Politika jako sled (ne)zasloužených porážek
Politics as a Series of (Un)Deserved Defeats

Summary/Abstract: Pithart, Petr. Po Devětaosmdesátém: Rozpomínání a přemítání (Spisy Petra Pitharta, vol. 3). Prague: Academia, 2015, 490 pp., ISBN 978-80-200-2504-3.From the 1960s to the 1990s, Petr Pithart (b. 1941) was a leading dissident. After the Changes beginning in late 1989 he became Premier of the Czech Government and, later, was for years the Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the Czech Senate. He is also the author of a number of books about politics and modern Czech history. In his most recent publication, whose title translates as ‘After Eighty-nine: Recollections and Meditations’ (the third volume of Pithart’s collected works), he considers his role in the period from February 1990, when he was elected Czech Premier, to the defeat his party, the Citizen’s Movement (Občanské hnutí), in the general elections of June 1992. The reviewer notes in particular the passages devoted to the division of powers between the Czech and Slovak governments on the one hand and the Federal Government on the other, the scenarios for economic reform, the privatization of industries, and politics in practice. According to the reviewer, Pithart moves in this publication between self-criticism and self-defence and is at his strongest when he avoids moralizing and sticks instead to factual description.

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