Rozkymácený svět – Špirit Michael (2021)

The presented volume introduces the literary critic and translator Josef Vohryzek (1926–1998) as a critical thinker on the nature of the communist regime, on Czech and Slovak society in a common state and after its dissolution, on the relationship between the stronger and the weaker, the majority and the (Romani and Jewish) minority. The book is divided into four sections. The first consists of texts about society and politics before 1989 and after the fall of the communist regime. The introductory essay conveys the life experience of a non-partisan during the Prague Spring of 1968, reflections written during the so-called normalization for samizdat anthologies or periodicals address the factual possibilities of Charter 77, the mechanics of judicial harassment, and the significance of independent civic initiatives, while essays from the first half of the 1990s discuss relationships with the newly forming power, the dissolution of the federative republic, the ethos of the newly established Czech state, and the behavior of the so-called intellectual elites during all these moments. The second part consists of texts on racial intolerance. A polemic from 1968 shows the possible social consequences of the then-planned federalization of the Czechoslovak state, which is then addressed in one of the first documents of Charter 77 (from 1978), in which the position of the Romani people is elaborated in detail.