EXPERIMENTAL AND CLINICAL TRANSPLANTATION

Czechoslovakia was created after the First World War in 1918 as a common state of Czechs, Moravians, and Slovaks. After several transformations, 2 separate republics were established from Czechoslovakia in 1993: the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The objective of this article was to analyze the Prague Spring (1968), the period after the invasion into Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact Troops (1968), the period of cruel normalization (1968-1989), and the influence of Soviet domination in the Czechoslovak Republic on people with higher education. The invasion of the Warsaw Pact Troops into Czechoslovakia and the period of normalization had a highly negative impact on the life and work of the Czechoslovak people. Many eminent scientists left the Republic. The reason for this was persecution for their attitude to the situation behind the Iron Curtain. Professor Jan Brod, a world-renowned nephrologist and cardiologist, one of the signatories of the Two Thousand Words Manifesto, emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1968. Professor William Ganz, a world-renowned cardiologist of Slovak origin, emigrated to the United States in 1966. With Jeremy Swan, he was a coinventor of the Swan-Ganz balloon flotation catheter. Primary reasons for the emigration of scientists from Czechoslovakia was the suppression of the nascent democracy (the Prague Spring in 1968 by the invasion of Warsaw Pact Troops and the continuation of Soviet rule).

Key words : Invasion into Czechoslovakia, Prague spring 1968, Political emigration of scientists, Warsaw Pact Troop

Czechoslovakia was created after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, after the World War 1, in 1918. Following the Pittsburgh Agreement of May 1918, the Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence was drawn up in Washington and signed by the Provisional Government, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (Prime Minister and Minister of Finance), Milan Rastislav štefánik (Minister of National Defence), and Eduard Beneš (Minister of Foreign Affairs) on October 18, 1918, in Paris, and proclaimed on October 28, 1918, in Prague.

Two days later, Slovaks joined the Czechs in accordance with the Martin Declaration. The following year, Czechoslovakia expanded to include Subcar-pathian Rus, and this form of the First Czechoslovak Republic remained until the German occupation in 1938 (Figure 1). After several transformations, 2 separate republics were formed from Czechoslovakia in 1993: the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The division of Czechoslovakia was preceded by 3 significant periods: the Prague Spring (1968), the years of normalization (1969-1989), and a short period after the Velvet Revolution (1989-1992), with the fall of the Iron Curtain.^1-5

This article analyzes the fate of Czechoslovakia after World War 2, especially the period after the Prague Spring and the period after the Warsaw Pact Troop (WPT) invasion into Czechoslovakia, when the dominant influence of the Soviet Union continued for another 20 years. In addition, the article also analyzes the impact of Soviet rule in Czechoslovakia on prominent intellectuals from various fields after 1968.

History of the Prague Spring

Socialism with a human face

In January 1968, Alexander Dubček (Figure 2) was elected first Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and became the chief reformer. In April 1968, a program was adopted that guaranteed, among other things, freedom of religion, the press, assembly, expression, and travel, a program that, according to Dubček, would give socialism a “human face.”^1,2

The Two Thousand Words manifesto

On June 27, 1968, in Literární Listy and elsewhere, the political manifesto of the famous Czech writer and journalist Ludvík Vaculík, Two Thousand Words, was published, which was addressed to workers, peasants, artists, and everyone. The manifesto was considered the most important document of the Prague Spring. It emerged at the motion of staff at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which included Jan Brod (nephrologist, cardiologist), Otakar Poupa (physiologist), Miroslav Holub (immunologist, poet), and Otto Wichterle (macromolecular chemist, inventor of modern soft contact lenses) (Figure 3). The aim of the manifesto was to activate the Czechoslovak public against the increasing pressure of the dogmatic wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which was supported by the highest representatives of the Soviet Union. More than 100 000 people signed it, most of them intellectuals.⁶ An attempt at socialism with a “human face” and the manifesto Two Thousand Words aroused resentment among the Soviets. As a result, the WPT invasion into Czechoslovakia (except for Romania), led by the Soviets, occurred on the night of August 20/21, 1968 (Figure 4). About half a million soldiers and about 6000 tanks took part in the invasion. The Soviets officially called this invasion “Fraternal International Aid.” The government called on the nation not to engage in open fighting. The occupation left 137 people dead and more than 500 severely injured.

