On this day 58 years ago, Fidel Castro backed Russia's imperial venture in Czechoslovakia

 Today, thousands of Cuban troops are fighting for Putin's imperial venture in Ukraine.

Castro backs Brezhnev invading Czechoslovakia 29 years after Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Today marks two anniversaries. It is the “Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes,” and it is also a day to celebrate the “Baltic Way.” These two observances are connected through history, but the Castro regime has a connection to the first that is not well known.

Eighty seven years ago on August 23, 1939 Josef Stalin signed a treaty with Adolph Hitler formally known as a “non-aggression pact” but it came to be known after the names of their respective foreign ministers, V.M. Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Eventually it also became known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

It contained secret protocols to invade and conquer Poland, and split up the rest of Central and Eastern Europe into spheres of influence for Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.

 Nine days later on September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II started. Sixteen days later the Soviet Union, exercising its secret agreement with the Germans, invaded Poland from the East and met their Nazi allies on September 22, 1939 in a joint military parade in Brest-Litovsk to celebrate their victory.

 The Nazi-Soviet alliance continued

230,000 Polish soldiers and officers and thousands of military service representatives were taken captive by the Soviets. On March 5, 1940 the order to shoot the prisoners was signed by seven members of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich. Thousands of Polish Army officers and intellectual leaders were taken into the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in the Soviet Union, shot in the back of the head or in the neck and buried in mass graves.

Months later, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed the Baltic States in June 1940.

 How the alliance ended in 1941

This arrangement ended on July 22, 1941 when the Nazis double crossed their Soviet allies and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. This alliance cost the Soviet Union 22 to 28 million Russian lives in World War Two.

However it also ended with the Soviet Union retaking and absorbing the Baltic states for decades, and Poland firmly under Soviet control as a satellite state. This was a legacy of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that did not end until fifty years later.

Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite since 1948, had its Prague Spring in 1968, a moment when reformers in the government sought socialism with a human face and it was ended on August 21, 1968 with the arrival of Warsaw Pact tanks on Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s orders followed by an occupation that crushed the reformist initiative.

Fidel Castro backed Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968

Two days after the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968 Fidel Castro publicly supported the invasion and occupation of the central European country.

 Castro’s support of Soviet imperialism on the 29th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact revealed the true nature of his regime in Cuba.

The Soviet empire collapsed through nonviolent resistance

On June 4, 1989 the Solidarity labor movement won in free elections and the Polish people finally regained their sovereignty from Soviet domination through nonviolent means.

The End of Molotov Ribbentrop

Thirty seven years ago today two million Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians joined hands together in a giant human chain stretching 370 miles on August 23, 1989. Fifty years to the day after the treaty that brought them so much grief had been signed. This non-violent act of defiance was a crucial event that led to the liberation of the Baltic States and their restored independence in 1991.

It was the end of the last vestige of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Black Ribbon Day

Today, the European Union observes Black Ribbon Day. This anniversary is observed to honor the memory of all the victims of totalitarianism and authoritarianism in the world. This includes the victims of communism in Cuba.

Sadly, the Castro regime continues to back Russian imperial ventures in Europe, this time in Ukraine, and its own ventures in Venezuela to frustrate the sovereignty of their respective peoples.

Since 2022, according to Ukrainian intelligence, 20,000 Cubans have fought in Putin’s imperial war in Ukraine. There are currently between six to seven thousand Cubans fighting on the frontlines. Estimates are that up to 300 Cubans have been killed in the fighting.

The Center for a Free Cuba has prepared a CubaBrief to observe Black Ribbon Day.

 In Washington D.C. last year a delegation from the Center for a Free Cuba formed part of a human chain in McPherson Square in observance of the Baltic Way anniversary. Celebrating the nonviolent victory over Russian imperialism by the peoples of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.

