59.999]and absolutely unraveled the system
[99:59:59.999]rather than reforming it.
[99:59:59.999]Thus we're confirming the thesis
[99:59:59.999]about the irreformability of the system.
[99:59:59.999]What is interesting is that Gorbachev himself understands it
[99:59:59.999]or at least in a way understands it
[99:59:59.999]when he talks to Jiri Dienstbier
[99:59:59.999]on the first occasion when Jiri Dienstbier
[99:59:59.999]a '68 journalist who becomes a dissident, stoker,
[99:59:59.999]and suddenly in December '89 minister of foreign affairs,
[99:59:59.999]on the first meeting with Gorbachev
[99:59:59.999]he says something about the crushed hopes of 1968
[99:59:59.999]and Gorbachev replies by saying
[99:59:59.999]well in '68 we haven't just strangled
[99:59:59.999]the Prague Spring in Czechloslovakia.
[99:59:59.999]We have strangled ourselves.
[99:59:59.999]So basically there you have the full story.
[99:59:59.999]The strangling of the Prague Spring prepares the ground
[99:59:59.999]for the unraveling of the Soviet system,
[99:59:59.999]and in that way prepares the ground for 1989.
[99:59:59.999]The third dimension of '68
[99:59:59.999]is not just Czech or east central European communism.
[99:59:59.999]It's about east and west.
[99:59:59.999]In a way the previous conversation already led us into this.
[99:59:59.999]You have, and lots of writings about '68 cover that,
[99:59:59.999]present the '68, the international dimension of '68
[99:59:59.999]focusing on the simultaneity of those revolts of course.
[99:59:59.999]And there is the simultaneity.
[99:59:59.999]There is the idea of the challenge to the establishments
[99:59:59.999]in different circumstances of course.
[99:59:59.999]In fundamentally different circumstances.
[99:59:59.999]In different parts of the world.
[99:59:59.999]In east and west Europe in particular,
[99:59:59.999]and the challenge to the Cold War division of Europe
[99:59:59.999]because if you challenge the systems in both sides
[99:59:59.999]of Europe, you are of course challenging the status quo
[99:59:59.999]that was established.
[99:59:59.999]The second focus was about the generational aspect.
[99:59:59.999]That is obviously yeah the focus about the youth revolts
[99:59:59.999]and this huge, so generational literature.
[99:59:59.999]This is the revolt, this is a clash of generations
[99:59:59.999]et cetera et cetera, and yeah.
[99:59:59.999]Superficially you can identify
[99:59:59.999]the same dress code, the same hair,
[99:59:59.999]the same music they listen to
[99:59:59.999]and the same challenge to the establishment
[99:59:59.999]that they post politically.
[99:59:59.999]I noticed that there is the new word
[99:59:59.999]that the experts from the Oxford Dictionary
[99:59:59.999]have chosen as the word of the year,
[99:59:59.999]and that's youthquake,
[99:59:59.999]and they did that last year.
[99:59:59.999]And they define it as "significant cultural, political,
[99:59:59.999]"and social change arising from actions
[99:59:59.999]"or influence of young people."
[99:59:59.999]Okay, so this is youthquake.
[99:59:59.999]That's one reading of '68, sort of transversely
[99:59:59.999]east and west and of course you can add to it
[99:59:59.999]that all these movements were united
[99:59:59.999]in their respective defeats.
[99:59:59.999]They all in one way or another,
[99:59:59.999]have not succeeded at least on their initial agenda.
[99:59:59.999]But of course more interesting is that
[99:59:59.999]the simultaneity is not similitude,
[99:59:59.999]and that not only you have very different itineraries
[99:59:59.999]of '68ers after '68.
[99:59:59.999]Of course being the '68er in Prague,
[99:59:59.999]in the years that Paul Wilson has described
[99:59:59.999]meant something else.
[99:59:59.999]You know, massive purges and the marginalization
[99:59:59.999]precisely of that independent sphere of culture
[99:59:59.999]that I had referred to before.
[99:59:59.999]And the '68ers in the west,
[99:59:59.999]to whom I will return in a moment.
[99:59:59.999]If I had to spell out in a telegraphic style
[99:59:59.999]the main differences, I would say
[99:59:59.999]in Prague the theme was return to Europe.
[99:59:59.999]You know, the slogan of '89 it was already there.
[99:59:59.999]In a survey published in
[99:59:59.999]they asked people a simple question
[99:59:59.999]from where to where with whom?
[99:59:59.999]And Ivan Svitak, the philosopher,
[99:59:59.999]the (speaks foreign language) of '68
[99:59:59.999]gave the shortest answer.
[99:59:59.999]From Asia to Europe, alone.
[99:59:59.999]That was his version of what '68 was about.
[99:59:59.999]Return to Europe.
[99:59:59.999]Meanwhile in the west,
[99:59:59.999]Europe was not exactly the subject.
[99:59:59.999]Europe was either considered as a common market,
[99:59:59.999]this capitalist market that was being established,
[99:59:59.999]or it was associated with
[99:59:59.999]post-colonial guilt, and you had
[99:59:59.999]the decolonization had just begun
[99:59:59.999]and therefore the focus was more on the third world.
[99:59:59.999]So the war in Vietnam.
[99:59:59.999]If I had, again in a nutshell you could say Ho, Che, Mao.
[99:59:59.999]You know this is a shortcut, but they were
[99:59:59.999]looking elsewhere, outside of Europe for inspiration.
[99:59:59.999]The second difference is that
[99:59:59.999]radical '68ers in the west
[99:59:59.999]would have little time for so-called
[99:59:59.999]bourgeois freedoms or even election affairs.
[99:59:59.999]What else, you know if you were emerging
[99:59:59.999]after 20 years of Stalinism,
[99:59:59.999]a restoration of bourgeois freedoms
[99:59:59.999]was not such a terrible thing,
[99:59:59.999]and the same thing goes of course about
[99:59:59.999]the consumer society, which was a prime target
[99:59:59.999]of the '68ers in the west,
[99:59:59.999]and if you're emerging from 20 years of socialist scarcity,
[99:59:59.999]you know consumption is not such a thing to be scorned of.
[99:59:59.999]So you have
[99:59:59.999]major differences among them,
[99:59:59.999]and I think that...
[99:59:59.999]I think Milan Kundera put it in a nutshell
[99:59:59.999]in a text he wrote 10 years after in Paris.
[99:59:59.999]And I can quote from that because I think it deserves it,
[99:59:59.999]and it's also a nice followup
[99:59:59.999]to his debate with Havel in '68.
[99:59:59.999]So he describes the contrast as follows.
[99:59:59.999]"Paris May '68 was an explosion of revolutionary lyricism.
[99:59:59.999]"Prague Spring was the explosion
[99:59:59.999]"of post-revolutionary skepticism.
[99:59:59.999]"May '68 was the radical uprising
[99:59:59.999]"whereas what had for many years been leading
[99:59:59.999]towards the explosion of the Prague Spring
[99:59:59.999]"was a popular revolt by moderates."
[99:59:59.999]I love this definition.
[99:59:59.999]The popular revolt by moderates.
[99:59:59.999]And then one more, if we have the time.
[99:59:59.999]One more quote from this.
