7 ms·

The Tourist: Philip Roth’s Czech KGB File

98 points by lermontov 6y ago

saiya-jin 6y ago
> as a teenager, he watched as the Soviet-backed communist party secured its coup d’état in 1948; Good read describing as things really were, but this part is not fully correct - communists got to the power legally by winning the elections, in 1946 in Czech part of Czechoslovakia and in 1948 in Slovakia. People were naive, uninformed and generally saw soviets mainly as liberators from nazi occupation (which was true). Few knew what stalinism brings, without exceptions and those few either were quiet or didn't matter enough. As soon as they got full power, democracy was effectively disbanded, political opponents either executed or jailed, and things like 'famous' uranium mines in Jachymov started operating like execution camps for undesired (something like soviet siberian gulags with added benefit of handling radioactive material without any protection). Ironically all this uranium was given to Soviet union for free AFAIK, and it was worth billions even back then (I guess some sort of ransom for very active 'protection' from evil capitalism).
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Czechoslovak-born here. This is not completely correct either. Communists won the election in 1946 and formed a coalition government in which they were the strongest force, but not completely dominant. There were other "bourgeoise" ministers. Unfortunately, Communists controlled the ministry of the interior and cleansed the police of "reactionary elements", thus cementing their control over the civilian law enforcement. Not over the army yet, though. There were regular elections scheduled for May 1948 and opinion polls were indicating that Communist share of vote is actually going to diminish. So they preempted them by staging a coup supported by People's Militias (a completely illegal armed militia of the party) on February 25, 1948. After that, the democracy was toast and it was full speed towards Stalinism, show trials etc. Some of the army generals wanted to suppress the coup militarily, but the aging President (Beneš) did not allow that. IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy.
  - vkou 6y ago
    > IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy. Had it done so, it's very likely that the USSR would have intervened.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      So might the Western powers. That was still the moment when Americans had the only working nuclear weapons on Earth. The width of the possible scenarios is unsettling, one of them may be Prague turning into European Hiroshima.
      - yread 6y ago
        > So might the Western powers. That would be unlikely - Czechoslovakia was in Soviet sphere of influence as decided in Yalta and the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe.
        inglor_cz 6y ago
        Unlikely, yes, but stranger things have happened during the early Cold War.
        Context_free 6y ago
        > the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe. "The west" was severely outgunned by the west - the largest political party in France in 1948 was PCF, the communist/socialist alliance in Italy almost won that year. Finland remained outside the eastern bloc simply because it was no longer seen as being part of a threat. In the UK the Labour party which tossed out Churchill while he was in Potsdam was busy nationalizing the commanding heights of England's means of production (although they were not as militant as their comrades on the continent of course). The west was busy trying to hold onto the West, never mind intervening in Prague.
        6y ago
- tpm 6y ago
  > communists got to the power legally by winning the elections, in 1946 in Czech part of Czechoslovakia and in 1948 in Slovakia. This is actually so wrong as to be an outright lie. The 1948 elections took place on May 30, after the Communists took power in the coup of February 25 (this was not the only important event - they took over power gradually before that). The 1948 elections featured only one party. From that it should be completely clear these were not really elections as there was nothing to choose from and in any case the Communists didn't really care, they already had all the power they needed.
  - saiya-jin 6y ago
    I will rephrase it since I see what causes a friction - in 1946 Communists won in Czech part of Czechoslovakia, in Slovakia it was Democratic party with over 60% (Demokraticka strana). Still, Slovakia was only 1/3 of whole republic, so communists won the elections overall, especially in Czech border regions with Germany, where arguably a still-unacknowledged atrocity happened after WWII - brutal forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Sudet Germans. Its true that in 1948 the elections were a sham since there was only a single party to vote for - communist one, hence their total victory in both Czech and Slovak part of the republic. But the true rise to power was in 1946 that enabled all that came later, and was done via those democratic elections. Coup d'etat sounds like there was a democratic government overthrown by some communist fringe movement outside government, which isn't true. They got to power and got majority, and used it to remove everybody else. Maybe my idea of coup d'etat is incorrect and this whole discussion is kind of pointless.
    - tpm 6y ago
