The Jazz Section was one of the most remarkable cultural institutions in “normalized” Czechoslovakia. Established in 1971 as part of the official Musicians' Union, the Jazz Section used its legal status to arrange jazz and rock concerts and to publish a variety of books without the permission or consent of the Communist authorities. From the late 1970s, the regime strove hard to close the Section; however, it survived until 1984. Only in 1986 did the regime find a way to prosecute its leading activists. This article investigates why persecution proved so troublesome. It focuses on the impact of the Jazz Section's legalistic strategy, and on the role of legal concerns in regime behavior. It argues that references to “law and order” had a central legitimizing function in the social discourse of the Husák regime, and that the resulting need to translate policies of repression into legal measures inhibited the authorities in their assertion of power and created an ambiguous window of opportunity for independent social activism.
The main reason is the limited capacity of the offset press of the printing office doing the Section's news bulletin. See Vladimír Kouřil, Jazzová sekce v čase i nečase (Praha: Torst, 1999), 19, and Karel Srp , Výjimečné stavy-povolání Jazzová sekce (Praha: Pragma, 1994), 56. Kouřil estimates the total number of members to be 8,220 persons, while the Secret Police in 1995 found a list of 11,339 members in a computer database kept by Karel Višřák, a member of the Jazz Section; see Karel Tomek: "Akce JAZZ," Securitas Imperii10 (2003): 256 n. 50, and Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 203.
2.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 24. Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 49 and 56. The Secret Police complained in an internal report that the Jazz Section was allowed to build a membership base in all Czechoslovakia in conflict with its own statutes; see Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 239.
3.
Petr Sedlecký : "Případ Jazzová sekce," Svědectví, Vol. XX, No. 79(1986): 533-42, quotation on 535. Official documents reveal the deep truth of this observation. In March 1983, the Ministry of Culture asked the Musicians' Union immediately to get hold of the stamp and the letterhead paper, and again in 1984, the Union functionary responsible for the dissolution ("likvidace") of the Jazz Section made the immediate confiscation of the rubber stamp of the Jazz Section a priority. But even in 1985, the Secret Police raged that the "Jazz Section still uses rubber stamps, letterhead paper, and has its own offices" due to the tardiness and inefficiency of the Ministry of Culture and the Musicians' Union; see Tomek, " Akce JAZZ," 252, 282, and 302.
4.
This changed slightly towards the very end of the Section's life as its battle for existence was more openly politicized. Still, contacts with Charter 77 were few and on an individual basis; see Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 18, 24, and 304. Srp was much against associating the Section too closely with the Charter; see Srp , Výjimečné stavy, 177-78. The Charter 77 praised the Jazz Section in its Document No. 33 of 1983, "On popular music," reprinted in Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 57-76. See also Josef Vlček: "Hudební alternativní scény sedmdesátých a osmdesátých let," In Josef Alan, ed., Alternativní kultura. Příběh české společnosti 1945-1989 (Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2001), 222-23 and 233, on the slow rapprochement between the musical underground and the Jazz Section activists, and on the politicizing of the Section in the early 1980s.
5.
Lubomír Dorůžka: Panoráma paměti ( Praha: Torst, 1997), 362.
6.
Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 101, see also 25. Kouřil gives a less enthusiastic account of why the Section chose this legal strategy-it was forced by circumstances for lack of alternatives- and of how efficient it eventually was. But he also remarks: "I admit that . . . our complaints against the state and its authorities . . . led us more toward enthusiasm than toward fear." See Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 30-32, quotation on 31. Tomek claims that the Section only began to use a strategy of legal self-defense from 1985, inspired by the lawyer Josef Průša; see Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 254. But as is seen in the following, references to the law and the use of legal advice were inherent to the Section's strategy from its earliest beginnings.
7.
See the definitions in Jiří Boguszak: Základy socialistické zákonnosti v ČSSR (Praha: Nakladatelství Československé Akademie Věd, 1963), 7-8, and Milan Čičakolektív: Československý socialistický štát a právo: Vznik a rozvoj (Bratislava: Veda, 1987 ), 193.
8.
This useful analytical distinction is developed in Inga Markovits, "Law or Order- Constitutionalism and Legality in Eastern Europe," Stanford Law Review34:3 (1982): 513-613; see esp. 516-23.
9.
Specialist law journals such as Review of Socialist Law, WGO-Monatshefte für Osteuropäisches Recht, Osteuropa-Recht, or Jahrbuch für Ostrecht, followed legal developments in the "socialist" states, including Czechoslovakia. My point thus refers to scholarship in the fields of history and political science.
10.
This view is expressed in Vilém Hejl and Karel Kaplan, Zpráva o organizovaném násilí (Toronto: 68 Publishers , 1986 ). The authors saw nothing but organized violence in the Communist use of the judiciary, and summed up their findings: "The Communist regime came to power after the systematic destruction of the existing legal order, and then failed to respect even the products of its own legislative activity . . . And history only repeats itself in the 1970s and 1980s" (182).
11.
The most comprehensive study is Josef Pokstefl: Der soziale Wandel in der ČSSR und sein Reflex auf das politische und Verfassungssystem (Marburg an der Lahn: Johann-Gottfried-Herder-Institut , 1984). See also by the same author: " Die ideologische Bewältigung des Prager Frühlings' in der ČSSR (1969-1976) ," Berichte des Bundesinstituts für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien 33 (1978), in particular 36-55, and: "Das Recht als Instrument des' Konsolidierungsprozesses' in der ČSSR," Jahrbuch für Ostrecht19 ( 1978): 155-82. Valuable is also Zdeněk Jičínský: Právní myšlení v 60. letech a za normalizace (Praha: Prospektrum1992); see esp. 175-94. Jaroslav Cuhra, Trestní represe odpůrců režimu v letech 1969-1972 ( Praha: Sešity Ústavu pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR 29, 1997), gives a detailed account of the methods employed in the early stages of "normalization." The general lack of interest in the subject is reflected in Otáhal's comprehensive biographical essay on research on "normalization," which mentions developments in the legal sphere only in passing; see Milan Otáhal: Normalizace 1969-1989-Příspěvek ke stavu bádání (Praha : Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AVČR, 2002), 54-55.
12.