The collapse of the reform process after the entry of the WPT heralded the fate of the Two Thousand Words manifesto and its key authors. They were persecuted for their actions, lost their jobs, and could not continue their careers, and many were threatened with imprisonment. The manifesto was designated as the main symbol of the “alleged counter-revolution.” The main Czechoslovak reformers were forcibly and secretly transferred to the Soviet Union, where they were forced to sign the Moscow Treaty, which provided for the “temporary deployment” of Soviet troops (75 000 soldiers) in Czechoslovakia. Their presence on the territory of Czechoslovakia lasted until 1991.^6-8

Period of normalization (1970s to 1980s)

Alexander Dubček was replaced by Gustáv Husák. He declared Dubček's experiment terminated and quickly initiated the process of “normalization.” All the reform elements were abolished, and people were cruelly persecuted, especially those who sought to change the system. They began to have existential problems, and this forced them to leave the country. These factors resulted in a huge wave of emigration.

The emigration that occurred after August 1968 was followed by another major wave of refugees, after the establishment of Charter 77. Charter 77 was a civic initiative that represented the most significant action of resistance against the communist regime in the normalized Czechoslovakia. The main initiator of Charter 77 was Václav Havel (the last president of Czechoslovakia from December 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia). The main reason for its creation was criticism of the government for human rights violations. Chartists, mostly intellectuals, were severely persecuted by the regime. In many cases, the State Security (štB), forced them, as inconvenient people, to emigrate.⁹

The invasion of the WPT into Czechoslovakia and the period of cruel normalization under Soviet rule negatively affected the lives and work of the Czechoslovak people. Many eminent scientists had to leave the country, with a political emigration from behind the “Iron Curtain.”⁹

Examples of Persecuted Scientists and Writers Who Emigrated

Professor Dr.Med. Jan Brod, FRCP (1912-1985), professor of medicine at Charles University in Prague, had an important role in Czechoslovak medicine during the 20th century. He was one of the founders of academic nephrology in Europe and modern clinical nephrology in Czechoslovakia. He was a pioneer in the pathophysiology approach to kidney disease and hypertension. In 1951, he was a cofounder of the Institute of Cardiovascular Research in Prague and in 1961 became its second director. In 1962, Professor Brod wrote the book Kidneys: Physiology, Clinical Physiology, Clinic, in Czech. The book was translated into German and into English. This book had greatly enriched the knowledge of clinical nephrology, not just in Czechoslovakia but also in other central European countries.

In 1968, Professor Brod was one of the 4 main initiators and authors of the Two Thousand Words manifesto. He knew what repression would follow after the invasion of the WPT, so he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1969, he became the head of the newly established Nephrology Department of the University Hospital in Hanover. He looked forward to his retirement, which he wanted to spend at his second home in Great Britain. He died in 1984, so unfortunately he did not live to see the fall of the Iron Curtain. His final resting place is at The Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Leamington Spa in the United Kingdom.¹⁰

Professor Otakar Poupa (1916-1999) was one of the authors and initiators of the Two Thousand Words manifesto. After the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, he emigrated to Scandinavia. Before 1968, he worked at the Department of Physiology of Professor Vilém Laufberger in Prague, who discovered ferritin, an iron-containing protein. In 1961, he became a full professor of pathological physiology at the Charles University and a corresponding member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1968. In exile, he continued to research the hearts of rare and “unorthodox” vertebrates, from which he tried to reconstruct the natural history of the heart.¹¹

Professor William Ganz was born in 1919 in Košice, Slovakia and died in 2009 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He studied in Košice at the same gymnasium as Professor Miroslav Mydlík. In 1947, he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the Charles University in Prague. Since 1962, under the leadership of Professor Jan Brod, he worked at the Institute of Cardiovascular Research as a renowned cardiologist and head of a coronary group. Although the political situation eased in 1966 to 1968, he assumed that the Soviet Union would not allow Czechoslovakia to become a democratic country. In 1966, William Ganz and his family emigrated to Los Angeles. He became professor of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and continued his work under the guidance of Professor Jeremy Swan. Together they developed the so-called “Swan-Ganz balloon flotation catheter.” Its use in cardiology has spread throughout the world. In the United States, he developed a method of local thrombolytic therapy and conducted the first studies on coronary thrombolytic therapy in patients with acute myocardial infarction.¹²

Another main initiator of Two Thousand Words was Professor Ing. Otto Wichterle (1913-1998), a Czechoslovak macromolecular chemist and inventor of gel contact lenses. In 1969, he was removed from his post of Director of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry but did not emigrate and continued to work there as an ordinary scientist.¹³

