Vabank – Kocáb Michael (2019)

In the summer of 1989, composer Michael Kocáb, along with journalist Michal Horáček, founded the initiative MOST, which aimed to facilitate negotiations between the communist authorities and representatives of independent opposition groups. What initially seemed partly like audacity and partly like political naivety turned out in November of the same year to be primarily civic courage and foresight, when the then Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec sat down at the negotiating table with representatives of the students, the Civic Forum, and the Public Against Violence, led by Václav Havel. Kocáb describes all the crucial negotiations with the communist rulers, with the generals of both the Czechoslovak and Soviet armies, and with the Soviet party, including representatives of the KGB, which he led or participated in on behalf of the initiative MOST or the Civic Forum. The course of the Velvet Revolution is described against the backdrop of the planned operation Intervention, which the military forces, in cooperation with the StB, attempted to use force to prevent democratic changes. The autobiographical text reads somewhat like a political thriller. The author describes how the situation changed day by day, hour by hour, and shows that politics is a creative and often improvisational activity, in which it is sometimes not out of place to take on "brazen" responsibility. In the second part...