The Unbearable Stifling of Being (A Communist)

Communism sounds like the greatest thing in the world when you look at it theoretically. It's just when you put it into practice that it can become about as scary as Fascism. Fundamentally, the fact that you need people in charge of a system that promotes total equality means that the power-hungry will always rise up and warp the system to their advantage. In a world where people are desperate for control it's impossible for any society to be completely democratic, no matter the intentions. And artists seem to be a constant source of misery for the men in the big chairs: they are the ones that have both the minds and the means to criticise the ruling powers, and in Eastern Europe they were supressed as quickly as possible if they dared to speak out against the regime, and some were even pre-emptively silenced, just in case they should become disgruntled.

It is against this backdrop that Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being is set, in post-Second World War and Russian-occupied Prague. My main reason for wanting to read this was that I visited Prague a couple of years ago and absolutely loved the place. The only hangovers from Communism I saw were the amazing public transport system and a Ruskie hat that I bought which caused an old lady to say "Salut, comrade" at a bus-stop, thinking I was a Czech Communist, not an English tourist. So overall, Communism seemed pretty cool to me. But obviously not if you were Milan Kundera back in the sixties. Characters in the novel are hounded by the government into signing documents declaring their support for Communism, while equally harassed by anti-Governemnt protestors into condemning the regime; conversations in private dwellings are surreptitiously recorded and then broadcast to discredit the speakers; people are tricked by government agents into giving away their bodies for blackmail; nobody can trust any person, or even any wall, as you never know what horrors may be lurking behind it, ready to denounce you to the powe-be and destroy your life. Anyone in a position of respect or responsibility is forced to unswervingly dedicate themselves to Communism, lest they be jettisoned into a life of obscurity. It's the mad stuff of dystopian fiction and it's hard to believe how real this oppression was, so recently, and in countries so similar to my own.

One thing we did see in Prague: on the day we left we were wandering about and accidentally came across the Memorial to the Victims of Communism. I'd seen it in the guide book but didn't think it looked that impressive, and maybe seeing it in the picture above you don't think so either, but in person it's one of the most striking things I've ever seen. It shows full bodies receding back into nothing to depict how Communism stripped Czechoslovakia's citizens of their identities and livelihoods. It's hard to imagine a society that would not only crush art and philosophy, but even remove doctors it didn't like from their jobs and leave them to rot in squalor. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a great book that combines a great story, complicated philosophical musings, and also teaches you about the messed up modern history of a beautiful city. That Kundera obviously experienced much of the fear and paranoia whipped up in the novel makes it all the more vivid. Sometimes I think back to that old woman who thought I was her comrade. I guess Communism treated her well, and she was sad to see it go. Everything is relative.