"Braliśmy w tym udział...". Wspomnienia członków Komunistycznej Partii Czechosłowacji

"We took part in this... Memoirs of members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia The first edition of ‘We Took Part in It. Memoirs of Members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party,’ [Czech original title: Zápasy KSČ. Očima pamětníků] was published in 1971 on the fiftieth anniversary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. This book is part of the structure of the cyclical celebration of the rise of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and thus an element of the ritual of the updating of the cosmogonic myth, in which there is a symbolic return to the place and time when it all began, when the Communist movement was untainted even by the distortions of the 1950s, and above all (from the perspective of the normative authorities) by the counter-revolution and the madness of the Prague Spring. For this ritual transfers to a reality which has a model function, and consequently makes common the experience of creation and leads to the rebirth of the communist world. The history of the crisis of the twenties and thirties becomes in this case only a contribution to the history of the seventies, not only in terms of the repetition of the cosmogonic myth of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but also in terms of the attempt to transfer the interwar enthusiasm of the beginnings of the communist movement to normative conditions. The experience of the mythical beginnings is meant to stimulate enthusiasm for overcoming subsequent crises. Nevertheless, both the structure of the proposed cosmogonic myth, its language and, above all, the reproduction of the contents and ideas contained in the document forming the philosophy of presenting the past in the period of normalization indicate that this is merely an illusion."