Tragický případ Miroslava Dolejšího a Eugena Vrby

• Authors: Prokop Tomek

Title variants

EN

The Tragic Case of Miroslav Dolejší and Eugen Vrba

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

This article presents Miroslav Dolejší (1931–2001), the author of Analýza událostí 17. listopadu (Analysis of the Events of 17 November), the best-known conspiratorial interpretation of the democratic Czechoslovak revolution of November 1989. It does so, however, from a little known side of Dolejší, that is, as a talented man and political prisoner of the Communist régime, who spent a total of eighteen and half years behind bars. Dolejší was first arrested in 1951, and accused of working with an American agent to found an underground youth organization that would carry out a coup d’état . According to the author of the article this was probably an operation provoked by the Czechoslovak secret police. Dolejší was sentenced to twenty-three years in prison, of which he served nine before being released in the presidential amnesty of 1960. Afterwards he showed his exceptional abilities: though he had not finished secondary school, he became an expert in the field of systems engineering and automated systems of control and a member of several academic societies. During the ‘Prague Spring’ he was active in K 231 (or Klub 231, Klub bývalých politických vězňů, the Association of Former Political Prisoners). In the mid-1970s, with the help of the former journalist Eugen Vrba (1918–2004), who was under secret-police surveillance, Dolejší attempted to send academic articles about Czechoslovakia to the West, for which he would receive payment. In 1976 both men were arrested. Although the offi cial dossiers did not state clearly whether Dolejší’s and Vrba’s reports contained sensitive intelligence, the two men were accused of spying and Vrba was sentenced to ten years in prison, Dolejší to eleven. Dolejší was released in 1985, twenty months before his sentence would have ended. The author claims that Dolejší’s analysis, which seeks to explain the events of November 1989 as a conspiracy of dissidents, Communists, and foreign secret services, was psychologically determined by the tragic fate of its author and that it is fair to see it as a particular way of seeking satisfaction for wrongs done. For men imprisoned in the 1950s, and who had thus been robbed of their futures, it was painful to see former Communists, albeit signatories of Charter 77, who had in several cases been involved in their persecution, taking up senior posts in public life. For Dolejší one such person was Vladimír Kolmistr (born 1930), a member of Obroda (Rebirth), the club of dissident reform-Communists, and then a member of the Czech Parliament (Czech National Council) in the 1990s. In 1950, as Chairman of the Kladno District Committee of the Czech Youth Association (Český svaz mládeže), Kolmistr had instigated Dolejší’s expulsion from secondary school. Evidence of this is provided by the minutes of the meeting about the expulsion, which are also published here with an introduction by the historian Jaroslav Cuhra, putting them in the broader context.

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2009
• Issue: 2-3
• Pages: 419-430

Contributors

author

Prokop Tomek

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic