Word: communists
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...still regarded as one of the country's greatest writers and, more importantly, a leading voice of the generation that turned away from Communism to embrace the heady liberalismof the Prague Spring before it was crushed by Soviet tanks. So the recent allegation that, as a student under Communist rule, he informed local police on a young man is being greeted with dismay, and a little disbelief. The author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and other best selling novels has vehemently denied the allegation, saying that the allegations are an attempt at character "assassination" and that...
Czechs are not so much shocked that Kundera, 79, now living in Paris, may have snitched on a suspected class enemy while a staunch Communist. Such things were not uncommon at the time. What most find surprising, however, is that the secret was kept for so long. At the same time, his supporters stress that any such incident should not detract from his work as an artist and could even explain the nature of his genius: his moral detachment and near-obsession with the themes of denunciation and betrayal. "I have always known [Kundera] was a Communist...
...suspected enemy of the state would have been quite widespread among Czech students of the time. "It falls within the context of that era," says Ondrej Tuma, director of the Institute for Contemporary History . "The Czechoslovak society, and especially the young people, the intellectuals, were crazy about the Communist ideology. They were absolutely serious about it, including the propaganda and spy-mania. Thousands and thousands of young people would have acted the same...
...Among other things, the flap underscores the difficulty of gleaning the truth from communist- era archives. Police files similar to the one in which this document was found exist in most post-communist countries in eastern Europe. And such celebrated opponents of communism as former Czech President Vaclav Havel and Polish dissident journalist Adam Michnik have argued strenuously against their contents being divulged to the public, for fear that the information will be misinterpreted, used for political gain, or to carry out personal vendettas. Skeptics also point out that the communist-era police frequently forged documents to embarrass state enemies...
...This sudden, aggressive enforcement of environmental regulations has become almost a rite of passage for industrializing nations. Now it's Vietnam's turn. The communist government's embrace of the free market has lifted millions out of poverty over the last decade. But just as in neighboring China, environmental considerations have been largely pushed aside in the race to build factories and industrial parks, few of them equipped with adequate wastewater treatment facilities...