 Tomorrow, Monday, August 24, 2026 at 2:00pm in Washington DC at McPherson Square join the Joint Baltic American National Committee – JBANC, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and the Embassy of Estonia, Embassy of Latvia to the USA, and Embassy of Lithuania in Washington, D.C. for this commemoration of the Baltic Way anniversary, which marked the beginning of the end of the last remnant of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that was finally achieved in 1991.

 

 

Remember Milada Horáková, who was martyred on this day in 1950, by the Communist regime for her nonviolent defense of Czechoslovak democracy.

Remember her 

Milada Horakova at her show trial in 1950.

Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government on June 27, 1950. She was a  lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods. 

Milada had been a member of the Czech resistance to the Nazi occupation of her homeland and survived a Nazi prison. After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis in 1945 by the Soviets she became a member of parliament in 1946 but resigned her seat after the Communist coup of 1948. 

However she refused to abandon her country.  She was arrested at her office on September 27, 1949 "on charges of conspiracy and espionage against the state." 

Milada was subjected to a show trial. 

Oxford Languages defines a show trial as "a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice." 

Vladimir Lenin called them "model trials", but they would eventually become known as show trials under Josef Stalin with hundreds of thousands executed and millions sent to work camps in Siberia, and they would take place not only in the Soviet Union, but in the East Bloc including Czechoslovakia, and as far away as Cuba. The Nazis also copied the practice, and so have other repressive regimes.

🕯️ Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Communist Regime

Today, we honour the memory of all those who were stripped of their freedom, dignity, and lives under the communist regime. Seventy-six years ago, Milada Horáková, Záviš Kalandra, Jan Bouchal, and Oldřich Pecl were… pic.twitter.com/Pw9gAaxjAk

— Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs (@CzechMFA) June 27, 2026

"I have declared to the State Police that I remain faithful to my convictions, and that the reason I remain faithful to them is because I adhere to the ideas, the opinions and the beliefs of those who are figures of authority to me. And among them are two people who remain the most important figures to me, two people who made an enormous impression on me throughout my life. Those people are Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Eduard Benes. And I want to say something to those who were also inspired by those two men when forming their own convictions and their own ideas. I want to say this: no-one in this country should be made to die for their beliefs. And no-one should go to prison for them."

Her life story was brought to big screen in 2017and on January 12, 2018 was available on Netflix, and is now available on Amazon. Below is an English trailer for this important film.

 Adam D. E. Watkins in his 2010 paper "The Show Trial of J U Dr. Milada Horáková: The Catalyst for Social Revolution in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1950" explains the importance of the show trial in gutting democratic traditions and replacing them with Stalinism:

The study deconstructs the show trial’s influence on inducing a country to foster the Communist movement against decades of democratic traditions. The research reveals the impact of the show trial of Dr. Milada Horáková in 1950 and how it was instrumental in reforming a society, marked the beginning of Stalinism, and ushered forth a perverted system of justice leading to a cultural transformation after the Communist putsch. Furthermore, the revolution truncated intellectual thought and signified the end of many social movements – including the women’s rights movement

According to D. E. Watkings Horáková was seen by the public as a symbol of  the First Republic and of democracy. Unlike others who did break under the relentless psychological and physical torture she never did. The communists tried to edit her testimony for propaganda purposes but as Radio Prague in their 2005 report on the discovery of the unedited tapes of her trial:

[S]he faced her show trial with calm and defiance, refusing to be broken. Audio recordings - intended to be used by the Communists for propaganda purposes - were mostly never aired, for the large part because for the Party's purposes, they were unusable.

Because she refused to cooperate with the Stalinists her punishment was particularly severe, even for the death penalty. In 2007 her prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova who in 1950 had helped to condemn Horakova to death, now 86, was tried as an accomplice to murder. 

During the trial Radio Prague reported that a note written by an anonymous eye-witness to Milada Horakova's execution quoted the young prosecutor recommending: "Don't break her neck on the noose, Suffocate the bitch - and the others too." Milada Horáková  was executed in Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950 by a particularly torturous method: "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes^. She was 48 years old." The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them.

In a letter to her 16 year old teenage daughter Milada explained why she had refused to compromise with evil. Her daughter received the letter 40 years later after the end of communist rule:

The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good … by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight.

Hours prior to her execution she reaffirmed her position to her family:

I go with my head held high. One also has to know how to lose. That is no disgrace. An enemy also does not lose honor if he is truthful and honorable. One falls in battle; what is life other than struggle? (Both quotes excerpts taken from here)

Ms. Brožová-Polednová, the prosecutor,  was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 but was given a presidential pardon by Vaclav Klaus on humanitarian grounds one year and six months into her sentence and released in 2010. The former prosecutor defended her actions claiming that what she did was legal and that she was "following orders." She tried to appeal her conviction at the Strasbourg Court in 2011 and lost.

⚖On June 27, 1950, the Czechoslovak communist regime executed #FreedomFighter Milada Horáková. In Czechia, we commemorate today as the #DayOfPoliticalPrisoners. The number of #PoliticalPrisoners worldwide is unknown, though rough estimates by human rights orgs are around 1mill. pic.twitter.com/lnx1jkABpA

— People in Need (@people_in_need) June 27, 2024

Today, June 27, the day of Milada Horakova's execution is now recognized in the Czech Republic as  “Commemoration day for the victims of the Communist regime.” 

El legado de Milada Horáková https://t.co/p43HYSJ6tp via @CADAL

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) June 28, 2026

Yesterday in Argentina, CADAL activists screened the film MILADA.

Biopic of the life of Milada Horáková (2017)

 

Remembering Václav Havel, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and nonviolent action

 "A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences." - Jacques Maritain

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and President Václav Havel in Prague (2002)

Twenty three years ago on December 17, 2002 Oswaldo Paya addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg at a ceremony awarding him the the Sakharov Prize where he outlined his nonviolent vision for change in Cuba.

"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.’"

 Václav Havel passed away fourteen years ago today, on December 18, 2011. His nonviolent resistance and dedication to truth in successfully resisting totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia remain powerful legacies and examples that are relevant today. In 2002, President Vaclav Havel addressed the Cuban people and offered words that should be heeded now:

"Our world, as a whole, is not in the best of shape and the direction it is headed in may well be quite ambivalent. But this does not mean that we are permitted to give up on free and cultivated thinking and to replace it with a set of utopian clichés. That would not make the world a better place, it would only make it worse. On the contrary, it means that we must do more for our own freedom, and that of others."

Nonviolence requires recognizing these extreme injustices and the justifiable anger that it generates but at the same time channeling it into creative and productive means to end the injustices. Some would argue that one must remove their anger, as one takes off a back pack, but that is profoundly mistaken. Martin Luther King Jr. offered a different approach that has proven more powerful: 

"The supreme task [of a leader] is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force." 

Mohandas Gandhi spoke in 1920 of learning "through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world."
 
This is not hating but harnessing a powerful spiritual energy and channeling it productively. Blowing up and screaming at someone is a waste of that energy that can be channeled into creative solutions to end the injustice.

Nonviolence theoretician Gene Sharp also recognizes that there is a moral dimension that cannot be ignored without dire consequences (as efforts to normalize relations with the Castro regime in Cuba demonstrated): "It is unreasonable to aim for a 'win- win' resolution. Brutal dictators and perpetrators of genocide do not deserve to win anything."

Today we mark the anniversary of the passing of Václav Havel, the president who led Czechia back into the community of free nations and whose name continues to be respected around the world. pic.twitter.com/VuCGIN9BzG

— Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs (@CzechMFA) December 18, 2025

Nonviolent thought can be divided into two general categories: strategic nonviolence and principled nonviolence but although emphasizing different perspectives they need not be in conflict.
Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence. 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence. Historical studies are cited that demonstrate the higher success rates of nonviolent movements when compared against violent ones. 

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

Principled nonviolence looks at the spiritual dimension, and the power of an individual to change and in doing so impact the world. Mohandas Gandhi described it as follows on September 8, 1913 in Indian Opinion:

"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."

