Television and Totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia

From the First Democratic Republic to the Fall of Communism

Martin Štoll

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781501324789
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Storia e critica della televisione

The story of Czechoslovak television is in many respects typical of the cultural and political developments in Central Europe, behind the Iron Curtain. Martin Štoll, with unprecedented access to the Military Historical Archives in Prague, provides contextual insights into the issues of introducing television in the whole Socialist Bloc (save China, Mongolia and Cuba), from the introduction of television broadcasting in Czechoslovakia in 1921 through to the 1968 occupation and the Velvet revolution in 1989 – encapsulating an important point in media history within two totalitarian states. Television and Totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia examines the variability of political interests as reflected on television in interwar Czechoslovakia, including Nazi research on television technology in the Czech borderlands (Sudetenland), the quarrel over the outcomes of this research as war booty with the Red Army, the beginning of the Czechoslovak technological journey, and, finally, the institutionalized foundation of Czechoslovak television, including the first years of its broadcasting as a manifestation of Communist propaganda. Revised and expanded from the Czech to include broader contexts for an English-speaking audience, Štoll expertly elucidates the historical, cultural, social, political, and technological frameworks to provide the first comprehensive study of the subject.

1

The silent majorities, Sovietization, and ‘life within a lie’

‘Whenever I turn on the radio or television, I can hear the language of history’, wrote Václav Havel’s friend and dissident Czech philosopher and essayist Milan Šimečka, in one of his essays.

For example, I see a person on TV opening his mouth and talking, but I don’t know what he is talking about and quite certainly nor does he know what he is talking about. He can be saying that all people agree with this or that measure, but I bet that he did not ask anyone, not even his neighbor who he had met in the elevator that morning. History can assume a terribly serious face, but it only produces lies. Fortunately, people speak to each other in the language of their small histories.

ŠIMEčKA 1984/1992: 8

Šimečka defines the basic contradiction which accompanied four decades of life under socialism, or any authoritarian regime. The conflict between the great and small history which can be seen as the conflict between the private and the public in a democracy or the conflict between the unofficial and official, prohibited (or merely tolerated) and permitted in a dictatorship¹ or elsewhere between the inner and the outer. Or, in Václav Havel’s words, between the truth and the lie.

Havel saw the lie even as an essential component of authoritarian (communist) power and a mechanism to maintain it:

Government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; […] the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance.

The climax of this cycle of power is that ‘[it] pretends to pretend nothing’ (Havel 1978/1990: 11).

It should be noted that in their essays Šimečka and Havel drew from the post–1968 reality, when Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Warsaw Pact armies. This period between 1969 and 1989, when the authoritarian regime collapsed, is known in the Czechoslovak context as late socialism, post-totalitarianism or normalization. The word normalization itself is absurd as it abuses the term of ‘normality’, though the reality was in sharp contrast with normal and natural social frame and interpersonal relationships.²

Havel presents his concept of ‘life within a lie’ in his essay The Power of the Powerless. He introduces the character of a greengrocer, who displays the communist slogan ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ in his shop as a sign of obedience. Havel argues that the greengrocer represents three possible courses of action available to those living in an authoritarian system. The fact that the regime expects this loyalty from the greengrocer and that he automatically complies makes it possible ‘for the game to go on, for it to exist in the first place’ (Havel 1978/1990: 11). If the greengrocer was to one day decide not to ‘ingratiate’ himself with the regime, that is to live within truth, he could decide simply: ‘to not put flags in his window when his only motive for putting them there in the first place was to avoid being reported by the house warden; he does not vote in elections that he considers false; he does not hide his opinions from his superiors’ (Havel 1978/1990: 38). Havel goes on to say:

This may, however, grow into something more. The greengrocer may begin to do something concrete, something that goes beyond an immediately personal self-defensive reaction against manipulation, something that will manifest his newfound sense of higher responsibility. He may, for example, organize his fellow greengrocers to act together in defence of their interests. He may write letters to various institutions, drawing their attention to instances of disorder and injustice around him. He may seek out unofficial literature, copy it, and lend it to his friends.

HAVEL 1978/1990: 38

FIGURE 1.1 and 1.2 Rallies of workers with compulsory participation on 1 May had their carnival elements close to absurdity. (© Martin Štoll, 1987).

This active attitude, not mere passive negation, can give birth to the ‘independent spiritual, social, and political life of society’ (Havel 1978/1990: 39). These three simplified levels – accepting the rules of the game, passive resistance and active defiance – are the basic models of life in the East European communist context, with each of them bearing their own consequences.

A majority of the citizens who did not support the system remained silent. Milan Šimečka explains: ‘For us in Eastern Europe it is not a funny term at all. Our dictatorship is able to govern so comfortably only because it is the will of the silent majority, with its consent and good-hearted indifference/unconcern.’ And naturally, like Havel, he also reflects on the outcomes of the choice of the third, active way: ‘If this silent and apathetic majority denied their obedience to the government, for example if it stopped going to work, party meetings, parades, and all other state festivities, the regime would collapse in a couple of days and it wouldn’t even have time to punish those that started this revolt’ (Šimečka 1984/1992: 30–31). It was a utopia, however; its realization contributed to the fall of the communist regimes. The minorities of people who strove to keep their integrity (workers in Poland, intelligentsia in Czechoslovakia) contributed to the activation of the majorities who then occupied public squares, fought (through violent clashes in Budapest or Poznan´), created the Baltic Chain stretching across the three Baltic States and dismantled the Berlin Wall (Švec – Macura – Štoll, P. 1996; Švec 2013).

FIGURE 1.3 Demonstration of power and joy, which Communists appropriated from the tradition of volunteer Sokol. (© Ivan Štoll, 1950).

Doubtlessly, mass media, censorship and propaganda played their unique role in building, fortifying and maintaining ‘life within a lie’, along with the direct cooperation of the silent majorities of all authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.

The specificities of East European socialisms

It is beyond the scope of this work to fully describe the multifaceted nature of socialism in Eastern Europe, how it played out in each country and fluctuated over time. However, to place the evolution of television in its historical context, this chapter will unpack at least three of the core aspects of East European communism which were common across the region.

First and foremost, it is necessary to disabuse the notion that socialism only appeared in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. The ideas of communism and class equality existed in Eastern Europe long before that. No matter if the communist parties were created independently or if they grew out of social democratic parties, they represented a certain radical force, though originally a marginal one, which was fortified by the crises of democracies as well as the economic crisis at the turn of the 1930s. Effective propaganda about the Soviet Revolution also had a significant impact. Many of those who truly believed in the idea of communism turned a blind eye to fragmented reports about the political trials in the USSR, the famine in Ukraine, forced collectivization and gulags. Many people were blinded by their faith in a strong ally and refused to believe those who had managed to catch a glimpse of the truth about life in the USSR.

In Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria, communist parties were considerably active in the anti-fascist resistance and during the Second World War, which gave them a trusted reputation when it came to the post-war division of power. As Pavel Kolář, a Czech historian settled in Florence, Italy says: ‘They were drawn from peripheral or even illegal positions right into the center of political decision making’ (Kolář 2015: 113). The Soviet Union, the main coordinator of the international communist movement, commanded great sympathies from all over Eastern Europe as one of the victors over Nazism. While the Western allies honoured the spheres of influence agreed upon in Potsdam (1945) the Soviets actively supported the installation of dictatorships in Bulgar...