Zdeněk Jičínský: Charta 77 a právní stát (Brno: Doplněk, 1995), 108 (from an article written in May 1989). Jiří Příbaň, one of the few scholars writing about the function of law in socialist Czechoslovakia, argues: ". . . later-stage communist regimes . . . shifted much of their power into the system of judicial power and legal institutions. Instead of the party militia, it was courts and prosecutors who had become the real `iron fist' of the Party and working class." Jiří Příbaň, " Political Dissent, Human Rights, and Legal Transformations: Communist and Post-Communist Experiences," East European Politics and Societies19: 4 ( 2005): 562.
13.
References as in note 1. Srp's memoirs are impressionistic and melodramatic and focus mostly on the last years of the Section's life, while Kouřil's book is a sober and well-documented history of the Section.
14.
Otáhal, Normalizace, 66. See also Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 34, on the Jazz Section's importance for the development of civil society.
15.
The Czech émigré writer Josef Škvorecký was very active in informing about the Jazz Section abroad. Under the pseudonym Vladimíra Burke, he published a series of articles in the Czech exile journal Západ (see Západ, 5:4 ( 1983): 16-21; 5:5 (1983): 1-9; 5:6 (1983): 1-4; 6:5 (1984): 1-4; 8:6 (1986): 1-5; and 9:3 (1987): 12-13). Among his articles in English language media we find: "Jamming the Jazz Section and The History Behind the Trial of the Jazz Section of the Czech Musicians' Union," The New York Review of Books35:11 (1988): 40-42.
16.
Reference as in note 1. Tomek focuses mostly on secret police documents from the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior, several of which are printed in the appendix to his study. A different and broader set of materials can be found in the archive of the Institute of Contemporary History ("Ústav pro soudobé dějiny") in Prague, which has collected an extensive file on the Jazz Section with 1,113 entries. Documents from this collection will be cited as ÚSD Jazz/ (file number). In his memoirs, Srp cites various documents from the Ministry of the Interior and the Secret Police that do not appear in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary History or in Tomek's study.
17.
See Lubomír Dorůžka: Český jazz mezi tanky a klíči 1968-1989 (Praha: Torst, 2002), 9, 19-20.
18.
Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 23. See also Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 14-15, Vlček, "Hudební alternativní scény," 221, and Dorůžka , Panoráma, 358-59, on the founding of the Jazz Section and on the character of the Union of Musicians.
19.
The Section also wanted to be "an integral part of our progressive cultural front," etc. Throughout its lifetime, the Jazz Section frequently used such official socialist jargon in its appeals and public statements. The declaration was brought on the front page of Jazz 1, the first Bulletin of the Jazz Section, reprinted in Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 41.
20.
The last bulletin, the double issue Jazz 27/28, appeared in 1982. On 1 May 1972, shortly after the first issue appeared, Karel Srp wrote a letter to a lawyer in Liberec, Jiří Moravec. He mentioned the Section's wish to continue publishing, adding: "But for this purpose we would need to know the more detailed directives for how we are to proceed with regard to institutions concerning themselves with the ideological content of such publications, as well as what kinds of rights and obligations we have in this field as a result of conducting editorial activity." ÚSD Jazz/ 13.
21.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 56-58.
22.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 223, dates the entry into the IJF to January 1978, while Sedlecký, "Připad Jazzová sekce," 534, has 1979. Dorůžka, who describes in detail how the IJF tried to help the Jazz Section, also seems to date the entry to 1979; see Panoráma, 362-66. The affiliation with the IJF helped the Section as it forced the Czechoslovak authorities to face also international repercussions if persecuting a legally recognized member of a UN organization; see " Zpráva jazzové sekce" Západ5:4 (1983): 17, 21.
23.
The historical account is primarily based on Kouřil's detailed presentation of the Jazz Section's various activities. See Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 246-47 and 251 on the Section's strategy for avoiding censorship.
24.
ÚSD Jazz/ 4 and 9 contain the relevant documents.
25.
Excerpts from the mentioned documents are found in Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 217-20. Not all these documents can be found in the ÚSD Jazz/ files.
26.
The Jazz Section objected vehemently to any threats to its unity, and to attempts from the Musicians' Union to get control of its savings. An internal memo from a meeting of the Jazz Section leadership of 27 February 1978 reveals that the Section was not opposed to being transferred as an autonomous whole to the Prague branch of the Musicians' Union. See ÚSD Jazz/ 71 and 72.
27.
See Listy, 8: 3-4, 73, and Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 24.
28.
Tomek writes: "From the beginning of its existence, the Jazz Section and people in it were continually monitored by the StB"; see "Akce JAZZ," 242. His account, however, focuses almost exclusively on the 1980s.
29.
The ÚSD archive contains four such letters from this period. In three of these, the Musicians' Union informs the Communist Party about its preparations for the Union's second congress, to be held on 9 April 1978, and asks for ideological advice. There are no specific references to the Jazz Section. The fourth letter is a complaint from the Ministry of Culture about the unsuitable behavior of the band Abraxas, registered with the Musicians' Union. See ÚSD Jazz/ 60, 61, 65, 69.
30.
Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 22-25.
31.
ÚSD Jazz/ 121.
32.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 175-78. Miroslav Vaněk: "Kytky v popelnici. Punk a nová vlna v Československu," In Miroslav Vaněk a kolektiv: Ostrůvky svobody: Kulturní a občanské aktivity mladé generace v 80. letech v Československu ( Praha: Votobia, 2002), 191-95.
33.
A personal account on the regime's massive campaign against rock music 1981-1983 appears in Mikoláš Chadima, Alternativa. Svčdectví o Českém rock & rollu sedmdesátých let (Brno : Host, 1992), 351-65. See also Vlček, "Hudební alternativní scény," 248-50; Michael J. Kilburn: The Merry Ghetto: The Czech Underground in the time of Normalization (Ph.D. Diss. Emory University , 2001), 76-79, 349-55; Vanek: "Kytky v popelnici, " 190-208.
34.
See Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 40-41, on the visit of The Living Theatre, and Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 179-84, and Dorůžka, Panoráma, 370, on the eleventh Prague Jazz Days. Characteristically, Dorůžka (in a letter of 1982 to Josef Škvorecký in Canada) wrote with enthusiasm about how the Jazz Section deceived the authorities by secretly staging the Jazz Days in clubs in and around Prague, whereas Kouřil remains sober, stressing the element of improvisation and chance in the Section's moving of the event, while finding it likely that the StB knew about this, but decided not to react to not provoke an incident. Srp too writes with fervor about how the authorities were deceived; only he dates the events to 1980, in connection with the tenth Prague Jazz Days. See Srp , Výjimečné stavy, 26. Srp also prints a conversation about the ban (allegedly recorded by the Ministry of the Interior) he had with František Trojan, cultural inspector at the Prague National Committee, and the man behind the bans of the Prague Jazz Days; op. cit46-48.