The advantage of principled non-violence and taking it up as a daily practice in ones life is that it gives one the strength to resist provocations and builds up the character of the practitioner that assists in carrying out a strategic nonviolent plan.

Critics of nonviolence often argue that nonviolence works well against democracies but not brutal regimes, often citing the Nazis. Nevertheless in 1943 in Germany on Rosenstrasse street German wives married to Jewish men, who had been taken to concentration camps, organized a series of strikes and protests that forced the Nazis to return their Jewish husbands back from the death camps. Those men survived the Holocaust thanks to their wives courageous and nonviolent action.  

The disturbing questions that should arise are: What would have happened if instead of the violent Antifa movement, that fought the Nazis in street battles throughout the 1930s that escalated violence, opponents of the Nazis had followed Gandhi's advice at the time and resisted them nonviolently? What would have happened if the Weimar Republic instead of attempting to silence the Nazis by repeatedly prosecuting them for violating hate speech laws had challenged their evil ideas in the court of public opinion?

Since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 there has existed in overall terms a general strategy of change that can be summed up as: " Carrying out a nonviolent struggle in defense of human rights for the freedom of Cuba."

Looking at another definition of strategy that divides it into three parts gives a better idea of the challenges facing the democratic opposition in Cuba:

1. Diagnostic: A totalitarian dictatorship with dynastic elements with the political will to hang on to power.
2. Guiding policy: nonviolence
3. Action plan: There exist different areas of emphasis by the opposition and civil society that is also something found in nonviolent struggles.

Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence: 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence." 

The reason for the greater success rate of nonviolent resistance is that it is easier to mobilize large numbers of people to take nonviolent action than to engage in violent action. Success is not only defined by overthrowing the existing regime, but having a transition that ends in a democratic regime. The methods used in nonviolent struggle translate better to democratic practices then violent resistance because they involve nonviolent discipline, the mobilization of large numbers and the encouragement of civic virtue.  

Vaclav Havel talks about the Communist dictatorship in Cuba and the position he was in to promote free thought and other freedoms Cubans are still deprived of in their own country. ( Recorded 2007) https://t.co/EuwaqttG7E #Cuba #CzechRepublic #VaclavHavel #DeathAnniversary

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) December 18, 2025

Furthermore the use of humor is not to be underestimated. Václav Havel in an address to the Central European University on June 24, 1999 at a difficult moment on the international scene made the case for laughter.

"The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world."

Following his death in 2011, every year on the anniversary of his passing admirers of Václav Havel the world over wear short trousers in his memory. 

On December 18th roll up your trousers to honor Vaclav Havel

Organizers explained its historic significance along with its particular Czech sensibility.

The “Short Trousers for Václav Havel” initiative started in 2012 to honor the memory of Václav Havel with a gesture that was unique, memorable and easily achieved by supporters of this exceptional person in modern Czech and European history.  Short Trousers is a reference to Havel stepping into political life in 1989 and his inauguration to the presidency in visibly short trousers. He explained vainly that rather than a tailor’s mistake it was his habit to pull his pants up at every dramatic situation. To this, one might say global mythology of his short trousers, he added with a smile: "I must say that I am glad of it, more or less. From my point of view it’s a pretty gentle way of mocking myself."  An effort to honor such a respectable person by a gesture that points to this humorous episode might appear, at first sight, as a contradictory act. But the opposite is true. We believe that rolled up trousers on the anniversary of the death of Václav Havel is a gesture which is Czech, slightly satirical and which can be easily joined by anyone who wants to honor the memory of the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president Havel in a cheerful way.

This method of spontaneous remembrance contrasts dramatically with how dictators forcibly demand that they be remembered on penalty of imprisonment for dissenting as has been the case following the 2016 death of Fidel Castro.  

Marking Vaclav Havel's 14th death anniversary wearing short trousers.

