ISBN: Ostalo
Godina izdanja: 1971
Jezik: Engleski
Autor: Strani

Journalist M - A Year is Eight Months: Czechoslovakia 1968
Doubleday, 1971
260 str.
meki povez
stanje: vrlo dobro

Introduction by Tad Szulc.

The author is a Czech journalist, an old acquaintance of Tad Szulc, the American reporter who introduces the book. Its tone is detached; one would expect more passionate opinions from what Szulc describes as an idealistic longtime Communist. Most of the book might have been written by Szulc himself; it is quite devoid of Central European idiom as well as communist terminology, and the modest inside data it presents is of the circumstantial newsweekly variety (the Two Thousand Words proclamation of June was nothing new in itself). `M` describes Slovak nationalism at length without interpretation. He stresses the conservatives` contribution to toppling Novotny, and the Dubcek group`s difficulty in steering toward reform while balancing its left and right opposing factions. Staying mostly on the level of Party developments, the book tells us little about the basic alignment of social forces. There is even less discussion of the basis for Soviet intervention; the issue of West German relations, e.g., arises only incidentally, without reference to the specific loan and trade questions which loomed so large. As a report of Central Committee flux and Extraordinary Congress suspense, it`s thorough, but the story lacks intellectual zest or the immediacy of other participant-observers` books (like Wechsberg`s The Voices, 1969, p. 49). Rather, in its emphasis on political shakeup and documentary annotation, it seems comparable to Zeman`s Prague Spring, (p. 51), a reference, not a revelation.

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