A poet who confronted censorship and power at each moment of reform
In September 1968, condemning the invasion, he contrasted the first tank to enter Prague with the last one to leave.
Jaroslav Seifert was a Czechoslovak poet and journalist who linked Prague’s working-class culture with the avant-garde. He left the Communist Party in 1929 in protest against its bureaucratic and Stalinist turn, while retaining a left-wing social outlook. After 1948 he led a committee examining the persecution of writers, and in 1968 he helped make the Writers’ Union a platform for abolishing censorship and widening cultural freedom, later condemning the invasion. He received the 1984 Nobel Prize in Literature, even as normalization restricted his publications and public voice.
Career timeline
- 1921Published his first poetry collection, City in Tears, and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
- 1922–1929Helped found Devětsil and edited Communist newspapers and avant-garde journals
- 1929Expelled from the Communist Party after signing the Manifesto of the Seven
- 1930–1948Worked as a journalist and cultural editor in the social-democratic and trade-union press
- 1949–1956Left journalism to write full-time and faced restrictions on publication
- 1956Criticized cultural policy toward disfavored writers at the Writers’ Congress
- 1968–1970Chaired the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union and then the Czech Writers’ Union
- 1984Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
The Czech writer who declared 'not one human question has been solved in twenty years' and authored the 'Two Thousand Words' manifesto
When Vaculík declared at the 1967 Writers' Congress that 'not one human question has been solved in the last twenty years,' the party delegation walked out and the audience erupted in long applause.
A Czech writer and Communist Party member who was expelled after his speech at the 1967 Fourth Congress of Czechoslovak Writers openly indicted the Novotný regime, declaring that 'not one human question has been solved in the last twenty years.' In June 1968 his manifesto 'Two Thousand Words' called on citizens to press for deeper reform through their own initiative, becoming a defining text of the Prague Spring and a pretext for Soviet intervention. Banned from publishing after the invasion, he founded the samizdat series Edice Petlice (Padlock Editions), which circulated works by banned writers including Václav Havel and Ivan Klíma for seventeen years. A Charter 77 signatory, he continued his criticism of the regime and, after 1989, wrote a weekly column for Lidové noviny until his death in 2015.
Career timeline
- 1945–1967Member, Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
- 1959–1965Editor, youth programming, Czechoslovak Radio
- 1965–1969Editor, Literární noviny (later Literární listy)
- 1967Expelled from the KSČ after his speech at the Fourth Congress of Czechoslovak Writers
- 1968Authored and published the 'Two Thousand Words' manifesto
- 1969–1989Banned from official publication; underground samizdat activity
- 1973–1990Founder and operator of Edice Petlice (Padlock Editions) samizdat press
- 1977Signatory, Charter 77
The Czech novelist who insisted the Prague Spring was a universal attempt to reconcile socialism with freedom
From 'The Czech Fate' in Listy, December 1968: "The Prague Spring moved Czechs and Slovaks to the center of world history… the nation had beheld its own greatness."
A Czech-French novelist. He joined the Communist Party in his youth and was expelled twice; his speech demanding an end to censorship at the 1967 Writers' Congress opened the intellectual prelude to the Prague Spring. After the Warsaw Pact invasion he published 'Český úděl' ('The Czech Fate'), arguing the Prague Spring held universal significance as an attempt to reconcile socialism and democracy, sparking a fierce polemic with Václav Havel, who called it self-centered megalomania. He went into exile in France in 1975, achieved world fame with The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), and died in Paris in 2023.
Career timeline
- 1948Joins the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
- 1950Expelled from the party
- 1952–1970Lectures on world literature at FAMU
- 1956Readmitted to the party
- 1967Speech at IV Writers' Congress; intellectual prelude to Prague Spring
- 1968.12Publishes 'Český úděl'; polemic with Havel
- 1970Expelled again; books banned
- 1975Exile in France
- 1984Publishes The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- 2019Czech citizenship restored
Czech playwright-turned-president whose absurdist theater critiqued the regime and whose dissident leadership ended communist rule
In February 1969, Havel published 'Český úděl?' in the journal Tvář, rebutting Kundera's lyrical nationalism: 'I do not believe in this fate… first and foremost we ourselves are the masters of our fate.'
Czech playwright, dissident, and statesman. His absurdist plays The Garden Party (1963) and The Memorandum (1965) won international acclaim for their satire of the Communist system. After the Prague Spring was crushed in 1968, he answered Milan Kundera's 'Český úděl' with 'Český úděl?', arguing the reforms had merely restored freedoms that existed thirty years earlier, and turned fully to dissident politics. He co-founded Charter 77, endured nearly four years in prison (1979–1983), led the Civic Forum in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and became the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic.
Career timeline
- 1963The Garden Party premieres, playwright debut
- 1968Resists via Radio Free Czechoslovakia during Warsaw Pact invasion
- 1969Publishes 'Český úděl?' in Tvář, rebutting Kundera
- 1977Co-founds Charter 77; first spokesperson
- 1979–1983Imprisoned for dissident activity; writes Letters to Olga
- 1989Leads Civic Forum in the Velvet Revolution
- 1989–1992President of Czechoslovakia
- 1993–2003President of the Czech Republic