75 years ago today: Milada Horáková sentenced to death in Communist show trial in Czechoslovakia

"When you realize that something is just and true, then be so resolute that you will be able to die for it.”   – Milada Horáková, in a letter to her daughter

 

Image of Milada Horáková at her show trial

First wrote about Milada Horáková, the Czech democrat who resisted both Nazis and Communists, back in 2014, and her refusal to go along with the political show trial organized against her in 1950. 

She had been a member of the Czech resistance to the Nazi occupation of her homeland and survived torture in a Nazi prison. After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis in 1945 by the Soviets she became a member of parliament in 1946 but resigned her seat after the Communist coup of 1948. 

However she refused to abandon her country. 

She was arrested at her office on September 27, 1949 "on charges of conspiracy and espionage against the state." 

The show trial of Horáková and twelve of her colleagues began on May 31, 1950. 

Oxford Languages defines a show trial as "a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice." 

Vladimir Lenin called them "model trials", but they would eventually become known as show trials under Josef Stalin with hundreds of thousands executed and millions sent to work camps in Siberia, and they would take place not only in the Soviet Union, but in the East Bloc including Czechoslovakia, and as far away as Cuba. The Nazis also copied the practice, and so have other repressive regimes.

Adam D. E. Watkins in his 2010 paper "The Show Trial of J U Dr. Milada Horáková: The Catalyst for Social Revolution in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1950" explains the importance of the show trial in gutting democratic traditions and replacing them with Stalinism.

"The study deconstructs the show trial’s influence on inducing a country to foster the Communist movement against decades of democratic traditions. The research reveals the impact of the show trial of Dr. Milada Horáková in 1950 and how it was instrumental in reforming a society, marked the beginning of Stalinism, and ushered forth a perverted system of justice leading to a cultural transformation after the Communist putsch. Furthermore, the revolution truncated intellectual thought and signified the end of many social movements – including the women’s rights movement."

According to Watkins, Horáková was seen by the public as a symbol of  the First Republic and of democracy. Unlike others who did break under the relentless psychological and physical torture she never did. The communists tried to edit her testimony for propaganda purposes but as Radio Prague in their 2005 report on the discovery of the unedited tapes of her trial.

[S]he faced her show trial with calm and defiance, refusing to be broken. Audio recordings - intended to be used by the Communists for propaganda purposes - were mostly never aired, for the large part because for the Party's purposes, they were unusable.

Milada Horakova addressed the court in the final day of her show trial on June 8, 1950 in which she refused to go along with the script prepared for her. 

"I have declared to the State Police that I remain faithful to my convictions, and that the reason I remain faithful to them is because I adhere to the ideas, the opinions and the beliefs of those who are figures of authority to me. And among them are two people who remain the most important figures to me, two people who made an enormous impression on me throughout my life. Those people are Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Eduard Benes. And I want to say something to those who were also inspired by those two men when forming their own convictions and their own ideas. I want to say this: no-one in this country should be made to die for their beliefs. And no-one should go to prison for them."

Because she refused to cooperate with the Stalinists her punishment was particularly severe, death by hanging.

During the trial Radio Prague reported that a note written by an anonymous eye-witness to Milada's execution quoted the young prosecutor recommending: "Don't break her neck on the noose, Suffocate the bitch - and the others too."  

Milada Horáková  was executed in Pankrác Prison on June 27, 1950 through "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes. She was 48 years old." 

The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them.  She wrote letters to her mother-in-law, husband, and daughter. Only her daughter, Jana, would learn of the contents of the letter when it was published in an underground publication in Czechoslovakia in 1970. She finally received the letters in 1990.

In the letter to her 16 year old teenage daughter Milada explained why she had refused to compromise with evil. 

The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good … by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight.

Hours prior to her execution she reaffirmed her position to her family:

I go with my head held high. One also has to know how to lose. That is no disgrace. An enemy also does not lose honor if he is truthful and honorable. One falls in battle; what is life other than struggle?  

In 2007 her prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova who in 1950 had helped to condemn Horakova to death, then 86, was tried as an accomplice to murder.  She was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 but was given a presidential pardon by Vaclav Klaus on humanitarian grounds one year and six months into her sentence and released in 2010. 