35.
See Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 48-51, on how the Section got its books and journals printed. Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 259-61, and Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 31-36, describe the uproar following the publishing of Hrabal's book. The official response was vehement, and included a declaration from the Prosecutor's Office of 13 September 1982 that charges would be pressed against Srp for violating § 118 of the penal code, Illegal business activity [Nedovolené podnikání]. See also ÚSD Jazz/ 260. Eventually, little happened in the case, and in November 1983, the Ministry of Culture complained to the Procurator's office about the lack of action; see ÚSD Jazz/ 326, also printed in Tomek , "Akce JAZZ," as Appendix 14. See also ÚSD Jazz/ 254, 258, 259, 262, 263, 269, 270 on the Hrabal affair.
36.
ÚSD Jazz/ 154,158, 160. The latter document also appears as Appendix 1 in Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 280-81.
37.
ÚSD Jazz/ 159, 162.
38.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 24, 373. Several founding members left the organization around 1980, some because of the political situation, others because jazz was increasingly becoming a marginal concern for the Section.
39.
To illustrate, the Union held a meeting with the Section on 30 November 1982 on "the final solution to the question of the Jazz Section," ÚSD Jazz/ 278.
40.
ÚSD Jazz/ 295. The document is also printed as Appendix 2 in Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 281-83.
41.
The Musicians' Union informed the Ministry of Culture about these measures in a letter of 25 April 1983. See ÚSD Jazz/ 297, also printed as Appendix 3 in Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 283-84.
42.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 201, ÚSD Jazz/ 304, 305. Already in 1978, the Section had considered this to be an acceptable solution. See note 26.
43.
ÚSD Jazz/ 316; also printed as Appendix 4 in Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 284-86.
44.
ÚSD Jazz/ 326; also printed as Appendix 13 and 14 in Tomek , "Akce JAZZ," 295-99. The wrath of the Party and the Ministry was now directed not only against the Jazz Section, which was accused of "antisocial activities" ("protispolečenská činnost"), but also against the Musicians' Union with its "inclination to counter-argue," and in particular its disobedient Prague branch.
45.
This step, a common repression measure in "normalized" Czechoslovakia used also against Charter 77 signatories etc., had already been discussed in the Ministry of Culture a few days before. Formally, Panton was asked to restructure, which made Srp's position in the publishing house superfluous. The political nature of the decision was obvious, and Srp got hold of some internal documents from the Ministry of Culture outlining the plan, which he tried to use in his unsuccessful struggle to get his job back. See ÚSD Jazz/ 324, 326, 330-32, 336, 338, 340-43, 349; Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 29; and Dorůžka , Panoráma, 372.
46.
Law no. 126/1968 on Certain Temporary Measures to Stabilize the Public Order of 13 September 1968. This became a point of contention for the Jazz Section, as the Law was explicitly only temporary and the situation in the country had already been declared stabilized in 1970.
47.
ÚSD Jazz/ 417 and 443. In the spring of 1984, the Ministry of Culture also demanded that all Jazz Section publications be removed from public libraries. See Kouřil , Jazzová sekce, 374. This brief summary of events, which includes only a fragment of the activities going on at various official levels 1980-1984, is primarily based on the ÚSD Jazz/archive, and on Tomek's and Kouřil's accounts. On a few occasions, Kouřil's dates differ from the ones of the archive, but I consider these discrepancies to be insignificant.
48.
Průša, who was also a Charter 77 activist, represented the Jazz Section from January 1985. His efforts are valued highly by both Kouřil and Srp.Průša's ties to the Jazz Section pleased the StB, which saw in them proof that the Section was moving closer to Charter 77; see Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 240. At the trial against the Section's leaders, the defense argued that the accused all believed in Průša's arguments about the illegality of the dissolution of the Section, and hence in the legality of their actions. The judge refuted this argument, saying that ignorance of the law could not be an exculpatory reason ("exkulpační důvod"); see ÚSD Jazz / 582, p. 7.
49.
Průša prepared a detailed legal response on the dissolution of the Jazz Section and sought to press charges against various authorities for violating Czechoslovak law. See ÚSD Jazz/ 455, 462, 463, 469, 484, 503, 526 etc., and the interview with Průša in Osteuropa-forum. 3: 14 (December 1986): 7-9. Here, Průša described the persecution he was exposed to. See also Sedlecký, "Případ Jazzová sekce," 540.
50.
Tomek, " Akce JAZZ," 254, ÚSD Jazz/ 456.
51.
ÚSD Jazz/ 466. The same day Karel Lebeda from the Ministry of Culture wrote to Bernášková referring to a meeting of 19 April 1985, and describing the publishing activity of the Jazz Section since its dissolution. ÚSD Jazz/ 467.
52.
ÚSD Jazz/ 474. This paragraph could give up to two years in prison; see Jan Tolar: Trestní zákon a předpisy souvisící (Praha: Panorama, 1985), 194-95. In another letter of July 26 to the Prosecutor's Office in Prague, Fiala excused that he has not been able to prepare the case so that prosecution could be initiated on 23 July as previously decided; see ÚSD Jazz/ 473. Eventually, prosecution was officially initiated on 26 July, and Srp and the other leaders were formally charged with violating § 127 on 6 December 1985; see ÚSD Jazz/ 476, and Tomek , " Akce JAZZ," 256.
53.
ÚSD Jazz/ 476. In so doing, the authorities indirectly acknowledged the Jazz Section's claim that the organization was legal in the given period!
54.
Tomek, " Akce JAZZ," 255; ÚSD Jazz/ 479. The attempt to link Chadima to the case was later abandoned. Kouřil's guess that Chadima was only selected because of his Charter background, which might come handy if the subversive nature of the Section was to be stressed, is probably correct; Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 302-304, see also Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 249. See further Sdělení VONSu Č. 467 of 16 September 1985 , printed in Listy, 15:6, 69, which condemns the house searches and the attempts to press charges as purely politically motivated.
55.
