On 3 November the Frontline Club hosted an event organised by the Czech Centre London, the insight with Michael Žantovský was part of the ‘Made in Prague’ festival season. Michael Žantovský, who is the current Czech Ambassador to the Court of St James, was discussing his new book called Havel: A Life. 

Václav Havel was elected as President of Czechoslovakia in December of 1989 after 41 years of communist rule. His political activities during the communist regime brought him under the surveillance of the secret police and led to multiple prison stints, including a four-year incarceration between 1979 and 1983. His Civic Forum Party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution, and Havel himself was instrumental in dismantling the Warsaw Pact and expanding NATO eastwards.

In January 1990, Žantovský served as Havel’s spokesman, press secretary and advisor. It was in this capacity that he was able to address a sold out Frontline Club about his lifelong friend. Not only could Žantovský provide a unique perspective on Havel as a statesman, but also as a playwright, essayist, dissident and philosopher. Alongside Žantovský sat Edward Lucas, senior editor at The Economist, and he began the questioning around the issue of Havel’s death in 2011 and what effect that had.

“It brought back many a memory and it bought back the importance of the man,” Žantovský said. “It was not quite self evident at the time [because] the last few years of Havel’s life were years of personal decline and also of some public amnesia of sorts and one could be forgiven for having the impression that he was no longer relevant to the events of the day . . . and then he died and it came as a shock to so many people and the public response was so emotional, so spontaneous and so massive that all of a sudden people realised what he meant for history, what he meant for the Czech nation and for the Slovak nation as well and some of us, including myself, realised what he meant to me personally.”

The interview then led us through Havel’s early life as a playwright and focused particularly on Havel’s 1963 play, The Garden Party, which Žantovský commented, “was an excellent metaphor for the Communist system” as it focused upon a “bureaucratic, heartless system which is only concerned with its own self preservation and with the internal struggles and games that it plays”.

Conversation then zoned in upon Havel’s political dissidence to which Lucas asked about Havel’s role in “nurturing the sentiment of independent thought”. Žantovský replied:

“Havel for a time actually went along with the way. He moved out of Prague with Olga, he stayed . . . in his country house, and he was not – he was watched – but he was not overly bothered as long as he stayed where he was . . . as long as you were not publicly active they, the system, did not necessarily hold it against you, you know, they would let you live a nice life if you didn’t bother them.”

Žantovský then went on to describe a series of events which led to the conclusion, in Havel’s mind that, “If the situation is to change he couldn’t wait for the other side to make the first move, he would have to make the first move.”

The rest of the interview covered topics such as his unconventional marriage, the chaos surrounding the abrupt fall of the Berlin wall, and the common misconceptions surrounding Havel’s character. When the floor was opened to for the question and answer session, Žantovský fielded numerous questions about Havel and his relationship with Václav Klaus. Žantovský replied:

“Again [there is] this stereotype that Václav Havel and Václav Klaus were antagonists who were at loggerheads throughout their political lives and couldn’t get along. I think it shows that, you know, for all their differences and they had significant differences and I comment on a couple of those, they were real politicians, and as politicians they both realised at certain points they couldn’t get some things done without each other. . . . They were able to forget about their differences and do the important things together.”

You can order a copy of Michael Žantovský’s book Havel: A Life here.

Watch and listen to the talk here:

This event is organised by the Czech Centre London.

Twenty five years ago in December 1989, Václav Havel was elected as President of Czechoslovakia, marking the end of the Velvet Revolution and with it, the culmination of 41 years of communist rule.

Before becoming a statesman, Havel was a playwright, essayist, dissident and philosopher. His political activities during the communist regime brought him under the surveillance of the secret police and led to multiple prison stints, including a four-year incarceration between 1979 and 1983. His Civic Forum Party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution, and Havel himself was instrumental in dismantling the Warsaw Pact and expanding NATO eastwards. Above all, however, he remained an intellectual and an artist.

