Today’s #Ukraine is not 1938 #Czechoslovakia. Yet the 28-point “peace plan” negotiated between the #US and #russia suggests that US President #Trump considers the #Munich deal a precedent.
#Czechoslovakia
A 1976 Czechoslovakian animated Sci-Fi short about the dangers of Von Neumann/nanomachines.
In addition to the shame of #Vichy and the #Hitler - #Ribbentrop Pact for the cleansing of #Czechoslovakia, the treaty between El Santo and Black #Shadow is probably one of the most important in human #history #luchalibre
Archivist with giant books at the Clementium, Czechia (then Czechoslovakia), Prague, 1958
A case of the “Spanish flu” in October 1918. #111Words #FranzKafka #Prague #ReinerStach #SpanishFlu #Pandemic #AustriaHungary #Czechoslovakia #1918 https://111-words.ghost.io/a-case-of-the-spanish-flu-in-october-1918/
Literary Hub – How a 1977 Czech Writers’ Manifesto Applies to the Stark Realities of America in 2025
Illustration from article, no credit.How a 1977 Czech Writers’ Manifesto Applies to the Stark Realities of America in 2025
What We Can All Learn From the Courage of Charter 77
By Jonny Diamond, October 10, 2025
The wonderful Czech writer Ivan Klima died this past weekend at the age of 94. Klima lived a remarkable, principled life, having survived both the Nazi occupation of Prague (he spent three years in the concentration camp at Terezin as a boy), and the post-1968 repression of the Soviet regime.
Unlike his more famous literary compatriots, Milan Kundera and Josef Skvorecky, Klima stuck around in Czechoslovakia, despite being forbidden from publishing for 20 years. For two decades Klima was consigned primarily to menial work, as a street sweeper, bricklayer, orderly… But he kept writing. And he kept resisting, through the publication of literary samizdat (his own and others), organizing clandestine salons, and helping to disseminate Charter 77, an artists’ manifesto named for the year it was written.
Editor’s Note: Charter 77 appended below.
Charter-77DownloadThe main authors behind Charter 77—Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, and Pavel Kohout, who were responding to the Communist government’s crackdown on free expression—generated its moral (and to some extent legal) authority by citing two UN human rights covenants signed by the Czechoslovak government in 1968, in the lead up to the so-called Prague Spring. [Spoiler: the Russians didn’t approve, sent tanks into Prague, and crushed any hope of a freer society].
The Communist regime quickly made it a crime to distribute copies of Charter 77, calling it “an anti-state, anti-socialist, and demagogic, abusive piece of writing,” and deeming its signatories to be “traitors and renegades” and “agents of imperialism.” As for how they saw themselves, the organizers behind Charter 77 were very clear about being nothing more than an ad hoc confederation of likeminded people, and certainly not an opposition party. In their own words, they were a “loose, informal, and open association of people . . . united by the will to strive individually and collectively for respect for human and civil rights in our country and throughout the world.” (So, more of a shared set of beliefs than a formal organization, like, you know, antifa.)
Why is a 50-year-old writers’ manifesto worth thinking about now? First of all, the aforementioned human rights covenants, cited at length in the charter, map neatly over what we still like to think of as western democratic ideals of free expression and individual liberty. And just as Charter 77 decries the state crack-down on those ideals in 1970s Czechoslovakia, we too can cite many and obvious authoritarian crimes from the Trump administration circa 2025.
From government officials menacing late-night comedians to masked thugs landing helicopters on apartment buildings, from Democratic officials threatened with jail time by the president to the brazen flouting of the rule of law, America’s decades-long drift into authoritarianism has sped up dramatically in the last nine months. We are in the middle of an anti-democratic sea-change, and as each week passes the likes of Stephen Miller grow bolder in flouting their fascist inclinations.
But it’s never too late to fight for basic human freedoms, for the right to be who you are and to say what you want, the right to not go hungry or get shot at school or lose everything because you get sick. Luckily, Charter 77—which is but one of countless historical examples of courage in the face of tyranny—offers a clear blueprint for how we might respond to the Trump administration’s attacks on free expression and the rule of law:
With regard to the targeting of pro-Palestinian ideas on college campuses:
The right to freedom of expression, for example, guaranteed by Article 19 of the first-mentioned covenant, is in our case purely illusory. Tens of thousands of our citizens are prevented from working in their own fields for the sole reason that they hold views differing from official ones, and are discriminated against and harassed in all kinds of ways by the authorities and public organizations.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Literary Hub » How a 1977 Czech Writers’ Manifesto Applies to the Stark Realities of America in 2025
#Authoritarianism #Charter77 #Communism #Czechoslovakia #DonaldTrump #Facism #GOP #Ice #Injustice #IvanKlima #LiteraryHub #PalestinianRights #Republicans #StephenMiller
Applebaum: Russia occupied #Poland, #Hungary, East #Germany, #Czechoslovakia after WWII. It's exactly the same war crimes and genocide against Ukrainians.