Professor Tomáš Douša (1937-1999) worked as a nephrologist under the guidance of Professor Brod at the Institute of Cardiovascular Research. In 1967, he was on an internship in Chicago. After the Soviet invasion in 1968, he did not return to his homeland. In 1977, he became Professor of Internal Medicine and Physiology at the Mayo Clinic and Foundation, Rochester, and later Director of the Nephrology Research Department at this famous clinic until his death.¹⁴

Professor Paul Schweitzer (born 1929) was an internal medicine physician and renowned cardiologist at the Internal Clinic of the Faculty Hospital and Pavol Josef šafárik University in Košice. In 1968, he emigrated to New York. He became Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s Faculty of Medicine and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. In addition, he was the head of the Antiarrhythmic Center and later Deputy Head of the Cardiology Department at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.¹⁵

Jozef škvorecký

Jozef škvorecký (1924-2012) was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He worked as an educator, editor, and translator. When his novel The Cowards was condemned and banned by communist leaders, he lost his job as editor of the journal Světová Literatura. After the invasion of the WPT into Czechoslovakia, škvorecký emigrated to Canada with his wife Zdena Salivarová. In 1971, they founded the publishing house “68 Publishers,” which for the next 20 years published banned Czech and Slovak books, for example, those by Havel, Kundera, and Vaculík. He taught at the Department of English at Toronto University, where he was appointed Professor Emeritus of English and Film.¹⁶

Arnošt Lustig (1926-2011) was a Czech Jewish writer and world-renowned publicist and author of a number of literary works on the Holocaust. He was in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In 1968, he emigrated to the United States, lectured at the American University of Washington, and was appointed Professor in 1978. Even 5 decades later, Lustig also looked at the meaning of humanity and the essence of human existence in his proses.¹⁷

Milan Kundera (born 1929), a Czech-French writer, poet, and fiction writer, graduated from the Film Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and taught world literature. At the Congress of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers (1967), he gave the introductory paper titled “Unnatural Being of the Czech Nation.” Among other things, he condemned the attempt to ban films and described the fate of Czech literature as vitally dependent on the degree of spiritual freedom. He was fired from Film Academy of Performing Arts in 1970 and lost any opportunity to publish. He left his homeland and has lived in France since 1975. He taught at the University of Social Sciences in Paris, where he founded a new field, “Central European Culture.”¹⁸

Ladislav Mňačko

Ladislav Mňačko (1919-1994) was a Slovak writer. He was one of the devotees of the communist regime in the early 1950s. Over time, he lost his enthusiasm for communism and even joined its opponents, for which he was persecuted. In 1968, he decided to leave the country and settled in Austria. His works were banned. He is known for his novel The Taste of Power, a shocking parable about how mesmerizing power a totalitarian regime can have. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1989.¹⁹

Jiří Pelikán (1923-1999) was a Czechoslovak journalist and a member of parliament. In 1939, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. His party career culminated, and, from 1955 to 1963, he held the position of Secretary-General and President of the pro-communist International Student’s Union. Pelikán at that time belonged to the ardent communists, and his harsh Stalinist attitudes corresponded exactly to what he was doing. He took part in party purges in universities. Pelikán confessed that he was responsible for exclusion of more than 10 000 college students after 1948. He himself pleaded guilty and apologized to the affected people. After the WPT entered Prague, he was “reassigned” to the diplomatic service and became a cultural attaché of the Czechoslovak Embassy in Italy. In 1969, he received political asylum in Italy. His proactive policy has gained great authority in Italy as well, and he was elected to the European Parliament for the Italian Socialist Party in 1979 and again in 1984. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he became from 1990 to 1991 a member of the Consultative Council of the President Václav Havel.²⁰

Division of Czechoslovakia

The division of the Czechoslovak Republic was about the process of dissolution of the federative state of Czechoslovakia, which was completed by the creation of 2 separate successor states on January 1, 1993: the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic. The prospect of joining the European Union mitigated the disadvantages of the disintegration of the common state of Czechoslovakia.^1-5

The primary reason for the emigration of people with higher education was the suppression of the Prague Spring and the nascent democracy by the invasion of the WPT and the continuation of Soviet rule for another 20 years, until the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989. Emigration meant a great intellectual loss for Czechoslovakia.

Volume: 21 Issue: 6 June 2023 - Supplement - 2

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