In a letter of September 26, 1985 Salát again complained about the difficulties involved in documenting any violation of §127/1. See ÚSD Jazz/ 482, and Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 256 on the disappointment in the Ministry of the Interior with the outcome of the house searches.
56.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 31-32; Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 93; Dorůžka, Panorama, 382-84. Dorůžka told his story in 1985 in a letter to Škvorecký, that is, shortly after the event.
57.
The authorities found out that to continue with the activities of an organization after its dissolution was in legal terms only a minor offense that could at most be punished with fines. When discovering this, one leading investigator called for a future tightening of the legislation. Four Jazz Section activists were given such fines in the winter and spring of 1986, but by then there was a strong political wish to impose truly substantial sanctions; see Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 257, and ÚSD Jazz/ 505, 511, 516.
58.
This paragraph was more serious than § 127 as it could give up to eight years in prison; see Tolar, Trestní zákon, 183-84. There is a curious twist to this change of charges: In 1986, the authorities forgot to formally initiate prosecution under the new paragraph, so when after 1989 the Jazz Section sought rehabilitation, the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic in 1991 referred to this technical faux pas a their reason to annul the 1987 sentences and return the case to the Prosecutor's Office for renewed consideration! The Supreme Court thus avoided making any statement about the construed nature of the process. Later, the Prosecutor's Office laconically stated that it had decided to put the case aside. Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 345-46; Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 182-83. The authorities also pressed charges according to § 136, Damaging property in socialist ownership, a crime the accused were held to have committed during the liquidation of the Section from October 1984. All accused were acquitted of these charges at the trial in March 1987. For the full text of the verdict, see ÚSD Jazz/ 582, 3 and 12.
59.
Tomek, " Akce JAZZ," 259. The ÚSD archive has nothing about the decision making going on from April to September.
60.
At a closed meeting of the District Court on 30 December 1986, the case was returned to the Prosecutor's Office for further investigation, which suggests that there were problems with the evidence. The Prosecutor's Office appealed the decision and got partial support from the Prague City Court on 21 January 1987. The City Court asked the District Court to deal with the charges pressed according to § 118, while the District Court's decision to return the material relating to § 127 for further investigation was upheld. Also, Vlastimil and Miloš Drda were released for health reasons, and their possible prosecution postponed. Čestmír Huát, Tomáš Křivánek, and Josef Skalník were released in January 1987, but the charges against them were upheld, whereas Karel Srp and Vladimír Kouřil remained in detention until the trial. In each release case, the Prosecutor's Office appealed the court's decision, but the City Court confirmed the releases. See Sdělení VONS Č. 599 (Další vývoj v trestní věci proti funkcionářům Jazzové sekce), printed in Listy, 17:1, 49-50, and Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 260-61, and 305-306, Appendix 18.
61.
See page 9 of the verdict; ÚSD Jazz/ 582. On the court proceedings see Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 310-15, Srp, Výjimečné stavy , 99-105, Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 263-69, and ÚSD Jazz/ 581. The prosecutor tried to describe all incomes from sale of Jazz Section publications as profit, since §118, Article 2 b) defined a "significant gain" as an aggravating circumstance of the crime. But the court quite logically subtracted all production costs and acknowledged that the meager gains remaining had been reinvested in new publications.
62.
ÚSD Jazz/ 606; Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 269-71. Tomek here quotes at length from a police report on the proceedings. Its author notes that supporters of the Jazz Section kept shouting: "Section, section, law, shame, glasnost"!
63.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 314. Kouřil sees in the text of the verdict a confirmation of his impression that the judge dared not take the full consequences of his own legal reasoning.
64.
Jiří Hanák: "Tažení proti neexistující organizace. Rozsudky nad vedením Jazzové sekce," Listy, 17:2, 35-36. Průša's reflections on the case are quoted here. The case received widespread domestic and international attention, and the court hearings became grand manifestations of solidarity with the accused.
65.
Srp, Výjimečné stavy , 93, 101-102. Srp adds: "JUDr. Stibořik also passed a verdict on himself-shortly thereafter he was discreetly removed from office." Op. cit. 105. See also 102 where Srp claims that Stibořik was working in seclusion ("pracoval v ústraní") after 1989. My own investigations do not confirm this account. Vladimír Stibořík, born 9 July 1953, whom the Czech National Council on 14 November 1979 had appointed judge at the District Court of Prague 4, was by the same Council promoted to the Supreme Court of the Czech Socialist Republic on 21 September 1988. Nor did 1989 end Stibořík's career, unless the Vladimír Stibořík who is today (in 2007) Presiding Judge (Predseda soudu) of the High Court (Vrchní soud) in Prague and external member of the Scolarly Council of the Faculty of Law of the Charles University is another person by the same name.
66.
Tomek, " Akce JAZZ," 261. Tomek refers to Appendix 18, a report from an officer from the Police Department of Investigation to an under-secretary in the Foreign Ministry. Here the author, Jan Pavlík, informs about developments in the case, including the strategy of the Prosecutor's Office in the light of the District Court's decision to exclude § 127 from the trial. The crucial passage reads: "By means of the Prosecutor's supervisory control of the court . . . influence will be exerted on the court so that the case against the accused Srp et al is adjudicated and decided properly, in accelerated fashion. At the same time, the possibility of appeal is presumed, both for the accused and for the Prosecutor." The document goes on to describe various steps to be taken depending on what kind of sentence the court decides to give to Srp. See Tomek , "Akce JAZZ," 305-307. On 6 January 1985 , the Ministry of the Interior complained in a status report that ". . . protraction in adjudication and now the return of the indictment to the Prosecutor for investigation" cast doubt on the state organs in the public opinion. This also seems to contradict the view that the court acted fully in accordance with instructions from the Ministry; see Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 262, n. 62.
67.
Kouřil frankly describes how the Section was unprepared for the arrests of its leaders. Attempts were made to renew the Section and have it legally recognized again, and the StB kept following its leading activists, but the Section never managed to recover properly before 1989. For the Section's later history, see Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 332-47, and Tomek , "Akce JAZZ," 272-76.
68.
