(DOWNLOAD) "Prague Autumn: The Czechs Escaped Soviet Domination Only to Face a New Tyranny (Europe)" by The American Conservative " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Prague Autumn: The Czechs Escaped Soviet Domination Only to Face a New Tyranny (Europe)
- Author : The American Conservative
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 63 KB
Description
FOR MOST OF US, Prague is an idea before it is a city. Mention of the name calls up a series of monochrome images, most of them violent and distressing, boding little good for those involved. Imperial delegates are hurled from a high window into a dungheap and the Thirty Years War begins. Women weep as the German army tramps by in the March gloom. Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler's personal favorite, is assassinated on a street corner (the first killer's gun jams, but the second hurls a hand grenade), and hundreds have to die or suffer horribly in the furious retaliation. Jan Masaryk, a liberal who tried to work with Stalin, is pushed to his death from yet another window, his fingernails scrabbling on the sill as he discovers for certain that democracy is incompatible with Communism, or was it the other way round? Rudolf Slansky and Vlada Clementis, guilty of being Jewish at a time when Stalin was displeased with Jews, are hanged by their revolutionary comrades, swiftly cremated, and their ashes spitefully used to grit the snowy roads. Russian tanks crawl through sullen crowds, their crews puzzled because they had expected to be welcomed. The affronted people hold up signs, in good, grammatical Russian, saying politely, "Go Home." When this fails, they try Molotov cocktails, and Jan Palach burns himself to death. After too much of this, enormous peaceful multitudes demand and achieve the return of their lost liberty. It is a happy ending, though too late for several million people unlucky enough to live and die in all the unhappy eras. We have heard and read Prague's name in ancient newsreels and history books. We know it as the scene of Franz Kafka's hopeless Trial and perhaps as the home of the Good Soldier Schweik, who responds to authority by having another drink. Like Rome or Jerusalem, its name sounds in the mind like a bell or a snatch of music, plangent and melancholy.