The Bolshevik regime also turned out to be less rigid against gays than their comrades in other East Bloc states. In 1961, homosexual acts, which during the Stalinist era of the 1950s were punished by up to five years imprisonment, were decriminalized, and, in the 1980s, they were completely deleted from the official list of illnesses. Still, to a regime so profoundly intolerant and suspicious of any signs of inconformity as the Czechoslovak communists, a citizen’s sexual orientation was of great interest.
StB, the secret police, meticulously registered every person who might be suspected of not being entirely heterosexual — not least if they also happened to be political dissidents — and frequently tried to blackmail them into co-operation (see: Lustration). Needless to say, when being an open homosexual represented a possible threat to your professional and social existence, lots of gays and lesbians preferred to hide their sexual orientation. And plenty of those who were not protected by the anonymity of a big city chose to cover up by getting married and having children.
Luckily, this has changed profoundly with the liberalisation that followed the Velvet Revolution in 1989. After decades on the fringes of society, gays and lesbians have “come out” without risking, at least in Prague and Bohemia, more badgering than in, say, Holland, although most of them prefer to do it in a more low-key and less proclaiming manner than in the West (see: Communication). Homosexuality, in any case, is no longer considered a social stigma, which was clearly demonstrated by Václav Fischer, a successful businessman who ran some years ago as a candidate for the Czech Senate.
In an attempt to ruin his chances of being elected, Fischer’s political opponents put up lots of billboards announcing that he belonged to “a four-percent minority”. The trick backfired completely. Not only because the voters found it utterly cheap, but also because most Czechs apparently consider a politician’s sexual orientation to be totally irrelevant. Fischer was elected by one of the biggest landslides in the Czech Senate’s history.
So, if the German philosopher Theodor Adorno was right when stating that a society’s relation to its sexual minorities is the best indicator of its tendencies towards fascism, it’s fair to conclude that Czech society is admirably non-fascist (and also caring about its relatively few HIV and AIDS victims). If we also add its great tolerance to sex in general, the conclusion must be that the Czech Republic, in some matters, is one of Europe’s most liberal countries (see: Values).
But, just to avoid confusing and perhaps also disappointing potential admirers, English speakers are still strongly advised to pay attention to one lingual detaiclass="underline" in the Czech language, the sentence “I’m warm” can be translated in two ways. And semantically, there is a profound difference between Jsem teplý and Je mi teplo!
Horáková, Milada
During its 41-year dictatorship, the communist regime executed almost 180 political opponents. Most of these court-sanctioned murders took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the scenario was very often the same:
Party bigwigs commissioned the courts to manufacture “evidence” that a person who the communists (or their masters in Moscow) considered to represent a threat to their autocracy, in reality was spying for CIA, Israel, Tito’s Yugoslavia or even the successors of Gestapo. The unlucky victims were without exception found guilty and then expedited to a swift death in Prague’s Pankrác prison.
Most of the accused reacted like the much-admired general Heliodor Píka, who knew he had absolutely no chance to escape the gallows and did practically nothing to reject the insane charges that were filed against him. Others, such as former party boss Rudolf Slánský and ten of his top apparatchiks (by “coincidence” all of Jewish origin), were tortured to reel off long and tear-dripping confessions about the crimes they had allegedly committed that ultimately didn’t help them at all.
And then, there was the tiny and seemingly defenceless Milada Horáková, who rejected the constructed charges with a vengeance, and then went bravely into death without a word of grief. The cold-blooded murder of the 49-year old lawyer, mother of an under-aged daughter, represents one of the darkest spots on the communist regime’s ugly record. Few other communist crimes caused stronger reactions in the Western world. And few of the Bolsheviks’ many victims displayed more civil courage.
Born in 1901 when Bohemia and Moravia still were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Milada Horáková grew up to become a typical proponent of the First Republic and the liberal ideals set forward by its president, Tomáš G. Masaryk. As one of Czechoslovakia’s first women, Horáková graduated from Prague’s Law Academy and started her career as a lawyer in the Central Social Office. Two years later, she became a full-time official of the National Socialist Party (no connection to Germany’s later NSDAP!), which was popular among workers and members of the lower middle class.
Ever since the party’s establishment in 1897, its members had promoted the Czech cause and struggled against what they regarded as Austrian militarism. When Czechoslovakia emerged in 1918, the focus shifted to social matters. To Milada Horáková, this meant not only the fight for social justice, but also for women’s emancipation (see: Feminism).
As one might expect from a committed democrat, Horáková had only contempt for the Nazis who occupied Czechoslovakia in March 1939 (see: Munich Agreement) and immediately engaged herself in the Czech resistance movement. The Gestapo arrested her a year later. Miraculously escaping a death sentence, she spent the rest of the war in a German concentration camp.
The communists, however, were not that complaisant. As a protest against their take-over in February 1948 (see: Communism), Horáková, who by now had become not only a member of the Parliament, but also the head of the Czech Women’s Council and one of the leaders of the National Socialist Party, withdraw from all her functions and left politics. The communists were still not satisfied. Assuming (probably correctly) that a democrat with Horáková’s moral integrity and broad popularity wouldn’t silently tolerate their appalling abuse of human rights, they fabricated evidence and charged her with treason and espionage.
Horáková fought like a tiger to the bitter end, but didn’t have a chance against the Bolshevik machinery. She was executed on June 27, 1950.
It’s tempting to claim that Milada Horáková didn’t die in vain. Like Jan Palach, she certainly represented a bright light in the dictatorship’s darkness. After the Velvet Revolution, a monument in Horáková’s honour was erected at Prague’s Slavín Cemetery, where the nation’s most prominent daughters and sons are buried. The location of Horáková’s monument, in front of the others, even indicates that she is a hero among the heroes.