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ACF: Prague Spring Edition
Friends, this edition of the podcast is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring — on the night of August 20-21, the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact armies invaded Czechoslovakia and put an end to the hopes for reform of the Communist regime. It would take more than a generation for freedom, destroyed by invasion, to come back to Prague. On January 16, 1969, Jan Palach, a 20-year-old student, burned himself in Wenceslas Square in protest against the resurgent tyranny. Agnieszka Holland, the Oscar-nominated director of the Holocaust movie In Darkness (2011), also made Burning Bush (2013), a three-episode mini-series on Jan Palach’s self-immolation and its aftermath, one of the best works of art we have about late totalitarian government. Flagg Taylor and I talk about this movie and about the Prague Spring itself, the Charter 77 movement, and Jan Palach’s legacy up to the return of freedom to Czechoslovakia.
Flagg has written about Burning Bush for NRO, here, here, and here.
He also has a book he edited, the translated essays of Charter 77 co-founder Vaclav Benda, The Long Night of the Watchman. (Hear him talk to Ben Domenech about it on the Federalist Radio Hour.)
Flagg and I have recently talked about totalitarianism in our The Death of Stalin podcast, but also previously on the great Oscar-winning movie, The Lives of Others.
Finally, here’s one of Flagg’s essays I like to recommend — on Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, the remarkable novel about Stalinism.
Published in Podcasts
I remember. I shall never forget.
In February, 1989. Václav Havel was charged with inciting others to participate in a banned demonstration, obstructing the police, and spitting on the sidewalk. (Okay, maybe not the sidewalk thing.) He was sentenced to nine months, which was up in May 1989 because nobody in Czechoslovakia was having any more.
In December, he was named President.
I am looking forward to this.
I recommend to adults and children the fantastic book The Wall by Peter Sis.
From the publisher’s blurb:
This sounds like a good story!
I think you’d enjoy the series–it has moral seriousness. It doesn’t flinch.
You might not think that a man who can write so well can also bake a mean pie…
Flagg does it all!
It was as good as I thought it would be. Thank you, gentlemen.
I just realized that Agnieszka Holland directed one of our favorite children’s movies, The Secret Garden.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Yup. Also, the Washington Square movie. Not as I might have wanted, but then it’s a book I love…
Excellent essay. I need to re-read that book. It has been many years, and some of it had stayed with me, but I certainly didn’t get all of that out of it at the time. However, in the intervening years i have learned more about the show trials and have tried to understand them. This is very helpful.
Glad to see it find the right audience!