The shared experience of communism and the fight against it is one of the strongest unifying factors between Poles and Czechs. Despite their disparate modern histories, which have taken vastly different paths, this historic common denominator is one of the few things that connects them. Despite the similarities between the two languages, it remains one of the most significant shared elements between the societies. The shared fate under communism forged real bonds between them, which served to temper older and more profound animosities and differences. This is a remarkable feat, particularly in Central Europe, and should be recognized as such.

It is on this foundation that a new, “Visegrad” definition of Central Europe has been built, whose founding legend is the cooperation “across borders” of opposition circles from individual countries (and above all Poles and Czechs). A key role in this story is undoubtedly played by the Polish “Solidarity” trade union movement as an inspiration for action and a source of know-how, and then also as the main initiator of the establishment of mutual relations in the region.

Within this sphere of ideas, on the other hand, both societies were united by the conviction – expressed at the same time by Kundera, Miłosz and others – of a common belonging to the "hijacked West." And if we think of figures who symbolise this connection, one of the first to come to mind would be Petruška Šustrová.

The farewell ceremony for this illustrious figure of the Czech dissident movement will take place on 17 May, 2023, the day before her 76th birthday, at the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, located in Prague's Vinohrady district. This church held great significance for her as she had been a dedicated parishioner for many years. Her passing marks the end of an era for an entire generation of Czechs who admired Poland as a symbol of hope. Her legacy will be remembered and celebrated by those who knew her, and her contributions to the Czech and Polish communities will continue to inspire future generations.

She talked many times about her first “physical” encounter with Poland when she found herself in Warsaw for All Souls’ Day in 1989. She was touched by the hundreds of candles lit at graves, monuments and plaques related to the Warsaw Uprising, which made a huge impression on her. “There was nothing on the shop shelves, but Warsaw was full of flowers and candles.”

Then – in November 1989 – she was in Wrocław to attend the "Central Europe at the Crossroads" conference combined with the "Festival of Czechoslovak Independent Culture". The latter was a meeting of Czech political émigrés with representatives of the domestic opposition organised by the Polish structures of the Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity movement. This was a key time because the regime still seemed to be holding firm in Prague and Bratislava and there was nothing to indicate that in a few weeks, Vaclav Havel would become president. “[I then returned] from this land of freedom to a grim police state" with the conviction that the end of communism was near, she later recalled. “They considered me a fantasist.”

But Poland had been present in Šustrova's life much earlier. It was a key part of the entire Czech dissident movement. A few years ago, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the introduction of martial law in Poland, she recalled: “I will never forget how on 13 December 1981 I found out about what was happening in Poland. For us, Poland was something terribly important. We hoped that something could be done about the system.”

The difference in the situation of the two countries under communism is easily seen in the very names used. The Czechs always speak of “dissidents” and not of “oppositionists”' because, between the publication of Charter 77, until the Velvet Revolution, there were a maximum of a few hundred – or at most a few thousand – people nationwide.

As the most eminent expert on the subject, Łukasz Kamiński, rightly points out, we should keep in mind that the cycles of development of Polish and Czech communism were not synchronised. For Czechs, a moment comparable to August 1980 in Poland was the Prague Spring and events in 1968-1969. The brutal pacification of this mass and almost community-wide strive for “socialism with a human face” (the so-called normalisation) meant that, until November 1989, opponents of the regime were exclusively particularly courageous, determined individuals, isolated from the majority of society.

The reach and precision of the Czechoslovak regime's penetration into society were far more extensive than those in Poland. The degree of control exerted over society during the 1970s and 1980s was unparalleled. The regime's interference in the lives of individuals and the families of those who dared to challenge the system, even in the slightest manner, may have been immeasurably greater. The grip on society was all-encompassing, and its impact on the daily lives of citizens cannot be overstated.

It was much more difficult to find grey areas in which it was possible to survive without having to collaborate. Every simple life choice could have irreversible consequences for the individual and his or her loved ones – not only strictly political actions but also, for example, the practice of religion.

“Entering into a dispute with the authorities means, in our state, that in addition to me personally, my entire family up to the third generation and all my friends who do not manage to disown me publicly enter into it. It will be a long, exhausting, exhausting and – by human standards – hopeless dispute,” wrote Václav Benda, who, like Šustrová was one of the spokespeople for Charter 77 and co-founders of the Czech VONS – Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted – in January 1978. And Šustrová recounted: “I read the files of the security service about me. There were accounts of individual days of my life. They always started with me going to the kindergarten with my children, and then picking them up. And so on, I imagined myself dragging my children and carrying heavy shopping bags, and them always following me, step by step. It made me sick.”

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     Czech dissidents who chose to fight for freedom consciously paid the price, which included exclusion and isolation. They worked as stokers in boiler rooms or cleaners (this was the case of Petruška Šustrova). Or they cleaned windows, like the later Cardinal and Archbishop of Prague, Miloslav Vlk, who later recounted how, in the intervals between one shop window and the next, he confessed by sitting in the courtyard on an upturned bucket.