[99:59:59.999]"Paris '68 challenged the basis of what is called
[99:59:59.999]"European culture and its traditional values.
[99:59:59.999]"Prague Spring was a passionate defense
[99:59:59.999]"of European cultural tradition in the widest
[99:59:59.999]"and most tolerant sense of the term.
[99:59:59.999]“A defense of Christianity as much as modern art."
[99:59:59.999]Et cetera et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]"We all struggled for the contribution of all of the above."
[99:59:59.999]Et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]So, he makes I think a very
[99:59:59.999]good contrast, which
[99:59:59.999]is important to bear in mind
[99:59:59.999]because the misunderstandings of '68 have I think
[99:59:59.999]marked people on, and sometimes
[99:59:59.999]the current misunderstandings.
[99:59:59.999]I'm not saying they can be traced to that,
[99:59:59.999]and that would be, but there is the sense
[99:59:59.999]that you have not understood what we went through,
[99:59:59.999]or we have not understood what you were bragging on about
[99:59:59.999]and those misunderstandings from way back
[99:59:59.999]have followup I think in the context
[99:59:59.999]in today's European politics.
[99:59:59.999]It is worth however, this is a contrast.
[99:59:59.999]You may want also to remember the exchange
[99:59:59.999]and the dialogue that went through.
[99:59:59.999]They were a number of it.
[99:59:59.999]There was a Christian Marxist dialogue.
[99:59:59.999]Prague was a major center of that,
[99:59:59.999]and you had, you had of course the important
[99:59:59.999]intellectuals or philosophers from Prague.
[99:59:59.999]Probably the most influential books published at the time
[99:59:59.999]where Karel Kosik's Dialectic of the Concrete,
[99:59:59.999]Kosik influenced by Ian Petuchka
[99:59:59.999]who was trying to humanize Marxism,
[99:59:59.999]was trying to reformulate Marxism
[99:59:59.999]and had a very rather civilizational pessimism
[99:59:59.999]about modern world and modern technology,
[99:59:59.999]and in contrast you had the other author
[99:59:59.999]that was most published at the time in the west,
[99:59:59.999]most translated.
[99:59:59.999]I'm talking about the author that was most
[99:59:59.999]translated in the west at the time, Radovan Richta's
[99:59:59.999]Civilization at the Crossroad,
[99:59:59.999]who on the contrary had this sort of optimism
[99:59:59.999]about the so-called scientific and technical revolution.
[99:59:59.999]Incidentally, Kosik's humanization
[99:59:59.999]through phenomenology of trying to combine
[99:59:59.999]Marxism and phenomenology was not compatible
[99:59:59.999]with the normalization that followed,
[99:59:59.999]but Radovan Richta scientific and technological revolution
[99:59:59.999]certainly was, but the...
[99:59:59.999]I think what is interesting is
[99:59:59.999]despite the differences I have stressed,
[99:59:59.999]is to see that convergence has taken place
[99:59:59.999]in the following decade.
[99:59:59.999]If you take what, if you look at what happened
[99:59:59.999]to the radical '68ers in the west,
[99:59:59.999]most of the important intellectuals
[99:59:59.999]or the people that I happen to have seen over the years
[99:59:59.999]because I was sort of a middle man with the countries
[99:59:59.999]of central Europe and particularly with Prague,
[99:59:59.999]you see gradually how they let's say the radical left
[99:59:59.999]became abandoned Marxism and became anti-totalitarian left
[99:59:59.999]and then later anti-totalitarian liberals, more or less.
[99:59:59.999]This was the trajectory, and yeah.
[99:59:59.999]And this was true not just in Paris,
[99:59:59.999]but this was true in Berlin,
[99:59:59.999]in other places like that and that created the conditions
[99:59:59.999]for a convergence for the meeting of,
[99:59:59.999]at least for a dialogue with dissent in central Europe
[99:59:59.999]and particularly under the impact
[99:59:59.999]of Charter 77 and Vaclav Havel.
[99:59:59.999]It was Havel's essays were mentioned.
[99:59:59.999]Paul has translated them into English.
[99:59:59.999]I translated one into French.
[99:59:59.999]The open letter to Husak.
[99:59:59.999]That was in the summer of '75
[99:59:59.999]that I translated that, and I remember
[99:59:59.999]the impact it had then.
[99:59:59.999]There were a number of circumstances.
[99:59:59.999]There was Solzhenitsyn in 1974 and then there was Havel,
[99:59:59.999]there were a few other things
[99:59:59.999]and basically if you take 10 years after '68,
[99:59:59.999]the '68ers that were ignorant about Prague in 1968 were
[99:59:59.999]basically on the same wavelength,
[99:59:59.999]receptive to the message of dissidence
[99:59:59.999]in Paris, but also in London, in Berlin,
[99:59:59.999]in Rome, et cetera et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]So that convergence I think
[99:59:59.999]is the important legacy,
[99:59:59.999]and in a way it help explain
[99:59:59.999]why the writings of dissent in central Europe
[99:59:59.999]could have such an impact.
[99:59:59.999]They were the receptors, they were the disseminators
[99:59:59.999]of those ideas, and I'm not sure
[99:59:59.999]how much it worked the other way.
[99:59:59.999]That is much more difficult to assess, but yeah.
[99:59:59.999]The impact of dissent, charter 77 in particular
[99:59:59.999]and of Havel's writing was absolutely considerable.
[99:59:59.999]So the fact that in the east,
[99:59:59.999]this is the main contrast that will remain.
[99:59:59.999]In the east, the legacy of '68 was defeated,
[99:59:59.999]and those who were associated with it
[99:59:59.999]driven to the sidelines, marginalized,
[99:59:59.999]driven underground as was mentioned.
[99:59:59.999]In the west I would say, it was the opposite.
[99:59:59.999]The '68ers flourished, were successful.
[99:59:59.999]They abandoned the idea of revolution,
[99:59:59.999]but they converted their...
[99:59:59.999]Initiatives, incentives, visions, ideas
[99:59:59.999]into a variety of social movements
[99:59:59.999]and basically from, from the environmental issue.
[99:59:59.999]The greens were born from '68.
[99:59:59.999]The feminist movement, the gay liberation movement,
[99:59:59.999]the whole ideas about multiculturalism.
[99:59:59.999]A long list of left liberal issues if you want
[99:59:59.999]had associated with liberalism
[99:59:59.999]are, were brought about by the '68,
[99:59:59.999]by the '68 generation.
[99:59:59.999]How do you account for that?
[99:59:59.999]Why did they...
[99:59:59.999]It is my reading of '68,
[99:59:59.999]it was coached in the Marxist language.
[99:59:59.999]At least I'm talking about
[99:59:59.999]those who were the active militants.
[99:59:59.999]I'm not talking about the rank and file students
[99:59:59.999]who were marching in the demos.
[99:59:59.999]It was coached in the language of Marxism and of revolution
[99:59:59.999]because revolutions tend to think of themselves
[99:59:59.999]or speak of themselves in terms of the previous revolution.
[99:59:59.999]So they were using the language
[99:59:59.999]if you want of 1917 the same way 1917
[99:59:59.999]when it was referring to Paris commune in 1871,
[99:59:59.999]and the Paris commune was using the language
[99:59:59.999]of the French revolution.