The former prosecutor defended her actions claiming that what she did was legal and that she was "following orders." Brozova-Polednova tried to appeal her conviction at the Strasbourg Court in 2011 and lost. She died on January 15, 2015 at age 93.

Milada's life story was brought to the big screen in 2017, was available on Netflix, and can be purchased on Amazon. Below is an English trailer for this important film.

Remember her: Milada Horakova martyred on this day in 1950 by communist government for her nonviolent defense of Czechoslovakian democracy

Remember her 

Milada Horakova at her show trial in 1950.

Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government on June 27, 1950. She was a  lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods. 

Milada had been a member of the Czech resistance to the Nazi occupation of her homeland and survived a Nazi prison. After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis in 1945 by the Soviets she became a member of parliament in 1946 but resigned her seat after the Communist coup of 1948. 

However she refused to abandon her country.  She was arrested at her office on September 27, 1949 "on charges of conspiracy and espionage against the state." 

Milada was subjected to a show trial. 

Oxford Languages defines a show trial as "a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice." 

Vladimir Lenin called them "model trials", but they would eventually become known as show trials under Josef Stalin with hundreds of thousands executed and millions sent to work camps in Siberia, and they would take place not only in the Soviet Union, but in the East Bloc including Czechoslovakia, and as far away as Cuba. The Nazis also copied the practice, and so have other repressive regimes.

Let’s celebrate champions of women’s rights, defenders of democracy, freedoms and dignity like Milada Horáková who bravely stood against totalitarianism in all forms and was executed on this day in 1950 for opposing the communist occupation of Czechoslovakia. Long live Heroes https://t.co/XXdZY8o5e4

— CzechEmbassyPodgorica (@CzechEmbassyME) June 27, 2024

Seventy three years after Milada Horakova addressed the court in the final day of her show trial on June 8, 1950 her words ring true and strong:

"I have declared to the State Police that I remain faithful to my convictions, and that the reason I remain faithful to them is because I adhere to the ideas, the opinions and the beliefs of those who are figures of authority to me. And among them are two people who remain the most important figures to me, two people who made an enormous impression on me throughout my life. Those people are Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Eduard Benes. And I want to say something to those who were also inspired by those two men when forming their own convictions and their own ideas. I want to say this: no-one in this country should be made to die for their beliefs. And no-one should go to prison for them."

Her life story was brought to big screen in 2017and on January 12, 2018 was available on Netflix, and is now available on Amazon. Below is an English trailer for this important film.

 Adam D. E. Watkins in his 2010 paper "The Show Trial of J U Dr. Milada Horáková: The Catalyst for Social Revolution in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1950" explains the importance of the show trial in gutting democratic traditions and replacing them with Stalinism:

The study deconstructs the show trial’s influence on inducing a country to foster the Communist movement against decades of democratic traditions. The research reveals the impact of the show trial of Dr. Milada Horáková in 1950 and how it was instrumental in reforming a society, marked the beginning of Stalinism, and ushered forth a perverted system of justice leading to a cultural transformation after the Communist putsch. Furthermore, the revolution truncated intellectual thought and signified the end of many social movements – including the women’s rights movement

According to D. E. Watkings Horáková was seen by the public as a symbol of  the First Republic and of democracy. Unlike others who did break under the relentless psychological and physical torture she never did. The communists tried to edit her testimony for propaganda purposes but as Radio Prague in their 2005 report on the discovery of the unedited tapes of her trial:

[S]he faced her show trial with calm and defiance, refusing to be broken. Audio recordings - intended to be used by the Communists for propaganda purposes - were mostly never aired, for the large part because for the Party's purposes, they were unusable.

Because she refused to cooperate with the Stalinists her punishment was particularly severe, even for the death penalty. In 2007 her prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova who in 1950 had helped to condemn Horakova to death, now 86, was tried as an accomplice to murder. 

