V bludišti chyb, omylů, tragédií – a nadějí
In the Maze of Mistakes, Errors, Tragedies – and Hope

Summary/Abstract: CÍSAŘ, Čestmír: Paměti: Nejen o zákulisí Pražského jara. Praha, SinCon 2005, 1285 stran. / Císař, Čestmír. Paměti: Nejen o zákulisí Pražského jara. Prague: SinCon, 2005, 1,285 pp. Using numerous examples, the author in the fi rst part of this long review provides an outline of the typology of memoir literature about Czechoslovakia in 1968. He states that we are still lacking proper memoirs from the ranks of the victors of those times, that is to say, from members of the political élite in the period of “Normalization,” most of whom have instead remained silent about these events. By contrast, the defeated, the “Sixty-eighters,” have presented their experiences in numerous essays, both in this country and abroad. A third line comprises memoirs of political prisoners, longstanding democrats, and others who did not identify with Communism in any shape or form, and whose view typically involves detachment and scepticism about the reform-possibilities of the “Prague Spring.” The second part of the review is devoted to the memoirs of Čestmír Císař, a Communist politician who was Minister of Education in the 1960s, and who, after twenty years of imposed silence, tried to make a comeback by seeking election to the office of Czechoslovak President in 1990. The reviewer fi nds in the memoirs the idea of a distinctly Czechoslovak road to Socialism to be the philosophical and political keystone of Císař’s life. He considers the most interesting part of the memoirs to the one that deals with the “Prague Spring,” the high point of Císař’s carrier. In many ways the memoirs remain typical of those of a Communist intellectual. Yet, according to the reviewer, they are still considerably more than merely an historical source.

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