[99:59:59.999]So you have always revolution that is
[99:59:59.999]using the language of the past, but in fact it was not,
[99:59:59.999]it was a revolution of the future
[99:59:59.999]because all the movements I have referred to,
[99:59:59.999]this is the big transformation that took place
[99:59:59.999]after '68 and that the '68ers brought about,
[99:59:59.999]and this is incidentally why they are
[99:59:59.999]so pleased with themselves, because unlike in Prague,
[99:59:59.999]where they were expelled
[99:59:59.999]from everywhere they are everywhere.
[99:59:59.999]In the media, in all the advertising, et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]They've done fine, thank you very much
[99:59:59.999]and so this is perhaps also an explanation I started
[99:59:59.999]by saying that why there is this celebration
[99:59:59.999]the 50th anniversary in the west is more intense
[99:59:59.999]than in the east, because it's probably the last chance
[99:59:59.999]for that generation to, for a bit of self celebration
[99:59:59.999]can never harm.
[99:59:59.999]So this is the
[99:59:59.999]east-west contrast, and the convergence
[99:59:59.999]basically between dissent,
[99:59:59.999]dissidence in Prague if you want,
[99:59:59.999]or dissidence in central Europe
[99:59:59.999]and the post '68 generation in the west
[99:59:59.999]converging to human rights, civil society,
[99:59:59.999]environment, and number of themes
[99:59:59.999]that are converging and the...
[99:59:59.999]When I said that each revolution thinks of itself
[99:59:59.999]in terms of the previous one,
[99:59:59.999]if you look at the symbol of the movement in Paris,
[99:59:59.999]Danny Cohn-Bendit.
[99:59:59.999]He was no communist, he was an anti-communist.
[99:59:59.999]In fact, '68 from that point of view in Paris,
[99:59:59.999]although they were using this revolutionary language,
[99:59:59.999]was an anti-communist thing
[99:59:59.999]because it was against the communist party.
[99:59:59.999]The communist party was against the movement of '68,
[99:59:59.999]against the student, and they were leading a campaign.
[99:59:59.999]We will not let the country be messed up
[99:59:59.999]by a German-Jew Cohn-Bendit,
[99:59:59.999]and suddenly the demonstrators.
[99:59:59.999]Yesterday it was referred the intelligence of the crowd,
[99:59:59.999]the demonstrators would be shouting
[99:59:59.999]we are all German Jews et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]This was a response to the communists,
[99:59:59.999]and it was Cohn-Bendit who attacked
[99:59:59.999]when Aragon the communist poet came for a discussion,
[99:59:59.999]he starts saying that he's a Stalinist creep et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]There was a very strong anti-communist moment
[99:59:59.999]formulated in leftist radical language
[99:59:59.999]which then of course once the wind blew over
[99:59:59.999]became anti-totalitarian liberal,
[99:59:59.999]liberal libertarian.
[99:59:59.999]That is what Cohn-Bendit would stand for,
[99:59:59.999]and the people who don't like them would add bo-bos.
[99:59:59.999]Bourgeois boheme, bohemian bourgeois.
[99:59:59.999]So you have lib-lib, liberal libertarians
[99:59:59.999]and we established bohemian bourgeois.
[99:59:59.999]This is the fate of the '68 generation,
[99:59:59.999]and I'm being a bit unfair perhaps
[99:59:59.999]with many of them, because the
[99:59:59.999]engagement with dissent and with particularly
[99:59:59.999]with the Czech situation with Havel was genuine,
[99:59:59.999]and a lot of very interesting exchanges took place then.
[99:59:59.999]Incidentally I would say,
[99:59:59.999]and I will maybe come to a conclusion after that
[99:59:59.999]so we can follow in the form of a conversation,
[99:59:59.999]what strikes me is the contrast
[99:59:59.999]between the intensity of the dialogue,
[99:59:59.999]of the exchanges that took place in the 1970s
[99:59:59.999]and I'd say from the second half of the seventies
[99:59:59.999]to the end of the 1980s,
[99:59:59.999]between east and west Europe.
[99:59:59.999]Not just with the post '68 generation of course.
[99:59:59.999]The audience was much broader,
[99:59:59.999]but the intensity of the dialogue
[99:59:59.999]when Havel had a text published
[99:59:59.999]in any western capital, this was important news
[99:59:59.999]and somehow that dialogue vanished or yeah,
[99:59:59.999]after 1990.
[99:59:59.999]That has perhaps something to do with what happened
[99:59:59.999]to the role of intellectuals and the place of culture
[99:59:59.999]in our societies east and west.
[99:59:59.999]Intellectuals mattered.
[99:59:59.999]Dissident intellectuals prosecuted mattered
[99:59:59.999]in those societies, and the world mattered outside as well
[99:59:59.999]and the post '89 period is the era of the eclipse
[99:59:59.999]or the demise of the public intellectuals
[99:59:59.999]and also it is related to the changing role of culture
[99:59:59.999]in our culture and communication in our society.
[99:59:59.999]To conclude I wanted to be very short
[99:59:59.999]and unless I'm not keeping my word.
[99:59:59.999]Just to conclude on 1989,
[99:59:59.999]1989 is clearly an anti 1948.
[99:59:59.999]Okay, dismantle the communist regime.
[99:59:59.999]It is of course an anti '38 because '38
[99:59:59.999]the western democracies betray Czechloslovakia
[99:59:59.999]whereas in 1989
[99:59:59.999]they welcome...
[99:59:59.999]But 1989 is also in a way an anti '68.
[99:59:59.999]You know many people in the west were reading 1989
[99:59:59.999]as a kind of continuation, you know.
[99:59:59.999]I said about Gordon Skilling's thesis,
[99:59:59.999]you know Czech democratic tradition.
[99:59:59.999]It is there, it continues in adverse circumstances
[99:59:59.999]and therefore you have a, no.
[99:59:59.999]1988 from that point of view was a break.
[99:59:59.999]It was no longer about democratizing socialism,
[99:59:59.999]but it was about democracy.
[99:59:59.999]It was not about reforming the socialist economy,
[99:59:59.999]but it was making a clean break.
[99:59:59.999]No third way.
[99:59:59.999]The slogan was third way leads you to the third world.
[99:59:59.999]That was the cliche that Vaclav Klaus used and others,
[99:59:59.999]and yeah that was the clear departure from '68.
[99:59:59.999]You understand why this is happened
[99:59:59.999]and why it was Havel who embodied 1989
[99:59:59.999]and not Dubcek.
[99:59:59.999]That is fairly clear.
[99:59:59.999]It has however some implications or consequences about
[99:59:59.999]what happened after, and about the world of today
[99:59:59.999]and I cannot develop it now.
[99:59:59.999]I will simply mention two things.
[99:59:59.999]One of them is what has been for better or worse
[99:59:59.999]associated with '68 was a part of
[99:59:59.999]utopia and political thinking.
[99:59:59.999]You have a future visions.
[99:59:59.999]Maybe utopian, maybe misguided, et cetera
[99:59:59.999]and some of them badly defeated
[99:59:59.999]like the, like the Czechloslovakia Spring,
[99:59:59.999]but you had that dimension.
