Monika Zgustova on the legacy of the Prague spring

The Czech writer and translator Monika Zgustova considers that the oppression of the Prague Spring by Soviet troops in 1968 sealed a divorce between the western left and Moscow. "In a Europe split in half by the Cold War, there was little talk in western intellectual circles of persecutions suffered in the East. .... After the Prague spring, the Czech language and other Slave languages were opened up to the world thanks to a considerable quantity of translations ... The works translated unveiled communist barbarity. And even if certain intellectuals stuck to their guns for a while, maintaining that the Soviet invasion was in defence of the just cause of protecting communism from Capitalist voracity, this discourse gave in to the obvious evidence of the gulags and secret political practices. This evidence rendered pro-Soviet discourse obsolete once and for all."

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