During the trial Radio Prague reported that a note written by an anonymous eye-witness to Milada Horakova's execution quoted the young prosecutor recommending: "Don't break her neck on the noose, Suffocate the bitch - and the others too." Milada Horáková  was executed in Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950 by a particularly torturous method: "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes^. She was 48 years old." The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them.

In a letter to her 16 year old teenage daughter Milada explained why she had refused to compromise with evil. Her daughter received the letter 40 years later after the end of communist rule:

The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good … by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight.

Hours prior to her execution she reaffirmed her position to her family:

I go with my head held high. One also has to know how to lose. That is no disgrace. An enemy also does not lose honor if he is truthful and honorable. One falls in battle; what is life other than struggle? (Both quotes excerpts taken from here)

Ms. Brožová-Polednová, the prosecutor,  was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 but was given a presidential pardon by Vaclav Klaus on humanitarian grounds one year and six months into her sentence and released in 2010. The former prosecutor defended her actions claiming that what she did was legal and that she was "following orders." She tried to appeal her conviction at the Strasbourg Court in 2011 and lost.

⚖On June 27, 1950, the Czechoslovak communist regime executed #FreedomFighter Milada Horáková. In Czechia, we commemorate today as the #DayOfPoliticalPrisoners. The number of #PoliticalPrisoners worldwide is unknown, though rough estimates by human rights orgs are around 1mill. pic.twitter.com/lnx1jkABpA

— People in Need (@people_in_need) June 27, 2024

Today, June 27, the day of Milada Horakova's execution is now recognized in the Czech Republic as  “Commemoration day for the victims of the Communist regime.”

Biopic of the life of Milada Horáková (2017)

 

Remembering Václav Havel, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and nonviolent action

 "A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences." - Jacques Maritain

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and President Václav Havel in Prague (2002)

Twenty one years ago on December 17, 2002 Oswaldo Paya addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg at a ceremony awarding him the the Sakharov Prize where he outlined his nonviolent vision for change in Cuba.

The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.’

 Václav Havel passed away twelve years ago today, on December 18, 2011, and his nonviolent resistance and dedication to truth in successfully resisting totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia remain powerful legacies and examples that are relevant today. In 2002, President Vaclav Havel addressed the Cuban people and offered words that should be heeded now:

"Our world, as a whole, is not in the best of shape and the direction it is headed in may well be quite ambivalent. But this does not mean that we are permitted to give up on free and cultivated thinking and to replace it with a set of utopian clichés. That would not make the world a better place, it would only make it worse. On the contrary, it means that we must do more for our own freedom, and that of others."

Nonviolence requires recognizing these extreme injustices and the justifiable anger that it generates but at the same time channeling it into creative and productive means to end the injustices. Some would argue that one must remove their anger, as one takes off a back pack, but that is profoundly mistaken. Martin Luther King Jr. offered a different approach that has proven far more powerful: 

"The supreme task [of a leader] is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force." 

Mohandas Gandhi spoke in 1920 of learning "through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world."
 
This is not hating but harnessing a powerful spiritual energy and channeling it productively. Blowing up and screaming at someone is a waste of that energy that can be channeled into creative solutions to end the injustice.

Nonviolence theoretician Gene Sharp also recognizes that there is a moral dimension that cannot be ignored without dire consequences (as the recent drive to normalize relations with the Castro regime in Cuba demonstrated): "It is unreasonable to aim for a 'win- win' resolution. Brutal dictators and perpetrators of genocide do not deserve to win anything."

Václav Havel | October 5, 1936 - December 18, 2011. We will always remember. pic.twitter.com/V4x8xICrAZ

— Forum 2000 (@Forum_2000) December 18, 2023

Nonviolent thought can be divided into two general categories: strategic nonviolence and principled nonviolence but although emphasizing different perspectives they need not be in conflict.
Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence. 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence. Historical studies are cited that demonstrate the higher success rates of nonviolent movements when compared against violent ones:

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

Principled nonviolence looks at the spiritual dimension, and the power of an individual to change and in doing so impact the world. Mohandas Gandhi described it as follows on September 8, 1913 in Indian Opinion:

"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."

