Fifty years ago, Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the liberalization of the Prague Spring. What people today know about the consequences of this usually comes from images on the streets of Prague and from the lives of internationally-known Czech intellectuals like Václav Havel and Milan Kundera.
This second excerpt from journalist and translator Agneša Kalinová’s memoirs, My Seven Lives, published in B O D Y, presents the much lesser known picture of the fallout in Slovakia, where Soviet “normalization” didn’t only drive writers and journalists from their jobs (and eventually, country) but also offered a scope for nationalism and career advancement.
Read the first excerpt here, set in 1939, about the Slovak Republic’s anti-Jewish laws and what it meant for one teenage girl in wartime Prešov.
A third excerpt, about the intrigues and ineptitudes of the communist secret police, is forthcoming.
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