My older brother, Vladimir Imrich, who sadly passed away in March this year was named after Lenin, as during Second World War Russians were seen as liberators. By 1958 when many Czechoslovaks ended up in jail, Russians were seen as rapists. (I will not bite into the temptation to elaborate on the Iraq comparison here.)
So by the time I was born I was more likely to be named after John Lennon rather than Stalin. In fact, I was named after my father and my Polish grandfather...
My brother never left Czechoslovakia or the soil of the split brotherhood. In fact, he never travelled anywhere. But, one of the few politicians he admired was Ronald Reagan! Why? Intellectually, the facts can be twisted by the historians according to the colour of the political pendulum. Soulfully, what Reagan provided is beyond historical facts as he was one of the people who gave hope not so much to my brother Vlado, but hope to some of his four children: Aga, named after my sister who died as a result of working in a chemical communist factory, Marcel, Lukas, Tomas. The last born, Tomas came into the world four months after the Chernobyl explosion so he, like many others, was born with many disabilities. Tomas will forever be a little child who must be cared for fromthe time he opens his eyes till he goes to bed again...
Many past and present world leaders and veterans of the Cold War struggle against communism are making their way to Washington for the funeral service.
They included former Soviet communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who will formally represent Russia ...
Reagan returns to capital for last time
Tim Dunlop came, saw, Kingstonised, and blogjammed yesterday
#12 Blogjam and now more than
dozen dirty penended comments rule the blogosphere.
Tim also observed that
Ronald Reagan died and I would've liked former Czech citizen, Jozef Imrich, to say a bit more about his opinion of the former US president. You kind of get a sense of his feelings from this brief post...
Today, Czechs and Slovaks are full of praise for the American people who greatly influenced the fate of millions living in Central and Eastern Europe.
Way back when (pick your date), exiles had a simple goal for themselves and their country: to be politically incorrect
Amerikan leaders were important, but the models for future were closer geographically and politically to Prague
It is the nature of human existence that we know that sometimes in history "things happen" unexpectedly, overnight: one day Man leaves our planet and walks on the moon; in one day, symbolising Charter 77, you rock the river and the Iron Curtain; in one day you become a beach boy and marry a balletina; in one day, the Berlin Wall crumble; in one day your daughter of Velvet Revolution, named after Alexander Dubcek is born, and the world is never the same again.
There is no history, only biography and few write about it as well as Milan Kundera!
The Unbearable Lightness of Being had a remarkable success when it was published in English in 1984, the year Lauren my soulful mate crossed the Iron Curtain by herself to meet my family.
By 1984 Orwell's dystopian vision of a world ruled by totalitarian ideologies was seen to have been frighteningly prescient, particularly from the perspective of the eastern bloc countries. The cold war was at one of the hottest stages it had ever reached, with Reagan in the White House and Andropov in the Kremlin.Yet even in those bleak years, those with hearing sufficiently sharp could detect the first faint creakings of the ice-cap as it began to shift. Kundera was one of the keenest listeners to the break-up of the international order ...
Vaclav Havel said on many occasions before his death that Ronald Reagan was certainly one of the greatest statesmen of the recent era. The Czech President Havel, recalling the experience of the people in communist Europe: "The previous circumstances in our lives could be compared to a shroud of thick, impenetrable and stifling fog hanging over our whole lives. All of a sudden, with incredible speed, the fog we used to take as something virtually irremovable dispersed. Suddenly we saw an amazingly colorful landscape that had until then remained unseen. The first moments after such a radical change were marked by a universal feeling of joy. We were amazed at the beauty of the world which had until then been hidden from us, surprised at how dazzlingly bright the light of freedom was. But soon the amazement and elation passed away and we all found that the world which the fog had for so long concealed from us contained a great deal of surprising phenomena, new interrelationships, new problems and new tasks. An urgent need to build a whole new world became obvious."
Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of a new book entitled Reagan's War makes many thoughtful points about
the so-called bumpkin who won the Cold War.
Czech political scientist Jiri Pehe offers his assessment of the Reagan legacy in ending Soviet communism.
There is an irony to Reagan's masterful intuition in that even his closest advisers describe him as uninterested in the intricacies of politics
Like the Hungarian Amerikan journalist Andras Szanto, I too realised when I was serving in the Czechoslovak army from 1977 to 1979 that the Emperor did not have clothes. There were just comedy of mismanagement errors wherever one looked. I escaped from communism in 1980 a year before Reagan became the President.
In the current orgy of commemoration, Ronald Reagan's steely resolve in the face of the communist threat is taken as an article of faith.
The Great Communicator, we're reminded, put the world on notice that he was serious about bringing down the "Evil Empire." And that he wasn't afraid to spend big to win.
But the burnished vision of Reagan as St. George, single-handedly slaying the fire-breathing dragon of totalitarianism, is an exaggeration. In fact, communism's epic meltdown was more of a suicide than a capitulation.
Crooked Timber provides a critical biographical look at the contribution of the US President.
However, some of it flies in the face of what people like Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel believe was Reagan’s contribution.
Former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel advised that
He was a man of firm principles who was indisputably instrumental in the fall of Communism.
Ronald Reagan was no god.
But he understood that however mortal he was, he was, for eight years, the President of the United States.
Tomorrow will mark the anniversary (June 12, 1987) of his remarks at the Brandenburg Gate. That week I was using the email at the NSW Parliamentary Library and the boss Dr Russell Cope observed on a number of occasions the foggish salty eyes on this Bohemian. There were many hopeful comments about the speech broadcast on Radio Free Europe poring in from friends who were stuck behind the Iron Curtain.
This speech was delivered to the people of West Berlin, yet it was also audible on the East side of the Berlin wall:
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
We blog and link to stories because as bloggers, many of us seem to project hope even if we link to shocking stories of our corrupt times and when we despair we just remember:
When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
A Man Without a Country