As Srp in 1999 tried to get elected to the Czech Senate for the Social Democrats, documents appeared in the daily Lidové noviny that indicated that he had been an agent from 1976 to 1982. Srp's denials were not convincing, and he failed utterly at the elections. See Petr Placák "Karel Srp nemá v politice co pohledávat," Lidové noviny, 22 July 1999, 10; Petr Placák, "Nehoráznosti kandidáta Karla Srpa," Lidové noviny , 10 August 1999, 11; Štěpán Korčiš, "Srp užmá lustraci, byl agentem StB," Lidové noviny, 18 August 1999, 1; Rebeka Křižanová: Bahnění Karla Srpa", Týden, 23 August 1999, 30; Zuzana Pitrová, "Srp: Za slovy o mé kolaboraci s StB je Ruml," "Lidové noviny, 4 August 1999, 2; Jaroslav Jirů, "Disidenti všech směrů, nešpite se!, Mladá fronta Dnes, 6 August 1999, 10; Alexandr Mitrofanov, Naž státní správu bych byl protivný jako v disentu" (interview with Karel Srp), Právo, 14 July 1999, 1 and 6; Roman Janouch and Jaroslav Kojzar : Český národ byl vždycky papežštějši ne papež (interview with Karel Srp), Haló noviny, 13 September 1999, 1. In his memoirs, Srp brings excerpts from some "strictly secret" document of 14 July 1983, containing a plan to discredit him before American diplomats by spreading the rumor that he cooperated with the StB. Srp , Výjimečné stavy, 143-44.
69.
Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 245. Srp's case is covered on 243-45 and in Appendices 5-11.
70.
Petr Cibulka, Tak pravil Petr Cibulka. Odpověd' vládnoucímu komunistickému dobytku (Olomouc: Votobia, 1999). Cibulka has been a very active "agent-hunter" after 1989. On the Jazz Section's relationship to Cibulka see Vlček, "Hudební alternativní scény," 223 and 261 n. 19.
71.
Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 31; Dorůžka, Panoráma, 367 and 372. Dorůžka wrote to Škvorecký in 1984 from London to tell about the Section's astonishing efficiency in spying. He enclosed some secret documents that Srp had acquired on how he was sacked.
72.
Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 27. Tomek 251-52. Josef Vlček has later described how he, with Srp's blessing, signed up to cooperate with the StB around 1985, while carefully coordinating with Srp what to tell and what not; see Vlček, " Hudební alternativní scény," 223. Vlček's account is largely confirmed by Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 246-47.
73.
There is evidence suggesting that Josef Skalník worked as an agent, but one cannot determine the extent of his collaboration as his file was destroyed at the time of the Velvet Revolution; see Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 250. Tomek gives a sum total of 34 collaborators among all Jazz Section activists, but the partial destruction of the archive on Akce JAZZ in 1989 makes it impossible to find out how far they contributed to the destruction of the Jazz Section; Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 251.
74.
Quotations from Vaněk, "Kytky v popelnici," 191 and 194. Kotál mentions the exile journal Listy as one of the main supporters of the Section. Rome-based Listy was one of the most influential Czechoslovak exile periodicals along with Paris-based Svědectví.
75.
Quoted from Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 252. The report continues: "In spite of several years of effort, the results achieved do not correspond to the resources and means [silám a prost ředkům], which were invested. The reason for this is above all the inconsistent procedure of the involved agencies, which made it possible for the Jazz Section to double its membership, to establish contacts with Charter 77, and to gain the support of hostile organizations abroad."
76.
Vlček recalls that the "snitchophobia" quickly subsided in the inner core of Jazz Section activists when they came under real pressure from the StB; see Vlček, "Hudební alternativní scény," 232. In 1988, however, when the old and the new activists in vain tried to rebuild the organization, such suspicions really had a disruptive effect, much to the delight of the StB; see Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 274-75.
77.
Zajíček cooperated with singer-songwriters like Jaroslav Hutka and Jan Burian, and he managed to run a jazz club in Parnas in central Prague; see Vlček, "Hudební alternativní scény,"222, 232-33, and Dorůžka, Panoráma, 374, 380. Dorůžka wrote to Škvorecký in October 1985 that the police officer in charge of investigating the Jazz Section during an interrogation had commented on the Section for Young Music, saying: "They are even worse off, except that they don't have an American flag at home on the table." Op. cit. 374. On the regime's problems with the mass use of American symbols among young people in the 1970s and 1980s, see Paulina Bren: "Looking West: Popular Culture and the Generation Gap in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1969-1989," In Luisa Passerini , ed., Across the Atlantic: Cultural Exchanges between Europe and the United States (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2000), 307-9. I have found no systematic treatment of the history of the Section for Young Music, but it is briefly mentioned as continuing in the direction of the Jazz Section in Vladimíra Burke (= Josef Škvorecký): " Fašismus s gorbačovskou tváří," Západ8:6 ( 1986): 3, while H. Gordon Skilling devotes one paragraph to its activities in his Samizdat and an Independent Society in Central and Eastern Europe (Houndsmills & London: Macmillan1989), 82.
78.
Like the Jazz Section, the Section for Young Music protested against being closed along with the rest of the Musicians' Union. This happened in an open letter of 9 April 1985 to the Minister of Culture; see ÚSD Jazz/ 461. When Karel Lebeda from the Ministry of Culture reported to the Prosecutor in 1985 about the publishing activity of the Jazz Section (see note 51), he also included the Section for Young Music, since both organizations kept publishing after their dissolution. Lebeda treats both as equally subversive, and he stresses the leaflet "A Drawer full of Zappa" from the Section for Young Music as an example of the material involved; see ÚSD Jazz/ 467.
79.
"The ill feeling between the secret police and the criminal police, between functionaries of the Ministries of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs was well known. . . . And all of them held the biggest idiots in our field to be the Ministry of Culture" Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 113-14; see also 27, and Tomek, " Akce JAZZ," 248, 251-52, 254. In 1983, the Ministry of Culture did disagree with other state organs on how to approach rock music and youth culture more generally; see Vaněk , "Kytky v popelnici," 212-15.
80.
§ 127 was not the only paragraph tried and found inadequate; see Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 257. In 1987, the StB had to conclude about Mikoláš Chadima, the Charter 77 activist considered a candidate for the Jazz Section trial in 1985-86: "Through the agency measures applied, through the use of intelligence techniques, and through the carrying out of further measures, it was not confirmed that said person committed any criminal activity that would fulfill the factual substance ["skutkovou podstatu"] of any of the criminal offenses." Quoted from Tomek, "Akce JAZZ," 249-50.
81.
