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October 6th, 2008
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Exhibition remembers Prague Spring

Forty years on, texts and pictures speak of brutality and resistance

By Ondřej Bouda
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 9th, 2008 issue

MICHAEL HEITMANN/The Prague Post
Bohumil Dobrovolský looks at newsprints of the 1968 coverage that landed his family on the black list.
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MICHAEL HEITMANN/The Prague Post
The Jazz Section show features never-before-seen documents.
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More than 300 newspaper clippings, pamphlets and photographs are on show at the ArtForum gallery in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The display is organized by the Jazz Section, which was once the largest dissident organization in Czechoslovakia.
“We like to do exhibitions about events that we actually witnessed and make them interesting for the younger generation, so that important historical milestones are not forgotten and the new generation understands our motives,” said Karel Srp, founder and director of the Jazz Section.
At the July 4 opening of the exhibit, called simply “August 1968,” Srp talked about the violent chain of events the display brings back to life.
In April of that year, a new Communist Party leadership announced an action plan with the goal of achieving “socialism with a human face,” promoting freedom of press and expression.
But such sentiments were viewed with growing fear by party hardliners and their Soviet comrades. The Warsaw Pact’s “friendly armies” of Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union crossed the Czechoslovak border shortly after 11 p.m. Aug. 20, and by morning had entered Prague.
“It is important to remember that we all trusted and believed in the Communist Party at the time,” said Srp. “But, as soon as we heard about the invasion, we went out into the streets. It was one of those ‘Where were you when it happened’ moments.”
Visitors to the exhibit can browse through newspapers printed during the week of tension and see how the situation evolved and was perceived by different sources. Among the well-known documents and photographs are a few new gems that have come to light after years of hiding: citizen pamphlets warning of cars used by secret police, letters addressed to invading soldiers explaining that Czechoslovakia was not an enemy of communism and propaganda leaflets dropped from Soviet helicopters denouncing the social reforms as right-wing terror.
“I had a lot of the stuff in my storage room in the basement. When the police showed up with a search warrant, I showed them the wrong storage room and so escaped detention. Sometimes people bring in things they find in things they inherit,” Srp said, explaining how many of these artifacts survived another 20 years of communist rule.
Preserving the moment
Besides printed documents, visitors can also listen to recordings of radio speeches and songs by famous dissident singer Karel Kryl. “We even have a recording discovered only last week of Čestmír Císař, one of the reform communists,” said Srp. The Jazz Section found the tape by locating a descendant of the family with whom Císař was hiding after the invasion.
Bohumil Dobrovolský, who was an amateur photographer in 1968, also came to the exhibit opening to remember the eventful days with his friends.
“I went to the Czech Radio building as soon as I heard what happened, because that is where all the important events in modern Czech history took place,” he said. “With the camera as my weapon and my shield, I took as many pictures as I could.”
The situation on the streets was confused and covered in smoke, he said, with people running from soldiers’ gunfire. “I tried to push toward the soldiers through the haze and panicked crowds,” Dobrovolský said. “At one point, I came face to face with one of them and spat in his face. He was shocked and I took his picture at that point. He turned his automatic rifle on me and was about to shoot as I was hurling insults at him. I was lucky; he just spat in my face instead.”
Both men later suffered for their actions. Dobrovolský’s attempts to publish his pictures landed his entire family on the black list. “My brother could not go to school because of me. But we were a good Christian family, and nobody ever complained or blamed me,” he said. Dobrovolský became famous only after the 1989 revolution, and his pictures of the invasion are now on display in galleries across Europe.
Srp went on to found the Jazz Section, which at first was a legal group organizing jazz concerts and other cultural events. But, eventually, since they also managed to publish banned literature, the group was shut down, and its leaders, including Srp, were imprisoned. “We had more than 7,000 members. Without ever wanting to, we became the largest underground organization in Czechoslovakia,” he said.
Nowadays, Srp considers his organization’s fight against the authorities ongoing, and cites his anger over City Hall’s cuts to arts funding earlier this year (which had a financial impact on the Jazz Section).
“Even though [Mayor] Pavel Bém was a member of the Jazz Section prior to 1989 and a very brave one at that — as a doctor, he helped victims of police brutality — he has now presided over some of the worst changes to the city’s culture policy. Because we refuse to remain silent and we openly criticize their policy, they now call us swine,” Srpa said. “I must say that he has disappointed me greatly.”
The “August 1968” exhibit will be open at Valdštejnská 14 through the end of August.

Ondřej Bouda can be reached at news@praguepost.com


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