      The finer point is, I think, that they did not get they power legally in the elections, because no such power can be granted in elections. Elections are a way to elect the national assembly which can then create a government, write laws etc.; but things that happened after 1946 and especially after 1948 were not supported by legal power, but by Stalin's terror and totalitarian dictature.
      - 6y ago
- throw4738 6y ago
  Jachymov had strategic importance for survival of the Soviet Union. Soviets invested into building mine and provided initial workforce. Jachymov was not some siberian gulag for wood choping. Soviets also paid for uranium. Mine was closed as too expensive. How Czech communist party ran the mine, and what it did to its citizens is something else. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ceskoslovenskeho_uranu_do_Sovetskeho_svazu_v_letech_1946-1959/link/56dfd76c08ae9b93f79aa54f/download https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ces...
  - vHMtsdf 6y ago
    Regarding uranium extraction in Czechoslovakia, the Soviets later mined uranium in other sites by pumping sulfuric acid into the ground. This has caused a lasting ecological damage which has to be managed to this day. The acid was meant to dissolve the ore and was then sucked back out. The only issue was that they ended up pumping a more sulfuric acid into the ground than sucking out. This created an underground lake of sulfuric acid in an with other underground water "lakes". This sulfuric lake is threatening to spill into these water sources. I heard about this from my teachers at the university who were involved in the modelling of the underground spill. Using a limited number of wells, they were supposed to predict how the spill is spreading and what actions to take to stop it. I found some pictures from the site here: https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kyselina-ekologicka-zatez/r~i:gallery:15715/r~i:photo:319256/ https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kys...
  - flohofwoe 6y ago
    On the East German side of the border, Uranium mining started essentially as gulag-style worker camps under Soviet control right after the war, and a few years later was moved into the "Wismut AG", which was a company under shared East German / Soviet ownership. From the tales of my grandparents, it was a mix of Soviet oppression and Wild West. In the Wismut, the miners were very well paid (for post-war East Germany), but they were a rowdy bunch and quite often had quarrels (also physical) with the East German police and Soviet camp guards (who of course couldn't simply "mow down" their highly qualified work force). Eventually in the mid- to late 50's, it calmed down, and working for the Wismut was more or less a normal job (albeit with a high risk of dying early of lung cancer and/or silicosis). After the reuninification, the German government invested big into fixing the environmental damage that was done in 40 years, and that took over a decade. Props to them for this, the Erzgebirge is quite a nature paradise today.
- sn41 6y ago
  Prisoners handling radioactive material without protective material and gear, was also done in the Gulag system - e.g. Butugychag in Magadan, Siberia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag
motohagiography 6y ago
It's frustrating to hear stories about writers under totalitarianism, not just because of the pervasive state oppression, but because not one of them will prevent it from rising again. Writers like Havel and Solzhenitsyn's work ostensibly contributed to the ending of the European totalitarian system, but only decades after it rose, and after those cultures were destroyed. I worked with people who left or escaped communism, and many had brought the indolent bureaucratic cynicism and shame of the societies broken by communism with them. It takes generations to recover. The necessary condition for it to prevail is when people (young men in particular) lose their sense of social identity and personal networks so that they are isolated from each other and can't get more than three to five together at once to privately share their experience of the movements infiltrating their communities. It's a playbook. If only we would treat writers today as the canaries in the coal mine for this same totalitarian force of history, and learn how urgent these lessons from the 20th century truly are.
- sosull 6y ago
  This is really insightful. I appreciate you taking the time to write it.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Ironically, a lot of artists who made reputations as dissidents chafing against a totalitarian regime, ultimately repudiated those dissident political views or even came to feel nostalgic for the Soviet regime specifically. Solzhenitsyn himself is famous for becoming a reactionary in later life and wanting heavy-headed leadership over his country, only this time it would supposedly be OK because it would be rooted in ancient Christian Russian culture and not the "godless, foreign" regime that was Communism for him.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union were very different beasts and to label them both as simply heavy-handed is to paint with far too wide a brush.
HelloNurse 6y ago
The article focuses on Philip Roth's fictionalized adaptations of those interesting times, but there's also "Why write? : collected nonfiction 1960-2013" (ISBN 9781598535402, according to my public library catalog) which contains a lot of collected essays and interviews about Czech dissident writers and Roth's visits to Prague.