[99:59:59.999]That has vanished in the post '89 world.
[99:59:59.999]We live in the tyranny of the present,
[99:59:59.999]and that has to do with that.
[99:59:59.999]The end of that
[99:59:59.999]utopian, and the only utopias that are left today
[99:59:59.999]are the utopias, technologically driven utopias.
[99:59:59.999]You know people who promise that was,
[99:59:59.999]based in this country in California, you know.
[99:59:59.999]Enhanced humanity and yeah.
[99:59:59.999]So these are technologically driven utopias,
[99:59:59.999]but they are utopias of individual sort of
[99:59:59.999]salvation rather than collective projects,
[99:59:59.999]so end of utopia is one dimension.
[99:59:59.999]The second is
[99:59:59.999]1989 didn't want to imitate.
[99:59:59.999]You don't want to reinvent the wheel.
[99:59:59.999]You don't want to start new experiment.
[99:59:59.999]No experiment was one of the slogans.
[99:59:59.999]Okay no experiment, but therefore
[99:59:59.999]you are in the imitation mode.
[99:59:59.999]And the...
[99:59:59.999]If you are imitating,
[99:59:59.999]you should bear in mind at least you should think about
[99:59:59.999]what is it you are imitating?
[99:59:59.999]And if you're imitating a model that is itself in crisis,
[99:59:59.999]you may eventually discover that you have a problem
[99:59:59.999]and I will
[99:59:59.999]therefore return to Havel on this mode,
[99:59:59.999]what has been therefore not just dismissed
[99:59:59.999]the utopian element of '68 for better or worse,
[99:59:59.999]but it was also the legacies of dissent
[99:59:59.999]have been forgotten after 1989 including the thinking
[99:59:59.999]about the nature of the system
[99:59:59.999]east and west.
[99:59:59.999]What is it that we were going to imitate?
[99:59:59.999]Vaclav Havel in 1984 in a text called
[99:59:59.999]Politics and Conscience says the following
[99:59:59.999]and I will end with that.
[99:59:59.999]"The totalitarian systems warn of something
[99:59:59.999]"far more serious than western rationalism
[99:59:59.999]“is willing to admit.
[99:59:59.999]"They are most of all a convex mirror
[99:59:59.999]"of the inevitable consequences of rationalism,
[99:59:59.999]"a grotesquely magnified image of its own deep tendencies.
[99:59:59.999]"An extreme offshoot of its own development
[99:59:59.999]"and anonymous product of its own expansion.
[99:59:59.999]"They are deeply informative reflections of its own crisis.
[99:59:59.999]"Totalitarian regimes are not merely dangerous neighbors.
[99:59:59.999]"Even less some kind of avant garde of world progress.
[99:59:59.999]"Alas just the opposite.
[99:59:59.999]"They are the avant garde of a global crisis
[99:59:59.999]"of this civilization, first European
[99:59:59.999]"then Euro-American, ultimately global."
[99:59:59.999]So the word globalization is not yet around,
[99:59:59.999]but the thinking, Havel is thinking in those terms
[99:59:59.999]and that means if this is the way he is thinking about
[99:59:59.999]the communist system and about European modernity as a whole
[99:59:59.999]if the communist system was a distorted mirror
[99:59:59.999]of the crisis of our civilization,
[99:59:59.999]well then the fact that the communist is disappeared
[99:59:59.999]doesn't solve your problem.
[99:59:59.999]You're still left with the problem
[99:59:59.999]and the disturbing questions associated with it.
[99:59:59.999]And if you are addressing those questions,
[99:59:59.999]well you might on your way return to
[99:59:59.999]on the double loop to 1968,
[99:59:59.999]and the forgotten legacies of the dissident movements.
[99:59:59.999]Thank you for your attention.
[99:59:59.999](applause)
[99:59:59.999]By the translation of Havel
[99:59:59.999]and the reception of Havel in France
[99:59:59.999]because as you know, France is one of those places
[99:59:59.999]where intellectuals dominate and there's a tendency
[99:59:59.999]to think seriously about what intellectuals write.
[99:59:59.999]So how did Havel compare to other intellectuals
[99:59:59.999]who affected French debates in the past?
[99:59:59.999]For example during decolonization.
[99:59:59.999]Could you compare Havel to find out
[99:59:59.999]the effect on the intellectual class groups?
[99:59:59.999]Well it's a completely different period you know
[99:59:59.999]when Fanot published he'd only done
[99:59:59.999](speaks foreign language) et cetera
[99:59:59.999]with a preface by Sartre, et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]We are in a period where yes,
[99:59:59.999]there is decolonization and there are Marxism
[99:59:59.999]is still widespread in the intellectual circles
[99:59:59.999]and there is a great confrontation with the regime.
[99:59:59.999]When Havel's texts start arriving,
[99:59:59.999]and incidentally he was less known
[99:59:59.999]than some of the other prominent intellectuals.
[99:59:59.999]Around '68 he became known with his essays essentially
[99:59:59.999]and then with Charter 77.
[99:59:59.999]And that was already a different time,
[99:59:59.999]because as I said the,
[99:59:59.999]that sixties generation which was influenced
[99:59:59.999]by a radical left, seeking a new left kind of ideas,
[99:59:59.999]they had moved into a different mode.
[99:59:59.999]They were questioning the systems of power east and west
[99:59:59.999]and they were reading Havel in their own way.
[99:59:59.999]I'm not always saying that they understood Havel.
[99:59:59.999]That is a debate, but Havel clearly had interlocutors.
[99:59:59.999]Andre Glucksmann was one of the first who called me up,
[99:59:59.999]1975 it was, and I was editing for one week
[99:59:59.999]in the Weekly Liberacion.
[99:59:59.999]They gave me one week about Czechloslovakia,
[99:59:59.999]and two pages, so I was using the text that we are having
[99:59:59.999]and I asked Glucksmann who had then just published a book
[99:59:59.999]which was a devastating critique of totalitarianism
[99:59:59.999]and I said do you want to write something for this issue?
[99:59:59.999]And he did, and we established this contact
[99:59:59.999]and he was a big reader and influential
[99:59:59.999]disseminator of Havel's thinking,
[99:59:59.999]and there were many others.
[99:59:59.999]The theater people, not just in France but everywhere,
[99:59:59.999]but in France in particular
[99:59:59.999]at the Avignon Festival every year
[99:59:59.999]you know there was a Havel event.
[99:59:59.999]So the impact was absolutely enormous,
[99:59:59.999]and you could say that
[99:59:59.999]those of us who were engaged in this exchange
[99:59:59.999]between Prague and western Europe,
[99:59:59.999]a small network has developed.
[99:59:59.999]We knew each other, we saw each other,
[99:59:59.999]we would exchange texts and that was a complicated,
[99:59:59.999]you know the reception was enormous
[99:59:59.999]and this is why I contrast it with what happened after,
[99:59:59.999]because I felt that this dialogue has fizzled away
[99:59:59.999]and that's a great shame,
[99:59:59.999]especially when we see that Europe
[99:59:59.999]would need such a dialogue today.
[99:59:59.999]So Liberacion devoted a week to Prague?
[99:59:59.999]That's my understanding of what you said?
[99:59:59.999]Liberacion is a left communist--
[99:59:59.999]It was not communist.