The advantage of principled non-violence and taking it up as a daily practice in ones life is that it gives one the strength to resist provocations and builds up the character of the practitioner that assists in carrying out a strategic nonviolent plan.

Critics of nonviolence often argue that nonviolence works well against democracies but not brutal regimes, often citing the Nazis. Nevertheless in 1943 in Germany on Rosenstrasse street German wives married to Jewish men, who had been taken to concentration camps, organized a series of strikes and protests that forced the Nazis to return their Jewish husbands back from the death camps. Those men survived the Holocaust thanks to their wives courageous and nonviolent action.  

The disturbing questions that should arise are: What would have happened if instead of the violent Antifa movement, that fought the Nazis in street battles throughout the 1930s that escalated violence, opponents of the Nazis had followed Gandhi's advice at the time and resisted them nonviolently? What would have happened if the Weimar Republic instead of attempting to silence the Nazis by repeatedly prosecuting them for violating hate speech laws had challenged their evil ideas in the court of public opinion?

Since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 there has existed in overall terms a general strategy of change that can be summed up as: " Carrying out a nonviolent struggle in defense of human rights for the freedom of Cuba."

Looking at another definition of strategy that divides it into three parts gives a better idea of the challenges facing the democratic opposition in Cuba:

1. Diagnostic: A totalitarian dictatorship with dynastic elements with the political will to hang on to power.
2. Guiding policy: nonviolence
3. Action plan: There exist different areas of emphasis by the opposition and civil society that is also something found in nonviolent struggles.

Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence: 

Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence." 

The reason for the greater success rate of nonviolent resistance is that it is easier to mobilize large numbers of people to take nonviolent action than to engage in violent action. Success is not only defined by overthrowing the existing regime, but having a transition that ends in a democratic regime. The methods used in nonviolent struggle translate better to democratic practices then violent resistance because they involve nonviolent discipline, the mobilization of large numbers and the encouragement of civic virtue.  

Vaclav Havel talks about the Communist regime in Cuba and the position he is in to promote free thinking and other freedoms that Cubans are deprived of in their own country. ( Recorded 2007) https://t.co/EuwaqttG7E #Cuba #CzechRepublic #Havel

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) December 18, 2023

Furthermore the use of humor is not to be underestimated. Václav Havel in an address to the Central European University on June 24, 1999 at a difficult moment on the international scene made the case for laughter.

"The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world."

Following his death in 2011, every year on the anniversary of his passing admirers of Václav Havel the world over wear short trousers in his memory. 

On December 18th roll up your trousers to honor Vaclav Havel

Organizers explained its historic significance along with its particular Czech sensibility.

The “Short Trousers for Václav Havel” initiative started in 2012 to honor the memory of Václav Havel with a gesture that was unique, memorable and easily achieved by supporters of this exceptional person in modern Czech and European history.  Short Trousers is a reference to Havel stepping into political life in 1989 and his inauguration to the presidency in visibly short trousers. He explained vainly that rather than a tailor’s mistake it was his habit to pull his pants up at every dramatic situation. To this, one might say global mythology of his short trousers, he added with a smile: "I must say that I am glad of it, more or less. From my point of view it’s a pretty gentle way of mocking myself."  An effort to honor such a respectable person by a gesture that points to this humorous episode might appear, at first sight, as a contradictory act. But the opposite is true. We believe that rolled up trousers on the anniversary of the death of Václav Havel is a gesture which is Czech, slightly satirical and which can be easily joined by anyone who wants to honor the memory of the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president Havel in a cheerful way.

This method of spontaneous remembrance contrasts dramatically with how dictators forcibly demand that they be remembered on penalty of imprisonment for dissenting as has been the case following the 2016 death of Fidel Castro.  

 

Marking Vaclav Havel's 12th death anniversary wearing short trousers.