The idea of a state under the rule of law ("právní stát"; "Rechtsstaat") inevitably comes into conflict with the doctrine of the leading role of the Party. The regime therefore avoided the term after 1948 (even in 1968 it did not find its way into the reform programs) until Soviet discussions in the late 1980s forced it to apologetically declare that Czechoslovakia already was a state under the rule of law; see Jičínský : Charta 77 a právní stát, 94-100, 110-12, 140-42. Nevertheless, a rising star in the Communist hierarchy, the Slovak lawyer and member of the government, Marián Čalfa, explained to the Federal Assembly on 19 June 1989 in a debate on the preparations of a new Constitution that this document would stress in a new fashion that "the Party works within the limits of the constitution and the laws." This brought the diehard "normalizer" Alois Indra to ask: "Does that mean that it has so far been working in conflict with the Constitution, in conflict with the existing legislation?" to which Čalfa replied: "The KSČ has so far in a certain way been above the law, because the Constitution and the laws were changed upon its decision, as it was necessary. Now we want to express in a certain way that also the Communist party is bound by the constitutional framework. This principle has not been expressed like that in the Constitution." All quotes from František Cigánek: " Předlistopadový parlament ve světle archivní dokumentace," in Emanuel Mandler, ed., Dvě desetiletí před listopadem 89 (Praha: Maxdorf1993), 65.
82.
Josef Průša and the Jazz Section even organized courses for its leading members and their wives about their legal rights. Also, Ludmila Krausová, a doctor, mapped the activists' health to offer them some protection from the use of physical violence, or at least a chance to document its effects. See Srp, Výjimečné stavy , 81-82, 107; Kouřil , Jazzová sekce, 32.
83.
The physical costs of activism could be extremely high. Miloš Drda, the Section's treasurer, was seventy-one and had severe health problems when arrested in October 1986. He was eventually released from custody for health reasons in January 1987, but the rough months in prison broke his health, and he never recovered before his death in 1990. Srp , Výjimečné stavy, 112, Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 308, 329.
84.
Srp, Výjimečné stavy , 81. During the search in Vladimir Kouřil's apartment on 2 September 1985, the police found "ten copies of a leaflet containing instructions on how to behave in the course of a house search"; see Tomek , "Akce JAZZ," 256, n. 50. The text may well be the anonymous Poučení vyšetřovaným , printed in Listy, 13, no. 1 (1983): 42-45.
85.
For example: "Právní porada," Listy5, no. 6 (1975): 41-43, "Junty odebírají občanství," Listy5: 7 (1975): 8-9, "Komentář na přání příslušníka SNB," Listy8: 3-4, (1978): 27-29, or "Generálnímu prokurátorovi," Listy9: 7 (1979): 18; all signed by Advokát chudých.
86.
The Czechoslovak Federal Assembly ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Economic Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in November 1975. Both were published in the Czechoslovak Collection of Laws in October 1976. They were thereby incorporated in Czechoslovak law. The Charter 77 Declaration mentions Czechoslovak legal norms only in passing, but later documents refer more frequently to domestic legislation. H. Gordon Skilling, Charter 77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia ( London: Allen & Unwin, 1981 ), 64-65; Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton, and Oxford : Princeton University Press, 2001 ), 105-106, and 176-79. See also Jiří Hájek's and Jan Patočka's Letter to the Federal Assembly of 3 February 1977, and the Charter 77 Declaration, printed in Skilling, Charter 77, 213-16 and 209-12. For more contemporary Charter related texts with legal arguments, see Jičínský , Charta 77 a právní stát, 14-93.
87.
Skilling, Charter 77, 181. Skilling also writes: ". . . the Charter seemed almost naïve in its demand for legality from a regime, which . . . was considered the epitome of illegality." (65)
88.
Jiří Příbař : "Legitimacy and Legality after the Velvet Revolution ," In Jiří Příbaň & James Young: The Rule of Law in Central Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate , 1999), 29-55, here 33. The argument is repeated almost verbatim in Příbaň, " Political dissent," 562.
89.
Příbaň, " Legitimacy," 34, and Příbaň, " Political dissent," 564.
90.
Already in 1975, Hájek and Mlynář saw in the Helsinki Final Act and the Helsinki process a new possibility for making legal human rights claims in Czechoslovakia. Vladimir V. Kusin, From Dubček to Husák: A study of "Normalization" in Czechoslovakia (New York : St. Martin's Press, 1978), 291-95; and Thomas, Helsinki Effect , 100-101. Thomas's book describes in detail how similar responses and initiatives emerged in the Soviet Union, Poland, and other Communist countries. Undoubtedly, these human rights movements inspired each other ideologically and organizationally. There are many interesting parallels between the ideas analyzed in Benjamin Nathans, "The Dictatorship of Reason: Aleksandr Vol'pin and the Idea of Rights under `Developed Socialism," Slavic Review, 66: 4 (2007): 630-63, and the thinking of Czech legal activists, but I have found no evidence of any direct inspiration from Vol'pin in my Czech sources.
91.
Jaroslav Pažout : Výbor na obranu nespravedlivě stíhaných , in Petr Blažek, ed., Opozice a odpor proti kommunistickému re imu v Československu 1968-1989 (Praha: Dokořán , 2005), 96-110, esp. 96-101.
92.
Zděnek Vebera: Právní záruky ústavnosti a zákonnosti v ČSSR (Brno: Univerzita J. E. Purkyně, 1975), 39-40.
93.
Stanislav Zdobinský, ed., Ceskoslovenská ústava, Komentář (Praha: Panorama, 1988), 185, 194-95; see also the Constitution's Art. 17 with comments, 99-100.
94.
Vebera, Právní záruky, 39. This understanding of law as one among many instruments in the Party's total administration of state and society was given from the outset in Communist ruled Czechoslovakia. In 1936, Stalin and Vyshinsky had introduced the concept of socialist legality, attacking "left revisionist" (essentially Leninist) ideas of the withering away of the state and of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a form of rule not requiring law. See Gordon B. Smith: "Die Entwicklung der ,Sozialistischen Gesetzlichkeit' in der Sowjetunion," in Georg Brunner, ed., Grundrechte und Rechtssicherheit im sowjetischen Machtbereich (Berlin: Berlin Verlag , 1982), 47-60; and R.W. Makepeace, Marxist Ideology and Soviet Criminal Law (London: Croom Helm, 1980), 165-69. Paradoxically, Soviet theory and practice thus moved towards judicial formalization, as expressed also in the Soviet Constitution of 1936, at the time of the Great Terror.