[99:59:59.999]A left left left, but had you know pretty strong ties
[99:59:59.999]to the communist party at certain points.
[99:59:59.999]No, didn't it?
[99:59:59.999]No, not the post '68 Liberacion.
[99:59:59.999]No they weren't.
[99:59:59.999]They were left wing anti-communists if you want.
[99:59:59.999]Anyway that's not of interest to this.
[99:59:59.999]Questions?
[99:59:59.999]Ah I can't resist, Jacques.
[99:59:59.999]You...
[99:59:59.999]You presented a very elegant,
[99:59:59.999]very French construction of
[99:59:59.999]using the metaphor of the French revolutionaries
[99:59:59.999]of May 1968 using the language of the previous revolution.
[99:59:59.999]It's great, it's aesthetically it's very satisfying,
[99:59:59.999]but then you went on to say that Daniel Cohn-Bendit
[99:59:59.999]and the others may have been
[99:59:59.999]anti-communist because the French communist party hated them
[99:59:59.999]and my impression is that this is
[99:59:59.999]pretty far in history a little.
[99:59:59.999]I mean they may have been anti Soviet communists,
[99:59:59.999]but there was a whole ethos of the May events
[99:59:59.999]which was pro Chinese communist, pro Mao,
[99:59:59.999]pro Cuban communists et cetera et cetera,
[99:59:59.999]and I think we need to remember that some of these people
[99:59:59.999]went on to become the red factions
[99:59:59.999]in Germany and Italy in the 1970s
[99:59:59.999]and did some terrible things,
[99:59:59.999]adhering to the ideology of their
[99:59:59.999]own way of the communist ideology.
[99:59:59.999]So I would not dismiss it entirely,
[99:59:59.999]but perhaps you didn't mean it that way, so...
[99:59:59.999]But I just wanted to make the comment.
[99:59:59.999]Well I mean, I did refer to the fact
[99:59:59.999]that they looked to the third world for inspiration.
[99:59:59.999]They were disappointed in the proletariat in the west.
[99:59:59.999]It was not revolutionary anymore,
[99:59:59.999]or not sufficiently revolutionary
[99:59:59.999]and they turned to, for inspiration to the third world
[99:59:59.999]and this is why I put it in a short cut, Ho Che Mao.
[99:59:59.999]I mean people forget how important
[99:59:59.999]the Vietnam War was in the west.
[99:59:59.999]I mean this country, I mean this week
[99:59:59.999]Martin Luther King died, so this is
[99:59:59.999]you know the race issue and Vietnam.
[99:59:59.999]This is you know, and Berkeley the free speech movement.
[99:59:59.999]You have that, the ingredients of '68 in America.
[99:59:59.999]You have, each country had its own '68.
[99:59:59.999]The it's true that in western Europe
[99:59:59.999]because of the influence of communist parties
[99:59:59.999]or of Marxism, lot of the radicals went that way
[99:59:59.999]and some of them went, as you rightly said,
[99:59:59.999]to even violent extreme.
[99:59:59.999]But that I think in retrospect,
[99:59:59.999]I'm not saying this didn't exist.
[99:59:59.999]First of all this didn't happen
[99:59:59.999]in France, which is interesting,
[99:59:59.999]and I think Sartre's influence was the decisive.
[99:59:59.999]I asked Andre Glucksmann what is his interpretation?
[99:59:59.999]Why was there no violent temptation?
[99:59:59.999]He said at least Sartre told them to stop there.
[99:59:59.999]I mean he liked radical rhetoric,
[99:59:59.999]but not actual violence.
[99:59:59.999]And incidentally, he wrote about Prague Spring of 1968.
[99:59:59.999]He wrote as an introduction
[99:59:59.999]to Antoni Leonin's book (speaks foreign language)
[99:59:59.999]You may know that book in Czech.
[99:59:59.999]This is interviews with leading Czech writers,
[99:59:59.999]intellectuals, you know with Skvorecky, with Havel,
[99:59:59.999]Komensky, I mean I think there are practically
[99:59:59.999]it's a kind of who's who
[99:59:59.999]of Czech literary scene at the time.
[99:59:59.999]There is an introduction by Sartre.
[99:59:59.999]It's called The Socialism that Came in from the Cold.
[99:59:59.999]So he's at the moment when he's a crazy '68er
[99:59:59.999]in the French context if you want.
[99:59:59.999]I mean I'm using crazy '68,
[99:59:59.999]and he's writing this preface
[99:59:59.999]basically denouncing the Soviet system
[99:59:59.999]and that shows that yeah, he had at least
[99:59:59.999]belatedly understood what the invasion was about.
[99:59:59.999]And incidentally, I was as a student then,
[99:59:59.999]I was pestering you know these prominent intellectuals
[99:59:59.999]when we needed to petition for somebody,
[99:59:59.999]they confiscated Kocmanek's manuscripts.
[99:59:59.999]There was a petition, or somebody was arrested
[99:59:59.999]and I remember once I wanted Sartre's signature.
[99:59:59.999]Oh yes, I know for what.
[99:59:59.999]We were trying to do,
[99:59:59.999]there was an international tribunal about Vietnam.
[99:59:59.999]That was set up you know about the crimes
[99:59:59.999]committed in Vietnam, and I said well we should
[99:59:59.999]do something about the crimes
[99:59:59.999]that they're committing in Czechloslovakia.
[99:59:59.999]So I had a sort of similar kind of profile.
[99:59:59.999]We will examine, we will present
[99:59:59.999]all the things that the communists are doing after '68.
[99:59:59.999]So I went on getting prominent name, et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]So eventually it took me major efforts to get to Sartre,
[99:59:59.999]and he didn't have much time so he says
[99:59:59.999]well what's about this?
[99:59:59.999]I say well it's about you know Czechloslovakia
[99:59:59.999]and we want to do this and that.
[99:59:59.999]He interrupted me immediately and said yes, put my name
[99:59:59.999]and I said you know but it was very difficult
[99:59:59.999]to get hold of you, et cetera
[99:59:59.999]and he says in the future, whenever you need my signature
[99:59:59.999]you use my signature for Czech.
[99:59:59.999]So this is...
[99:59:59.999]Kind of loose use of his name,
[99:59:59.999]but it only worked because it was associated
[99:59:59.999]somehow with the Prague Spring
[99:59:59.999]and he had,
[99:59:59.999]this is a bit of a digression.
[99:59:59.999]I think he had two visits to Prague.
[99:59:59.999]One was a rather unfortunate one.
[99:59:59.999]He came to Prague I think in the early sixties.
[99:59:59.999]People were hoping to hear Sartre, the existentialist.
[99:59:59.999](speaks foreign language)
[99:59:59.999]You know the existentialist,
[99:59:59.999]and you know by then he was trying
[99:59:59.999]to become a pseudo-Marxist or something like that,
[99:59:59.999]and everybody was you know in the,
[99:59:59.999]at the university where he gave his lecture
[99:59:59.999]everybody was terribly disappointed.
[99:59:59.999]So this was a frustrating encounter with Sartre,
[99:59:59.999]and then the, I forgot which play of his they were showing
[99:59:59.999]in Prague in the fall of '68 and he came there,
[99:59:59.999]and yeah you have an element of schizophrenia.