By his side throughout was Michael Žantovský, Havel’s press secretary, speech-writer, translator and close friend. The pair met as dissidents under communist rule and remained close until Havel’s death in 2011. Žantovský will be joining us in conversation with Edward Lucas, senior editor at The Economist, to bear witness to Havel’s extraordinary life as documented in his new book Havel: A Life, and to share his own experiences of living through the Velvet Revolution and the formation of the Czech Republic.

Michael Žantovský is the current Czech Ambassador to the Court of St James. He was among the founding members of the movement that coordinated the overthrow of the communist regime. In January 1990, he became the spokesman, press secretary and advisor to his lifelong friend, President Václav Havel. He has combined a career in politics and the foreign service with work as an author and translator into Czech of many contemporary British and American writers.

Part of the Made in Prague Festival, 17 October – 30 November 2014.

On Wednesday 19 June, the Frontline Club audience burst into spontaneous applause to the precision choreography of a Transnistrian military parade. The footage was part of the documentary film Fortress, shown at the preview screening of Open City Docs Fest, supported by the Czech Centre London as part of One World Echoes in London.

Capturing aspects of everyday life in the unrecognised Pridnestrovian Moldovian Republic, from televised propaganda to school graduation ceremonies, the film offered rare insight into the little-known world that is also known as Transnistria. Czech director Lukáš Kokeš explained what his film was about:

“It’s not only about human rights, and not only a travelogue about an exotic country. The main topic for us was the atmosphere of that place, and we called it Fortress because we think that in every country there is a kind of a fortress. It shows us that Transnistria, with its corruption and its absurd regime is not so far away as we thought. So I think sometimes we all live in a small fortress called Transnistria.”

Moderator and Founding Director of Open City Docs Fest Michael Stewart kicked off the Q&A:  “As young chap who wasn’t, I’m sure, familiar with the occupation of your country by the great Russian forces, how come you made this particular film?”

“The biggest motivation for us to go there and make a film was that we didn’t know about the existence of this territory, or country,” replied Kokeš. “Often the territory is described as a dangerous place where you should never go; so we wanted to explore it and fill this black gap on the European map. … We felt we were connected to the reality there, as it was similar to the communist past of our country.”

“There are speculations,” responded Kokeš, to a question on arms smuggling:

“They may have been sold in the 90s. The main income for the state comes from smuggling. They are smuggling food, cigarettes, alcohol, everything that comes from Ukraine goes through Transnistria. And there it gets lost. The son of Igor Smirnov, the [former] President, was the head of border control.”

“The fear of the people,” was the main obstacle the team faced in filming:

“This situation is similar to the Czechoslovakian reality during the 70s or 80s,” said Kokeš. “Because people fear they could lose their jobs, they don’t want to criticise the regime.”

He added, “It’s very interesting that nowadays:

“The secret service in Transnistria, at that time when we were shooting it was called MGB, which means Ministry of State Security; after the new President was elected – he was perceived as big hope, as a democratic force – he changed the name from MGB to KGB again.”

On internet access in the territory,  Kokeš observed, “there’s only one internet provider, controlled by the state”:

“The internet is there, you can surf, find everything you want, but you are being watched. Last month they started to block all the opposition sites, or the forums where people are discussing political issues. So it’s very easy for them to control.”

Asked about the potential resolution of the territorial conflict with Moldova, Kokeš replied:

“The propaganda is very, very strong. After 20 years they succeeded to make this brainwashed generation, because even the young people, they told us that Moldova is enemy territory to them. Officially there is still war between Moldova and Transnistria. Only they are not fighting. So Moldovans are enemies to them.”

To conclude, Kokeš described how the project changed his own perception:

“I was expecting a Soviet open-air museum. I expected only old cars, but suddenly there were pink Hummers. So I started to think things are more complicated. We started to ask people how could they describe the regime: is it socialist or democratic or dictatorship or something in between? And they said: it’s very complicated. It’s anarchy, it’s oligarchy, it’s democracy but with its own rules, it’s a complex problem.”