95.
Quoted from Hejl and Kaplan, Zpráva, 185.
96.
This meant that basically, everybody had won with the elimination of the old ruling elites as a class. The "working people" to whom all power belonged was defined in a 1988 commentary to the Constitution as "the whole society" (Československá ústava, 56), which theoretically excluded any possibility of a socially based opposition and indirectly reduced all malcontents to "anti-social elements," which is a very different category from "class enemies." But, as Article 4 never let anyone forget, this organic social whole remained most conscious of its own true interests in its incarnation in the Party. In the early 1970s, one Czechoslovak theorist, K. Fabian, defined "the people" as "all working people who support the program of socialist construction and recognize the leading role of the working class with its Marxist-Leninist party at its head," (quoted from Pokstefl , "Die ideologische Bewältigung," 31), thereby deriving the subjectivity of the people from the Party, not vice versa.
97.
See the lengthy discussion in Boguszak, Základy socialistické zákonnosti, 27-53. The author's starting point is the observation: "The reason for violations of socialist legality is first of all ideological remains of capitalism, of society's capitalist past". (27) Boguzsak thanks Zdeněk Jičínský, who reviewed the manuscript for publication, for useful advice.
98.
See Pokstefl, Der soziale Wandel, 428-41.
99.
On the 14th Congress, see Vladimir V. Kusin, From Dubček to Husák: A Study of "Normalization" in Czechoslovakia (New York : St. Martin's Press, 1978), 135-42.
100.
Quoted from Kusin, From Dubček to Husák, 115. Husák's statement was certainly tactical given the uncertain political situation at the time of his election, but even later he stayed by this discourse. On 5 January 1970, he defined "consolidation" (as he preferred instead of "normalization") as a process of ensuring: "a quiet life for people, upholding legality, the free development of society, favorable conditions for the development of economic activity, stability, social and existential certainty . . . ", etc. Quoted from Kieran Williams , The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics 1968-1970, (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 40.
101.
The mock irony of Husák's approach of dressing up political persecution as mere adherence to the law becomes obvious in Milan Šimečka's precious account of a politically motivated trial, the absurd dimensions of which he described to the Chairman of the Slovak National Council. This gentleman expressed his sympathy with the convicted Ladislav K, but ended by saying that "he could do nothing, because if he interfered with the court's jurisdiction, he would merely be repeating the old mistakes of the 1950s"! Milan Šimečka, The Restoration of Order (London: Verso, 1984), 105.
102.
This was all hailed as a great step forward in the realization of principles of socialist legality in contemporary literature, but the section on Punishable Offenses against the Republic (§§ 91-115; the "political" paragraphs) continued to contain several very elastic clauses open to arbitrary interpretation. See Jan Tolar & Gustav Přenosil , "Die neue Strafgesetzgebung in der Tschechoslowakischen Sozialistischen Republik", Osteuropa-Recht8 (1962): 177-90.
103.
See Karel Kosik, "Der Rechtsanwalt im tschechoslowakischen Strafprozeß", Jahrbuch für Ostrecht11 (1970): 107-20; Erich Schmied, Die Entwicklung des tschechoslowakischen Strafrechts seit 1961 and, "Jahrbuch für Ostrecht20 (1979): 49-65; "Galia Golan" The Czechoslovak Reform Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 210-22.
104.
Vladimír V. Kusin: The Intellectual Origins of the Prague Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 30-35. Jičínský : Právní myšlení, Kap. I, II & IV. See also Zdeněk Mlynář: Nightfrost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism (New York: Karz Publishers, 1980). The success of these reforms depended to a large extent also on the impact of the "rehabilitation committees" that were established in the 1960s to investigate the crimes of the early 1950s. Not all contemporary observers could see the progress. A Czech lawyer and judge who had defected to the United States in 1959 wrote: ". . . misgivings and suspicion of insincerity is hard to suppress with other advocates of destalinization including jurists such as Jicinsky or Boguszak. Until recently they were the most outspoken Stalinists and their sudden conversion seems to be too good to be true." Otto UlČ , "Class Struggle and Socialist Justice: The Case of Czechoslovakia," The American Political Science Review61:3 ( 1967): 741.
105.
Akční program KSČ (Praha , 1968), 31-32. English translation in Robin Alison Remington, ed., Winter in Prague: Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1969), 111. One notices the emphasis on procedure, which marks a revival of notions of legal positivism that had been very strong in the Central European civil law tradition. This line of reasoning can be seen as an attempt to replace an all-penetrating structure with an infrastructure, that is, an interchange in society of autonomous subjects and institutions. This implied a shift in the Party's role from administrator to actor, as the Party sought to reinvent itself as a political force. Legal means were held to be crucial in this context, since only a neutral, frame-setting law could protect a space where politics could be discussed. In the spring of 1968, Zdeněk Mlynář, one of the main authors of the Action Program, pointed to the significance of this mechanism in the law journal Právník: "When only the planned development of socialist democracy has been completed, the era of so-called legal nihilism will definitely end in our politics and our life. The development of a legal order will by necessity be one of the most important conditions for the success of the reform efforts as a whole, since a system of political democracy is unthinkable without a highly cultivated legal system." Quoted from Karel Kosík, "Reformtendenzen in der tschechoslowakischen Rechtslehre in den Jahren 1968-69", Jahrbuch für Ostrecht , 12 (1971 ): 145-76, here 147.
106.