[99:59:59.999]Here is this radical May '68er in paris,
[99:59:59.999]and he is a very radical opponent of Soviet invasion
[99:59:59.999]and in Czechloslovakia.
[99:59:59.999]And what I said about the signature simply says you know,
[99:59:59.999]I'll do anything if I can help.
[99:59:59.999]That was the posture, so you can damn the guy
[99:59:59.999]about his blindness.
[99:59:59.999]Why was he such a fellow traveler
[99:59:59.999]for so long and not seeing?
[99:59:59.999]You can give him credit for seeing belatedly
[99:59:59.999]what was wrong with his previous position.
[99:59:59.999]Thank you very much.
[99:59:59.999]One brief question.
[99:59:59.999]Isn't it a little bit of an irony
[99:59:59.999]that in '68 we tried to have sort of socialism
[99:59:59.999]with a human face where socialism already was sort of
[99:59:59.999]capitalism with a human face.
[99:59:59.999]So I wanted to ask where is this humanity
[99:59:59.999]that the left was so much craving for?
[99:59:59.999]So once humanity's going to the left,
[99:59:59.999]and now suddenly in '68 we're trying to be more humane
[99:59:59.999]by going to west.
[99:59:59.999]So that's question number one.
[99:59:59.999]The second question is more practical.
[99:59:59.999]What was, or could you compare,
[99:59:59.999]what was the international diplomatic reaction
[99:59:59.999]to the Russian invasion of Czechloslovakia?
[99:59:59.999]And could you compare that with the reaction of today
[99:59:59.999]with what happened in England for example?
[99:59:59.999]Thank you.
[99:59:59.999]Okay, well on the first,
[99:59:59.999]I mean one of the big things of the sixties
[99:59:59.999]was how we get rid of the Stalinist hold on Marxism
[99:59:59.999]and of course, you know the idea that
[99:59:59.999]infrastructure determines the superstructure
[99:59:59.999]so you change the economic and social relations
[99:59:59.999]and that will change people's minds,
[99:59:59.999]and if it doesn't change fast enough
[99:59:59.999]you may reeducate them and you may
[99:59:59.999]give history a push, you know?
[99:59:59.999]By using certain coercive methods, okay.
[99:59:59.999]We know about that.
[99:59:59.999]No, the whole sixties was this rediscovery
[99:59:59.999]of Marxist humanism that put men
[99:59:59.999]at the center of the socialist project.
[99:59:59.999]So this was forget about the...
[99:59:59.999]And this is where people like Kosik et cetera came in.
[99:59:59.999]So sort of the humanization of Marxism
[99:59:59.999]and this was not necessarily in their mind
[99:59:59.999]going full way to the west
[99:59:59.999]because there were people in the west
[99:59:59.999]moving in those directions, so they were
[99:59:59.999]meeting halfway, and this is why you had these dialogues.
[99:59:59.999]I'm not saying that these dialogues were,
[99:59:59.999]I mean if you read this stuff today probably
[99:59:59.999]I'm not sure it was all very interesting,
[99:59:59.999]but it's the idea of the dialogue.
[99:59:59.999]Zbigniew Brzezinski at that time was talking
[99:59:59.999]about building bridges, you know?
[99:59:59.999]And there was this idea that basically you could
[99:59:59.999]yeah, that east central Europe could evolve,
[99:59:59.999]you know differently from the Soviet model.
[99:59:59.999]And you have number of people
[99:59:59.999]including Brzezinski and others
[99:59:59.999]who thought that this would be a possible,
[99:59:59.999]I mean and Prague Spring became for them
[99:59:59.999]the incarnation of what they had,
[99:59:59.999]what they had in mind.
[99:59:59.999]Okay, we know how that ended,
[99:59:59.999]but as for the reaction to the invasion,
[99:59:59.999]of course unanimous condemnation.
[99:59:59.999]This was you know, everywhere.
[99:59:59.999]Governments, UN, international organization
[99:59:59.999]but, but, and this is something that I personally,
[99:59:59.999]well not only I could not be satisfied
[99:59:59.999]with simply condemnation or something like that.
[99:59:59.999]This was more of a personal thing,
[99:59:59.999]but also what I had problem with
[99:59:59.999]and this is why I quoted Adam Roberts and Philip Windsor.
[99:59:59.999]They said it is not a major international crisis.
[99:59:59.999]So did they pull up ambassadors
[99:59:59.999]for example, or diplomats--
[99:59:59.999]Yeah they called back ambassadors
[99:59:59.999]and they made protests, but basically
[99:59:59.999]nobody was going to move because at the very same time,
[99:59:59.999]they had negotiations in Washington
[99:59:59.999]about the missiles, the start negotiation
[99:59:59.999]et cetera et cetera, and they were
[99:59:59.999]not going to jeopardize that.
[99:59:59.999]So yeah, that was the...
[99:59:59.999]That was a tragic element that you basically felt yeah,
[99:59:59.999]for diplomacies of western Europe
[99:59:59.999]this was a very unfortunate rhetoric,
[99:59:59.999]but the Russians knew how far, what was the limit.
[99:59:59.999]In fact you should read this western response or lack of
[99:59:59.999]together with what Brezhnev tells Dubcek
[99:59:59.999]and it's again in this Minage book,
[99:59:59.999]he tells the negotiations in Moscow.
[99:59:59.999]Dubcek says oh, we were making socialism with human face.
[99:59:59.999]We were going to make socialism attractive
[99:59:59.999]all around Europe you know and this would be
[99:59:59.999]such a wonderful thing, and Brezhnev interrupts him
[99:59:59.999]and says oh, what do you think, the invasion,
[99:59:59.999]nobody's going to give a damn.
[99:59:59.999]Yes, and will protest
[99:59:59.999]and that will be about it,
[99:59:59.999]and the western communist parties
[99:59:59.999]they are useless as they have been for the last 50 years.
[99:59:59.999]This is more or less the quote.
[99:59:59.999]Well this is, Brezhnev gives a lesson of realism to Dubcek.
[99:59:59.999]What we are interested, we're not interested
[99:59:59.999]in building socialism in western Europe.
[99:59:59.999]We have our sphere of influence.
[99:59:59.999]This is our empire.
[99:59:59.999]This became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.
[99:59:59.999]Whenever the fate of socialism in one country is threatened,
[99:59:59.999]it's the duty of the whole socialist camp to step in
[99:59:59.999]and the west has accepted it because unlike the
[99:59:59.999]Brzezinski building bridges,
[99:59:59.999]this was detente which was supposed to dismantle the system.
[99:59:59.999]What followed after '68 was detente based
[99:59:59.999]on the recognition of the division of Europe.
[99:59:59.999]So this is a very different kind of proposition,
[99:59:59.999]and this is the ambivalence we had about that process.
[99:59:59.999]'Cause on one hand it's detente.
[99:59:59.999]On the other hand it is accepting the status quo.
[99:59:59.999]What has changed the status quo
[99:59:59.999]of course was the dissidence.
[99:59:59.999]I say I don't want to exaggerate,
[99:59:59.999]but the fact that people took literally
[99:59:59.999]the Helsinki Declaration which was supposed to
[99:59:59.999]stabilize the status quo in Europe
[99:59:59.999]and said it has a sewed basket in it.