Fortress was presented as part of the One World Echoes in London series, supported by the Czech Centre London and in collaboration with One World Prague.

Upcoming films in the series are Black Out and Stone Games, both at Open City Docs Fest on Sunday 23 June.

This is not a Cold War spy thriller. It is a story about the complex, difficult and testing, personal battles fought to preserve one’s own human spirit and compassion; to find the courage to act in a way that defies an all-enveloping totalitarianism and courts ruin or anonymous destruction. The story is set in a Czechoslovakia where many live resignedly in a limbo, dreamlike state, the consequence of the country’s failed “Prague Spring.”

There are obvious parallels between the plight of the captive, innocent animals and the inhabitants of Czechoslovakia. The masters of both the human and animal herds want to control every aspect of the lives of their charges.

The 32 giraffes  are part of a grand Socialist scheme to demonstrate communist superiority. An official explains the authorities not only want to maintain the largest herd in captivity but to create a new subspecies, Camelopardalis bohemica, adapted to Central Europe’s snowy winters.

The story is told by characters whose lives become entwined with the giraffes’ fate. One of these, Emil, is a haemodynamicist – a scientist who studies the blood flow of vertical creatures – and who is despatched to meet the ship delivering the giraffes to Hamburg. He resents communism which he says “lengthens and darkens the corridors of the Czechoslovak Socialist republic, year by year, into the corridors of nightmares” but, like most of his compatriots, he makes compromises necessary to avoid danger and secure some comforts.

Others drawn into the tale include Amina, a country girl who works in a factory close to the zoo where the giraffes arrive. She is a sleepwalker and the beautiful creatures grip her imagination and fill her dreams. Another is Jiri, a forester, hunter and expert sharpshooter, who is a loyal communist because it allows him to lead a distinctly un-communist life in the wilderness that he loves.

Ledgard displays dazzling imagination and originality when he allows one of the giraffes, Snehurka, to credibly present her own tale. His considerable knowledge of nature and wild animals bring to life Snehurka not as a cutely anthropomorphic “Jungle Book” character but in an entirely believable, unsentimental manner.

Ledgard masterfully conjures up many striking images such as the barge bearing its strange cargo, with towering heads protruding impassively through the tarpaulins sheltering them as it slowly makes its progress from the sea along canals and rivers to Czechoslovakia startling observers, including West German nudists and coupled lovers, on the water’s banks by day and drifting under the stars like a lost dream through sleeping towns and cities.

Emil says: “All suffering is connected. That is the feeling I have now on this barge of giraffes passing through Dresden: one suffering connects to another and binds us, as joy binds us.”
The book is filled with connections between people and ideas, many apparently improbable, but which are shown to be linked in a web, like the complex veins and arteries in the giraffes’ heads and bodies which allow them to survive.

This kaleidescope of connections encompasses characters out of childhood books, polar bears whose fates are decreed by English kings and Cromwell, mythological Czech water spirits, mermaids, Archduke Franz Ferdinand among many others. The images also provide snapshots of Czechoslovak history.

A painting of giraffes by Salvador Dali is mentioned in the book and there is indeed a quality of surrealism in the slightly suffocating atmosphere that pervades much of the narrative, something emphasised by an often chimerical dialogue as if the characters are putting into words the snatched thoughts and uninvited images that fleetingly establish their presence but rarely stay long enough to be sculpted into form by words.

The threads linking the characters are drawn tightly together after the giraffes are suspected of being infected with a disease that could spread to the farm livestock essential to the country’s economy and their destruction is ordered in a secret nighttime shooting.

In this novel Jonathan Ledgard has given notice of the kind of complex intellectual territory he endeavours to explore. It is not easy terrain but the first expedition has been a triumph. Ledgard’s thorough research provides fascinating information about giraffes and you will probably want to visit a zoo soon after reading the book.

Giraffe
By Jonathan Ledgard
Price: £7.99