Inga Markovits has shown that the interest in law and legality grew markedly in all socialist countries in the 1970s. This trend, however, did not reflect any interest in creating more scope for a perception or practicing of law as rights. In Markovits' words: ". . . modern East European constitutions are not expressing bourgeois Rechtsstaat (`rule of law') notions; they only reflect the conviction of socialist governments that discipline, regularity and order will further their administrations' goals." Markovits, "Law or Order," 522. As this discipline was constantly found wanting, the regimes increasingly focused on legal measures-rather than direct political coercion-as a means to express and promote state goals by establishing clearer norms for individual behavior. With Markovits again: "Law in this view appears as a kind of super-ego, designed to guide the not quite reliable socialist ego and to control its probably bourgeois id" (534). But in spite of these efforts, "bourgeois" perceptions of law as rights tended to assert themselves both among citizens and in individual socialist institutions, partly because most citizens in socialist states were more interested in their rights than in their obligations, and partly in consequence of the increased formalization and emphasis on procedure, which made courts and other actors less prone to apply a purely instrumental perspective on legal disputes. Markovits, "Law or Order," passim. Markovits largely neglects Czechoslovak developments, but her analysis allows one to see Husák's persistence on the use of legal instruments in his campaign for order, and the ambiguous consequences thereof, as part of a broader trend. The many steps towards legal reform in the 1960s were compatible with general trends in the socialist countries, but not so their rapid evolution into a change of paradigm. Therefore, the reestablishing of the conventional notion of socialist legality after 1969 was not accompanied by a "de-formalization" of law as a regulating mechanism, nor did Moscow call for this.
107.
Quote from Cuhra, Trestní represe, 71, see also 56.
108.
On changes in legal policies and paradigms, and the politics behind these changes, see Cuhra, Trestní represe, 7-9, 30-36; Oldřich Tůma, `"Normalizace' und Repression in der Tschechoslowakei 1968-1989," in Christoph Boyer and Peter Skyba, eds., Repression und Wohlstandsversprechen. Zur Stabilisierung der Parteiherrschaft in der DDR und der ČSSR (Dresden : Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung e.V. an der Technischen Universität Dresden, 1999), 129-40, esp. 134-35. Kusin, From Dubček to Husák, 115-18; Williams , Prague Spring, 236-39; Pokstefl , Der soziale Wandel, 413-26, and "Das Recht als Instrument," passim.
109.
Williams, Prague Spring, 221-25, 238-39; Cuhra, Trestní represe, 12, 24. See also Tůma, "`Normalizace' und Repression" 136, where Tůma claims that full control over all the mentioned sectors had been obtained around 1972. As seen above, the control was less than flawless in the mid-1980s.
110.
Cuhra, Trestní represe, 43. The same dubious logic pervades the description of the problem in a report from the Higher Police Academy in Prague in 1980: "…in spite of the political isolation, some political opposition groups continue their ideological and organizing activity that is found on the very limits of criminality… the `professional' dissidents… keep intensive semi-legal contacts with ideo-diversionary and emigrant centers abroad." Quoted from Josef Zila, "Crime and Criminal Policy in Czechoslovakia, Development and Contemporary Problems," Nordic Journal of Soviet and East European Studies3:2 ( 1986): 74. In rhetoric and content, this statement has much in common with Koták's analysis of the problems involved in containing independent music quoted above.
111.
Šimečka, Restoration of Order, 72-80.
112.
Rudé Právo, the Czech Communist daily, stressed in its comments on the arrest of and trial against the Jazz Sections activist that this was purely a question of economic crime, stressing in its headlines and conclusions: "The laws are binding for everyone" ("Zákony platí pro kazdého"), Rudé Právo 1 November 1986 and 12 March 1987; reprinted in Kouřil, Jazzová sekce, 317.
113.
Ludvík Vaculík: "Poznámky o statečnosti," in Václav Havel, O lidskou identitu (London : Rozmluvy, 1984), 203. In December 1987, Vaculík wrote an essay in praise of the Jazz Section, Dvojí způsob, which praised the practical, non-heroic approach to free cultural work, which in his opinion presented the regime and its police with a much harder challenge than open declarations of opposition; quoted in Srp, Výjimečné stavy, 108-109. In 1969 already, Husák had agreed with Brezhnev that the regime was not to make martyrs out of the "celebrity reformers" of 1968 by subjecting them to severe punishment; see Williams, Prague Spring , 237.
114.
Tůma: "`Normalizace' und Repression," 131-132.
115.
Zila, "Crime and Criminal Policy," 57-84. See also Bren, " Looking West," 303-304, and Vaněk , "Kytky v popelnici," 206.
116.
This aspect is covered extensively in Thomas, Helsinki Effect. Evidently, foreign policy concerns had an influence on levels of repression, both generally and in concrete cases. The internationalization of the case of the Jazz Section, the persecution of which was brought up at the CSCE Cultural Forum in Budapest in 1985 and CSCE meetings in Vienna in 1986, may well have contributed to the relatively mild sentences.
117.
In Leninist ideology, truth, justice, power and social action all implode in one nodal point: the Party. So, as A. J. Polan has argued, once the interest of the working class has become universal, not just opposition, but politics-defined as a clash of interests and values- becomes an ontological impossibility; see A.J. Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics (London: Methuen, 1984), 176. With its "identity thinking" Leninism is, Polan continues, a theory for the end of history and hence for the end of time, a conclusion strikingly similar to Havel's analysis in his 1987 essay Stories and Totalitarianism, printed in Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990 ( New York: Knopf, 1991), of how time seems suspended in "normalized" Czechoslovakia.
118.
"In the second half of the 1980s it was evident that it was no longer possible to uphold the outdated but direct system of repression based on violence and on fear of despotism and arbitrariness. The requirement to maintain at least the appearance of legal legitimacy . . . created new complications, as well as situations to which the counter-espionage system did not know how to adapt." Tomek, " Akce JAZZ," 277, see also 262. Tomek gives no explanation of the factors that led to this alleged change of conditions.
119.
See Chadima, Alternativa, 312-13 on relations between his band Extempore (banned in 1981) and local SSM branches and clubs, and Vlček, "Hudební alternativní scény," 238-39 on youth clubs. See also Bren, " Looking West," 315, 320. One may even consider the SSM to be-at least from the mid-1980s-an organization that sought to take advantage of these possibilities in order to promote independent youth culture, even against the intentions and interests of the mother party and the StB. See Vaněk, "Kytky v popelnici," 192-93, 225-28. Vaněk concludes with reference to SSM support of a big rock festival in Prague: "The action of the leading structures of the SSM signaled the beginning of the collapse of the existing political monolith" (228). See also Milan Otáhal: Studenti a komunistická moc v českých zemích 1968-1989 (Praha: Dokořán, 2003), 67-71; Milan Otáhal and Miroslav Vaněk, Sto studentských revolucí (Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny, 1999), 133-44.
See the discussion in Vaněk , "Kytky v popelnici," 228-31. Various authorities had very different opinions on the Rock-fest, which once again shows that the Communist regime in these years was far from monolithic.