[99:59:59.999]It speaks about human rights,
[99:59:59.999]the freedom to impart information,
[99:59:59.999]to disseminate information, et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]They took it at their word, they start to use it.
[99:59:59.999]You had the Helsinki committees in the USSR,
[99:59:59.999]you had Charter 77 et cetera
[99:59:59.999]and once you had that, that became part
[99:59:59.999]of western diplomacy which had been lukewarm
[99:59:59.999]at the time of the invasion, suddenly western diplomacy
[99:59:59.999]had to take on board the third basket,
[99:59:59.999]which was there for show initially.
[99:59:59.999]But they took it literally.
[99:59:59.999]They suddenly made, and it became part of an interplay
[99:59:59.999]between let's say dissidence in central Europe
[99:59:59.999]in Czechloslovakia in particular
[99:59:59.999]and the public opinion in western Europe.
[99:59:59.999]And once public opinion, the media, et cetera
[99:59:59.999]become engaged in this, diplomacy responds
[99:59:59.999]and you had a process
[99:59:59.999]which eventually became subverted
[99:59:59.999]and we know that Helsinki in a way
[99:59:59.999]contributed to the undoing of that system.
[99:59:59.999]So you have yeah, that's an interesting case
[99:59:59.999]for international relations.
[99:59:59.999]You have something which is established
[99:59:59.999]after the defeat of the Prague Spring
[99:59:59.999]which is meant to stabilize the division of Europe,
[99:59:59.999]and you inadvertently put in something
[99:59:59.999]that helps to derail the thing
[99:59:59.999]and it came as a surprise I'm sure to the Russians,
[99:59:59.999]but I think many of the western diplomats
[99:59:59.999]did not anticipate that either.
[99:59:59.999]I think they made good use of it after
[99:59:59.999]in the late seventies and especially in the 1980s.
[99:59:59.999]Thank you.
[99:59:59.999]Thank you for your speech.
[99:59:59.999]I really loved it.
[99:59:59.999]My question relates to what you said about dialogue.
[99:59:59.999]The fact that there was a,
[99:59:59.999]let's say east-west dialogue before
[99:59:59.999]and now that this kind of dialogue is here no more,
[99:59:59.999]but also the fact that the dialogue in the sixties
[99:59:59.999]well in the western Europe had a form of,
[99:59:59.999]or the argumentation
[99:59:59.999]tend to end up in a certain convergence of the sides
[99:59:59.999]that instead of revolution we got,
[99:59:59.999]let's say, multiculturalism, feminism, and all that
[99:59:59.999]as a sort of let's say compromise between establishment
[99:59:59.999]and the radical forces.
[99:59:59.999]Well nowadays we also have a time of let's say
[99:59:59.999]unrest and dissatisfaction and looking for something new,
[99:59:59.999]but as if it does not have a form of a dialogue anymore,
[99:59:59.999]and I mean I wonder if you have the same feeling
[99:59:59.999]and what might be the reason
[99:59:59.999]that even though the situation
[99:59:59.999]is in a way a little bit similar,
[99:59:59.999]this kind of unrest and looking for something new,
[99:59:59.999]but there is like rather than dialogue,
[99:59:59.999]more like digging these borders
[99:59:59.999]and well yeah, radicalization.
[99:59:59.999]So why is that, and maybe...
[99:59:59.999]Just came to my mind, what Tomas Sedlacek mentioned
[99:59:59.999]in his speech.
[99:59:59.999]It is disputable, but maybe somehow
[99:59:59.999]you can also relate it to that dialogue
[99:59:59.999]and dialogue thing.
[99:59:59.999]Tomas Sedlacek said that now we have like
[99:59:59.999]this is a time of politicians
[99:59:59.999]really trying to police people
[99:59:59.999]and doing really what people want
[99:59:59.999]and following all these sociological searches.
[99:59:59.999]But at the same time it is time like people,
[99:59:59.999]as if people feel that politicians
[99:59:59.999]don't listen to them anymore, so this divergence why,
[99:59:59.999]I mean maybe you don't see it.
[99:59:59.999]I mean I think it's a disputable claim,
[99:59:59.999]but maybe it can be related also to the topic of like
[99:59:59.999]dialogue versus radicalization.
[99:59:59.999]Yeah, well the dialogue was born
[99:59:59.999]in the sixties in a period of a fall
[99:59:59.999]when there was this...
[99:59:59.999]Among the common denominators was Europe,
[99:59:59.999]and the second there was a very
[99:59:59.999]loose use of the word socialism.
[99:59:59.999]I think it was again Ivan Svitak who said you know
[99:59:59.999]that socialism, what socialism in '68 could be so diluted,
[99:59:59.999]could be accommodated to absolutely everything.
[99:59:59.999]And indeed you accommodate it to structure,
[99:59:59.999]psychoanalysis, absolutely anything with an ism
[99:59:59.999]you could be accommodating with socialism
[99:59:59.999]and he added including novels by Francoise Sagan.
[99:59:59.999]You know this was how much you can dilute Marxism.
[99:59:59.999]We would still be using this reference to socialism.
[99:59:59.999]So you had a vague common framework
[99:59:59.999]which I think was not...
[99:59:59.999]Was very ambiguous and was hiding the real differences
[99:59:59.999]that emerged later.
[99:59:59.999]Then the real dialogue, for me the real dialogue
[99:59:59.999]started after '68 in the seventies
[99:59:59.999]because it no longer was used simply by,
[99:59:59.999]for some political purposes.
[99:59:59.999]Let's say if you're a communist party,
[99:59:59.999]west European communist parties,
[99:59:59.999]we're using references to the Prague Spring,
[99:59:59.999]this was simply to enhance the democratic credentials
[99:59:59.999]in their respective countries.
[99:59:59.999]The Prague Spring had been defeated,
[99:59:59.999]and they were simply referring to the idea,
[99:59:59.999]oh yeah this was a good idea
[99:59:59.999]and what a pity it didn't work out
[99:59:59.999]but we of course are, okay this is instrumentalization uses,
[99:59:59.999]I'm not interested in that dialogue.
[99:59:59.999]No, the real dialogue came with the dissident movement.
[99:59:59.999]With I mean, Havel was best known in Czechloslovakia,
[99:59:59.999]in Hungary there was Gyorgy Konrad.
[99:59:59.999]In Poland you had Adam Michnik
[99:59:59.999]and Kuron and a number of others,
[99:59:59.999]so you had a whole group.
[99:59:59.999]And similarly in western Europe you had
[99:59:59.999]a number of intellectuals engaged from the left,
[99:59:59.999]but from the right as well
[99:59:59.999]and from suddenly you know there was,
[99:59:59.999]when I said in this small network of supporters of dissent
[99:59:59.999]you had people of all kind of political persuasions,
[99:59:59.999]and it was associated with certain themes.
[99:59:59.999]The critic of totalitarianism
[99:59:59.999]and therefore the idea that you have to rethink
[99:59:59.999]the democratic project.
[99:59:59.999]You cannot do that if you don't have rights
[99:59:59.999]and therefore you have the language of rights
[99:59:59.999]is very much part of that legacy,
[99:59:59.999]and you do not have a democratic project
[99:59:59.999]without the idea of civil society.