The intimate, familial nature of Czech dissidents also stemmed from this. In the absence of any other space for freedom, it often took place at the level of families. In Prague itself, the dissident movement was largely an archipelago of dozens of flats that served as meeting places and hiding places for anyone who needed asylum. It was in such tiny “republics of words” – albeit under the constant and highly oppressive gaze of the secret police – that free debate and spiritual freedom flourished.

In such a situation, it is no wonder that the history of the Czech road to freedom is full of strong female heroes who were the cornerstones of these domestic “republics” – engaging politically on the one hand and running a home and raising children on the other. A few weeks ago, we said laid one of them to rest. Dana Němcová, a mother of seven, a psychologist by profession, who likewise earned her living as a cleaner. Petruška Šustrová managed to raise five children of her own (with four different husbands, we should add). Kamila, the wife of the creator of the concept of the “parallel polis” Vaclav Benda, also had five children.

And the Polish reflection on the Czech dissident movement must not overlook Anna Šabatová, the originator of the Polish-Czech border meetings, in whose flat the idea of Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity was later born. Their houses, by the way, all located in the Prague 2 district – New Town and Vinohrady – provided a stable point of reference and a safe refuge for all independent circles. The word dissident also aptly characterises the predominance of the moral element over politics within the Czech opposition. The primary objective was the struggle for the individual's right to a dignified life rather than political change, which under Czechoslovak conditions appeared as an illusion. Paradoxically, however, after the fall of the regime, it was a small group of Czech dissidents, armed with ethical principles and hardened by life on the margins of society, who built the foundations of a political system that broke with the communist past in a much more unequivocal way than the mass Polish opposition did.

It was then that Petruška Šustrová once again found herself on the front line – in her role as Deputy Interior Minister, carrying out the vetting of employees of the former security services or preparing the vetting law. She was one of the people directly responsible for many elements of Czech decommunisation.

The pillar of the Czech reckoning was their unequivocal moral judgement, which was enshrined in a laconic law of November 13, 1991 (480/1991) stating that “in the years 1948-1989, the communist regime violated human rights and its own laws”, later supplemented by the “Law on the Unlawfulness of the Communist Regime and Resistance to it” of 9 July 1993 (198/1993). In its preamble, it expresses the belief that “the freely elected parliament has a duty to hold the period of communism to account” and goes on to hold the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and its members responsible for “the planned destruction of the traditional values of European civilisation, the violation of fundamental rights and freedoms, moral and economic decline” or “the devastation of the environment”.

The Act concludes by stating that resistance to the system was “justified, legitimate and respectable”. Written exclusively in colloquial language, it was the tone of the 1993 law – that showed the dissociation from the communist period and its unequivocally negative assessment, without differentiation or shades of grey, that was and still is obvious (despite the wave of nostalgia and the changing political climate).

Petruška Šustrová, along with Interior Minister Ján Langoš and MP Vaclav Benda, was one of the most important architects of the Czech reckoning with communism. It was during this period that she forged a long-standing friendship with Polish activists, such as husband-and-wife-team Zofia and Zbigniew Romaszewski, who were looking for the best way to fight communism.

In Poland, the “Solidarity legitimacy” was (with the exception of the post-communist camp) an almost indispensable ticket into the world of politics after 1989, and even 30 years after the regime change, the first ranks of politics are full of veterans “from the underground” who still set the tone for many key disputes. In the Czech Republic, with few exceptions, dissidents quickly left politics. More often than not, this was a conscious decision – former dissidents saw themselves as activists fighting for human and civil rights rather than party politicians or cogs in the bureaucratic machinery. This was also the case with Petruška Šustrova, who left active politics in 1992 and was later active in public only as a journalist, commentator and translator.

Instead of fighting intra-Czech disputes, she devoted her energy and will to nations that were only "on the road to freedom". She travelled to monitor elections in Belarus and the Republic of Artsakh, met with the opposition in Cuba, made films about the Crimean Tatars and translated books about the free Chechens. She was a natural part of the informal “Promethean” international movement of former Central European oppositionists who knew that their struggle was still not over, and should continue until the last vestiges of the Soviet empire disappeared and all the peoples of the region gained freedom.

However, she never forgot her love for Poland. She tried to support new forms of Czech-Polish cooperation and, above all, fought against the simplistic, black-and-white view of Poland automatically adopted by Western news agencies. She combined all this, extremely rarely, with leftist political sympathies. She translated many – and very diverse – Polish authors, from Wojciech Jagielski to Grzegorz Górny, from Karol Modzelewski to Bronisław Wildstein. It is largely also thanks to her work that the image of Poland in the Czech public space remains much more nuanced than in most European countries.

This is one of the many positive elements of the legacy of the Czech dissident movement. A movement made up of people who never allowed themselves to be easily forced into ideological patterns and, above tribal loyalties, preferred the ethos of “living in the truth of philosopher Jan Patočka, who lay at the heart of the entire movement. – Maciej Ruczaj

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

  – Translated by Roberto Galea

The author is the director of the Polish Institute in Prague..