They arrest teachers, policemen, mayors in Ukraine, put them in filtration camps, move people to prisons in Crimea and Russia. Ukrainians disappear like in the gulag. Way past time to end russia’s ability to wage war.
#Ukraine #europeanunion #Uk #eu #europe #France #Deutschland #italy #Denmark #Poland #Finland #Spain #England #Finland #usa #news
CNN: Czechs agog as national archive prepares to open mysterious envelope sealed for 20 years. “The final thoughts of [Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk], who governed the Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1935, are believed to have been recorded by his son Jan Masaryk just before his death in September 1937 and have been sealed in a letter ever since, according to Czech public radio, which has set up […]
This sealed #envelope contains the last words of the founding father of #Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue #Masaryk. He wanted that it would be opened on 19.9.2025 and not before.
With almost 14,000 produced units between 1960 and 1999, the ČKD Tatra T3 tram car is still the most widespread of its type in the world (2022).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_T3
Photo credit: Praha, Tatra T3SUCS č. 7290. Praha, Tatra T3SUCS č. 7290/CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Praha,_Tatra_T3SUCS_%C4%8D._7290.jpg
#RailwaySunday #Czechoslovakia #CzechRepublic #Europe #TatraT3 #CKD #tram
Adolf Hitler was nominated for the #Nobel Peace Prize in 1939. The nomination of #Hitler was meant to be ironical:
"The nomination of Chamberlain provoked Erik Brandt to nominate Hitler as a provocation against Hitler and #Nazism.
The result of the Munich Agreement was that the western powers stabbed #Czechoslovakia in the back by handing over Sudetenland to achieve #peace.
Nor #Chamberlain or Hitler deserved a Peace Prize..."
👉 https://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/news/hitler-as-a-nobel-laureate
Prague commemorates the 1968 Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Video. The Czech Republic marked the anniversary of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on Thursday with memorial events in Prague and across the country.
#CzechRepublic #WarsawPact #Czechoslovakia #SovietUnion #Bulgaria #Hungary #Poland #History
This is not Ukraine. These are not images from World War II. These are photos from the Soviet "liberation" of #Czechoslovakia in #1968. Tanks sent by the Kremlin crushed democracy and freedom, and a drunken Russian soldiers fired on unarmed civilians. Czechoslovakia surrendered without resistance or a single shot fired. The Soviet Union and its successor, Russia, have not changed. Lies, barbarism, and brutality. Russia cannot be negotiated with. #Ukraine fights back. #СлаваУкраїні #Героямслава
We'll settle here, so the Soviet advisers don't get tired from a long journey when they come to us."
Author: Jan Vyčítal.
Commemorating the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia on 21 August 1968.
#history #czechia #slovakia #czechoslovakia #humor #humour #cartoon
Як танки зупинили «Празьку весну».
https://buymeacoffee.com/valdeloir/liyomukonu
#історія #ПразькаВесна #1968 #Чехословаччина #СРСР
#history #PragueSpring #1968 #Czechoslovakia #USSR
A multilingual entrance of the Prague Fair Palace, destroyed by a fire in 1974.
#czechoslovakia #czechia #prague #history #languages #jazykysveta
@kravietz Let’s also remember #MunichAgreement from 1938, where a similar situation was ”solved” by appeasing a dictator.
The similarities to today are striking:
-Germany occupied parts of a sovereign nation, basing their claims on a #language spoken by a minority.
-Like Ukraine, #Czechoslovakia ’s defenses were strongest on the regions given to Hitler.
-”#SecurityGuarantees” for Czechoslovakia weren’t worth the paper they were written on, and #WW2 started a year later.
Some people campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize, others actually deserve it.
And "peace at any price" is seldom a lasting peace. It's never possible to sate a dictator's appetite.
#NobelPeacePrize #NevilleChamberlain #DonaldTrump #AdolphHitler #Czechoslovakia #Nobel101
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