98 points by lermontov 6y ago

> as a teenager, he watched as the Soviet-backed communist party secured its coup d’état in 1948; Good read describing as things really were, but this part is not fully correct - communists got to the power legally by winning the elections, in 1946 in Czech part of Czechoslovakia and in 1948 in Slovakia. People were naive, uninformed and generally saw soviets mainly as liberators from nazi occupation (which was true). Few knew what stalinism brings, without exceptions and those few either were quiet or didn't matter enough. As soon as they got full power, democracy was effectively disbanded, political opponents either executed or jailed, and things like 'famous' uranium mines in Jachymov started operating like execution camps for undesired (something like soviet siberian gulags with added benefit of handling radioactive material without any protection). Ironically all this uranium was given to Soviet union for free AFAIK, and it was worth billions even back then (I guess some sort of ransom for very active 'protection' from evil capitalism).

inglor_cz 6y ago
Czechoslovak-born here. This is not completely correct either. Communists won the election in 1946 and formed a coalition government in which they were the strongest force, but not completely dominant. There were other "bourgeoise" ministers. Unfortunately, Communists controlled the ministry of the interior and cleansed the police of "reactionary elements", thus cementing their control over the civilian law enforcement. Not over the army yet, though. There were regular elections scheduled for May 1948 and opinion polls were indicating that Communist share of vote is actually going to diminish. So they preempted them by staging a coup supported by People's Militias (a completely illegal armed militia of the party) on February 25, 1948. After that, the democracy was toast and it was full speed towards Stalinism, show trials etc. Some of the army generals wanted to suppress the coup militarily, but the aging President (Beneš) did not allow that. IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy.
- vkou 6y ago
  > IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy. Had it done so, it's very likely that the USSR would have intervened.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    So might the Western powers. That was still the moment when Americans had the only working nuclear weapons on Earth. The width of the possible scenarios is unsettling, one of them may be Prague turning into European Hiroshima.
    - yread 6y ago
      > So might the Western powers. That would be unlikely - Czechoslovakia was in Soviet sphere of influence as decided in Yalta and the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe.
      - inglor_cz 6y ago
        Unlikely, yes, but stranger things have happened during the early Cold War.
      - Context_free 6y ago
        > the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe. "The west" was severely outgunned by the west - the largest political party in France in 1948 was PCF, the communist/socialist alliance in Italy almost won that year. Finland remained outside the eastern bloc simply because it was no longer seen as being part of a threat. In the UK the Labour party which tossed out Churchill while he was in Potsdam was busy nationalizing the commanding heights of England's means of production (although they were not as militant as their comrades on the continent of course). The west was busy trying to hold onto the West, never mind intervening in Prague.
        6y ago
tpm 6y ago
> communists got to the power legally by winning the elections, in 1946 in Czech part of Czechoslovakia and in 1948 in Slovakia. This is actually so wrong as to be an outright lie. The 1948 elections took place on May 30, after the Communists took power in the coup of February 25 (this was not the only important event - they took over power gradually before that). The 1948 elections featured only one party. From that it should be completely clear these were not really elections as there was nothing to choose from and in any case the Communists didn't really care, they already had all the power they needed.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  I will rephrase it since I see what causes a friction - in 1946 Communists won in Czech part of Czechoslovakia, in Slovakia it was Democratic party with over 60% (Demokraticka strana). Still, Slovakia was only 1/3 of whole republic, so communists won the elections overall, especially in Czech border regions with Germany, where arguably a still-unacknowledged atrocity happened after WWII - brutal forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Sudet Germans. Its true that in 1948 the elections were a sham since there was only a single party to vote for - communist one, hence their total victory in both Czech and Slovak part of the republic. But the true rise to power was in 1946 that enabled all that came later, and was done via those democratic elections. Coup d'etat sounds like there was a democratic government overthrown by some communist fringe movement outside government, which isn't true. They got to power and got majority, and used it to remove everybody else. Maybe my idea of coup d'etat is incorrect and this whole discussion is kind of pointless.
  - tpm 6y ago
    The finer point is, I think, that they did not get they power legally in the elections, because no such power can be granted in elections. Elections are a way to elect the national assembly which can then create a government, write laws etc.; but things that happened after 1946 and especially after 1948 were not supported by legal power, but by Stalin's terror and totalitarian dictature.
    - 6y ago
throw4738 6y ago
Jachymov had strategic importance for survival of the Soviet Union. Soviets invested into building mine and provided initial workforce. Jachymov was not some siberian gulag for wood choping. Soviets also paid for uranium. Mine was closed as too expensive. How Czech communist party ran the mine, and what it did to its citizens is something else. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ceskoslovenskeho_uranu_do_Sovetskeho_svazu_v_letech_1946-1959/link/56dfd76c08ae9b93f79aa54f/download https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ces...
- vHMtsdf 6y ago
  Regarding uranium extraction in Czechoslovakia, the Soviets later mined uranium in other sites by pumping sulfuric acid into the ground. This has caused a lasting ecological damage which has to be managed to this day. The acid was meant to dissolve the ore and was then sucked back out. The only issue was that they ended up pumping a more sulfuric acid into the ground than sucking out. This created an underground lake of sulfuric acid in an with other underground water "lakes". This sulfuric lake is threatening to spill into these water sources. I heard about this from my teachers at the university who were involved in the modelling of the underground spill. Using a limited number of wells, they were supposed to predict how the spill is spreading and what actions to take to stop it. I found some pictures from the site here: https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kyselina-ekologicka-zatez/r~i:gallery:15715/r~i:photo:319256/ https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kys...
- flohofwoe 6y ago
  On the East German side of the border, Uranium mining started essentially as gulag-style worker camps under Soviet control right after the war, and a few years later was moved into the "Wismut AG", which was a company under shared East German / Soviet ownership. From the tales of my grandparents, it was a mix of Soviet oppression and Wild West. In the Wismut, the miners were very well paid (for post-war East Germany), but they were a rowdy bunch and quite often had quarrels (also physical) with the East German police and Soviet camp guards (who of course couldn't simply "mow down" their highly qualified work force). Eventually in the mid- to late 50's, it calmed down, and working for the Wismut was more or less a normal job (albeit with a high risk of dying early of lung cancer and/or silicosis). After the reuninification, the German government invested big into fixing the environmental damage that was done in 40 years, and that took over a decade. Props to them for this, the Erzgebirge is quite a nature paradise today.
sn41 6y ago
Prisoners handling radioactive material without protective material and gear, was also done in the Gulag system - e.g. Butugychag in Magadan, Siberia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag

motohagiography 6y ago

It's frustrating to hear stories about writers under totalitarianism, not just because of the pervasive state oppression, but because not one of them will prevent it from rising again. Writers like Havel and Solzhenitsyn's work ostensibly contributed to the ending of the European totalitarian system, but only decades after it rose, and after those cultures were destroyed. I worked with people who left or escaped communism, and many had brought the indolent bureaucratic cynicism and shame of the societies broken by communism with them. It takes generations to recover. The necessary condition for it to prevail is when people (young men in particular) lose their sense of social identity and personal networks so that they are isolated from each other and can't get more than three to five together at once to privately share their experience of the movements infiltrating their communities. It's a playbook. If only we would treat writers today as the canaries in the coal mine for this same totalitarian force of history, and learn how urgent these lessons from the 20th century truly are.

sosull 6y ago
This is really insightful. I appreciate you taking the time to write it.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Ironically, a lot of artists who made reputations as dissidents chafing against a totalitarian regime, ultimately repudiated those dissident political views or even came to feel nostalgic for the Soviet regime specifically. Solzhenitsyn himself is famous for becoming a reactionary in later life and wanting heavy-headed leadership over his country, only this time it would supposedly be OK because it would be rooted in ancient Christian Russian culture and not the "godless, foreign" regime that was Communism for him.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union were very different beasts and to label them both as simply heavy-handed is to paint with far too wide a brush.

HelloNurse 6y ago

The article focuses on Philip Roth's fictionalized adaptations of those interesting times, but there's also "Why write? : collected nonfiction 1960-2013" (ISBN 9781598535402, according to my public library catalog) which contains a lot of collected essays and interviews about Czech dissident writers and Roth's visits to Prague.