[99:59:59.999]So you know the primacy of ethics over politics,
[99:59:59.999]rights, civil society.
[99:59:59.999]You have there series of themes,
[99:59:59.999]and then of course what do they mean in different societies
[99:59:59.999]and a different time?
[99:59:59.999]So this is where the convergence takes place
[99:59:59.999]and it's a very interesting and very serious discussion
[99:59:59.999]that took place, and this is why Havel's texts
[99:59:59.999]were read, but not just Havel's and others
[99:59:59.999]and there was this dialogue.
[99:59:59.999]Why did it disappear after or vanish?
[99:59:59.999]It didn't disappear overnight, but it I think partly
[99:59:59.999]because we lost a common enemy.
[99:59:59.999]We lost a common problem.
[99:59:59.999]The problem was you know Soviet totalitarianism
[99:59:59.999]and the division of Europe.
[99:59:59.999]Suddenly it was no longer there.
[99:59:59.999]The division of Europe was no longer there.
[99:59:59.999]We could meet at endless conferences all the time, and...
[99:59:59.999]What was the theme of the nineties?
[99:59:59.999]Building yesterday, Tomas referred to it.
[99:59:59.999]Building market democracies, et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]Well if you're building market democracies in eastern Europe
[99:59:59.999]this is the new project, this is not a new project.
[99:59:59.999]You're building something that exists in the west okay?
[99:59:59.999]So this is the first revolution without a new project.
[99:59:59.999]The project is to do what,
[99:59:59.999]we don't want to reinvent the wheel.
[99:59:59.999]We don't want the third world.
[99:59:59.999]Okay, so the very good reason
[99:59:59.999]yesterday Tomas used the phrase burning bridges.
[99:59:59.999]You know we have to go fast
[99:59:59.999]and we have to, okay but if your project
[99:59:59.999]is to imitate something that exists as well,
[99:59:59.999]you become less interesting.
[99:59:59.999]I mean the dialogue, they'll say yeah, what else is new?
[99:59:59.999]Oh you want to become, you want a new constitution
[99:59:59.999]or you want to create a market economy?
[99:59:59.999]Yeah that's, yeah we've been doing that
[99:59:59.999]for a couple of centuries.
[99:59:59.999]And therefore, that I think is one of the reasons why
[99:59:59.999]the dialogue was lost.
[99:59:59.999]I'm not, this is not to say who is responsible for that.
[99:59:59.999]Simply the circumstances have changed.
[99:59:59.999]Now, this may be the time when
[99:59:59.999]something of a very different kind
[99:59:59.999]or different kind of dialogue could
[99:59:59.999]resume or be rediscovered.
[99:59:59.999]Why?
[99:59:59.999]Because that cycle, that post '89 cycle
[99:59:59.999]has been exhausted.
[99:59:59.999]What was all, we want to create a democratic institution.
[99:59:59.999]We have them, guess what?
[99:59:59.999]They are in crisis.
[99:59:59.999]We have populist upsurge everywhere.
[99:59:59.999]We wanted to build market economy, wonderful, we have it.
[99:59:59.999]Guess what?
[99:59:59.999]We saw since 2008 a global crisis of the market.
[99:59:59.999]We wanted to return to Europe.
[99:59:59.999]We are members of the European Union, welcome.
[99:59:59.999]Guess what?
[99:59:59.999]Europe is in crisis.
[99:59:59.999]So the project has been mission accomplished.
[99:59:59.999]The project has been that, but it is in crisis
[99:59:59.999]so if you are in this situation,
[99:59:59.999]you can no longer rely on imitating.
[99:59:59.999]You're going to imitate what, Brexit?
[99:59:59.999]You're going to imitate Trump?
[99:59:59.999]What is it you're going to imitate?
[99:59:59.999]So the model is no longer a model.
[99:59:59.999]If the model of liberal democracy is Brexit and Trump,
[99:59:59.999]well then you have a problem
[99:59:59.999]that Orban and Kachinsky incidentally two former dissidents
[99:59:59.999]can say well you know this is our version of
[99:59:59.999]the true conservative values we stand for
[99:59:59.999]and so, in the times of crisis
[99:59:59.999]which is an internal crisis of the project,
[99:59:59.999]as I say has been exhausted.
[99:59:59.999]And if you see the external circumstances that have changed.
[99:59:59.999]Look at our neighborhood in Europe.
[99:59:59.999]I'm talking now from a European point of view,
[99:59:59.999]and I apologize to American friends
[99:59:59.999]but after all Czechloslovakia is at the heart of Europe so.
[99:59:59.999]I can be forgiven for that.
[99:59:59.999]We have Putin's Russia assertive,
[99:59:59.999]you see what's happening in Ukraine.
[99:59:59.999]We have the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in our doorstep.
[99:59:59.999]Collapsing states from Libya to Syria and
[99:59:59.999]civil wars and migrants on the move.
[99:59:59.999]And we have now the US and Trump
[99:59:59.999]which changes considerably the way trans-Atlantic relations
[99:59:59.999]are to be understood.
[99:59:59.999]So suddenly we have to think on our feet.
[99:59:59.999]This is no longer the post, the post '89 world is over.
[99:59:59.999]And the crisis is there, and the populists are on the rise.
[99:59:59.999]So this may be the time not to
[99:59:59.999]simply say oh yeah we interrupted the dialogue
[99:59:59.999]because we were doing catching up with the western model
[99:59:59.999]and now we discovered the western model is in crisis
[99:59:59.999]so this is time to resume dialogue.
[99:59:59.999]No no, it's simply everybody
[99:59:59.999]is confronted with that situation
[99:59:59.999]and not me, but your generation
[99:59:59.999]and the generation of the students who are here,
[99:59:59.999]well they will be the one engaged in that dialogue
[99:59:59.999]and that's, yeah.
[99:59:59.999]If in doing so they rediscover some of the things
[99:59:59.999]that the post '68 generation,
[99:59:59.999]the dissidents have on the way addressed,
[99:59:59.999]I mentioned the prime ethics and politics language of rights
[99:59:59.999]civil society, et cetera et cetera.
[99:59:59.999]Well, that may be a good place to start from.
[99:59:59.999]That may be a contribution to it,
[99:59:59.999]but that dialogue will be completely different
[99:59:59.999]because it will be focusing on other things.
[99:59:59.999]It will not be on how do you create a market economy?
[99:59:59.999]Or how do you mix the markets?
[99:59:59.999]It will be, you know, what kind of
[99:59:59.999]market economy is legitimate, acceptable?
[99:59:59.999]What is, what is compatible with
[99:59:59.999]what a European model of society exists?
[99:59:59.999]If you abandon that idea, well you're left with imitating
[99:59:59.999]well, either the Chinese or the American model
[99:59:59.999]and you will have nothing to contribute yourself.
[99:59:59.999]So I think the Europeans
[99:59:59.999]and especially the younger generation
[99:59:59.999]is now confronted with this new situation
[99:59:59.999]and hopefully that's where the dialogue can start.
[99:59:59.999]

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Jacques Rupnik: The Other 1968 - Three Readings of Prague Spring

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