SOU OBÉ ĚJINY - Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV - Akademie věd ČR

Summaries Anotace 525
engineering and automated systems of control and a member of several academic
societies. During the ‘Prague Spring’ he was active in K 231 (or Klub 231, Klub
bývalých politických vězňů, the Association of Former Political Prisoners). In the
mid-1970s, with the help of the former journalist Eugen Vrba (1918–2004), who was
under secret-police surveillance, Dolejší attempted to send academic articles about
Czechoslovakia to the West, for which he would receive payment. In 1976 both men
were arrested. Although the official dossiers did not state clearly whether Dolejší’s
and Vrba’s reports contained sensitive intelligence, the two men were accused of
spying and Vrba was sentenced to ten years in prison, Dolejší to eleven. Dolejší was
released in 1985, twenty months before his sentence would have ended.
The author claims that Dolejší’s analysis, which seeks to explain the events of
November 1989 as a conspiracy of dissidents, Communists, and foreign secret services,
was psychologically determined by the tragic fate of its author and that it is fair to
see it as a particular way of seeking satisfaction for wrongs done. For men imprisoned
in the 1950s, and who had thus been robbed of their futures, it was painful to see
former Communists, albeit signatories of Charter 77, who had in several cases been
involved in their persecution, taking up senior posts in public life. For Dolejší one such
person was Vladimír Kolmistr (born 1930), a member of Obroda (Rebirth), the club
of dissident reform-Communists, and then a member of the Czech Parliament (Czech
National Council) in the 1990s. In 1950, as Chairman of the Kladno District Committee
of the Czech Youth Association (Český svaz mládeže), Kolmistr had instigated Dolejší’s
expulsion from secondary school. Evidence of this is provided by the minutes of the
meeting about the expulsion, which are also published here with an introduction by
the historian Jaroslav Cuhra, putting them in the broader context.
Discussion
‘So, How Should It Have Been Done’ Pithart’s Questions
and the Civic Forum Historical Committee
Jan Křen and Pavel Seifter
In this contribution, the authors, both historians, but this time as eye-witnesses, ask
the question that Petr Pithart touched upon in his memoirs, Devětaosmdesátý (Eightynine;
2009): What could have been done to prevent the widespread destruction and
theft of secret-police files and other archive records in Czechoslovakia in late 1989
The authors cast doubt on Pithart’s claim that this state of affairs was a result of the
situation in society and that it was impossible to influence it in any fundamental way.
The solution, the authors believe, was offered by the Historical Commission of the
Civic Forum, of which they were members, whose draft proposals for the security
and preservation of archive records, as well as other work from December 1989 and
January 1990, they discuss here. They also discuss why these proposals were not
given a fair hearing in the Coordinating Centre of the Civic Forum.