Portál hlavního města Prahy

In the fiftiesPavel Kohout’s work was full of Communist creative optimism (his very first book published in year1950, was a collection of political fairy tales called “About black and white”). In the nineteen sixties he belonged among eminent Czech dramatists and also won recognition abroad. At first he embarked upon a few adaptations – Čapek’s The War with Salamanders and Hašek’s The Good soldier Svejk (under the title Josef Svejk alias So, they killed our Ferdinand). These plays were well received internationally as well. Later on, in 1967 he wrote a play August August, august in which he expressed his feeling that he is for the political establishment just a circus clown, a stupid August who is slapped in front of public. This play was a kind of breaking-up with the period that had lasted more than 15 years and during which time he had been serving the Communist Establishment.

What to do now, citizen?

The beginning of a radical change was his speech on the IV Congress of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, where he demanded freedom of expression for writers without being restricted by censorship. His speech didn’t meet with approval from those were in power but he received applause from many of his colleagues that were of the same opinion.

In few moths time the situation looked completely different. Kohout was on the 20 ^th 1968 elected as a leader of the main organisation of the Party by the Writers’ Union and he was one of the first who started discussion in the press about perspectives concerning the “revivalist process”. On 13 ^th March he took part on the evening discussion in the Slavic House where he, together with Jan Procházka, Josef Smrkovský, Marie Švermova etc., replied to questions from young people. There he also appealed to compromised officials to resign from their posts. Already three days later at the meeting of Communists from Prague 1 he presented a draft of the letter that appealed to Antonín Novotny to resign from the post of the President. Out of his articles that were written in spring 68, the most significant is probably a commentary with the title What to do now, citizen? that was published on 16 ^th May in Literární listy (The Literary Papers). He contemplates the split-up of the Communist Party that had a conservative wing and the wing of “Ludvík Vaculík”. He was afraid that the conservative wing was still very strong.

Kohout was also one of the authors of the document Citizens’ Message for the leadership of ÚV KSČ (the Central Committee of the Communist Party). This document was published on 26. 7. 1968 before the delegation left for Čierna above Tisa. He came up with one of the main logos We are with you, be with us! Thus he created a sort of his own “Two thousand Words”…

Diary of Contra revolutionary

In the time of the August occupation Kohout was on holiday in Italy. Shortly after 21 ^st August he hurried to Switzerland and Germany, where together with Günter Grass he appeared several times on TV and did an improvised tour around big cities. At meetings he tried to explain the nature of what was going on.

After the fateful August he for some time still believed that negotiation with the new Party leadership would be possible. In January 1969 it finally dawned on him that he was definitely on the other side of the barricade. The last straw was when he witnessed the discovery of a tapping device in the Václav Havel’s flat. Shortly afterwards he started writing his Diary of a Contra revolutionary for the Swiss publishing house C.J. Bucher Jũrgen Braunschweiger. Thus he became for several years a writer living in the Czech Republic but publishing abroad.

He was one of the first to whom after the fall of the Prague Spring the State Security paid close attention. Already in February 1969 there appeared in secret service files a note that he “appears to be one of the right wing elements of the after January period”. The Secret police had been recording Kohout’s speeches from the Radio Free Europe and from 1968 until 1970 also his interviews for West German media…After several years of precarious squabbling between the writer and the state police the situation culminated on 1 ^st October 1979 when they took away Kohout’s Czechoslovakian citizenship and he chose Vienna to be his new home.