V krajině za zrcadlem Političtí emigranti v poúnorovém Československu a případ Aymonin
In the Land beyond the Looking Glass: Émigrés in Czechoslovakia and the Aymonin Case

Summary/Abstract: In this article the author considers the less usual phenomenon of exile on the Communist side of the Iron Curtain, that is, émigrés in Czechoslovakia after the Communist takeover of February 1948. Their existence was a complementary feature of the Cold War with respect to the work of the democratic émigrés in the West, and served both to form a picture of the “class enemy” and to confi rm the legitimacy of the Communist regime as the guardian against “exploitation and oppression.” The author fi rst considers the status of political asylum in interwar Czechoslovakia, and says that despite the existence of numerous communities of Russian, Ukrainian, and, later, German émigrés, the right to political asylum was not legislatively defined, and was instead determined largely by international custom and convention. This state of affairs continued even after the war. Émigrés in Communist Czechoslovakia were granted asylum on the basis of a proposal drafted by the international department of the Central Committee of the CPCz, which stemmed from the relevant article of the Soviet Constitution, and was ultimately, in 1960, codified in the new Constitution of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The author then moves on to the composition of the Western émigrés in Czechoslovakia. By far the most numerous were the Greek and Macedonian refugees, who sought asylum in countries of the Soviet Bloc after the Communist defeat in the Greek Civil War. About 12,000 came to Czechoslovakia in several waves between 1948 and 1951. The next largest group was the Italians, mostly former partisans, of whom 214 were in Czechoslovakia in late 1950. Then come the Yugoslavs, opponents to the regime of Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) after his split with Stalin; there were 152 of them in late 1950. Among the 58 Spaniards, mostly workers and members of the intelligentsia opposed to the Franco regime, there were two leading functionaries of the Spanish Communist Party, Vicente Uribe (1897–1961) and Juan Modesto (1906–1968). The exile Spanish Communist Party held two congresses in Prague in those days. Apart from these groups fourteen US émigrés lived in Czechoslovakia in the mid-1950s and various individuals from other countries of Western Europe and the Third World. Among them were also four Frenchmen, the most important of whom was the cultural attaché Marcel Aymonin (1911–?), who is the focus of the article. The author considers Aymonin in the context of Czechoslovak-French relations, which began to worsen in summer 1947, and from the early 1950s were shifted on purpose from the usual bilateral state level to the sphere of communications between the Communist Parties of the two countries under the patronage of Moscow. At the request of the French and Italian comrades, as part of the efforts to achieve closer collaboration, Czechoslovakia also commenced propaganda radio broadcasts to France and Italy, which were entitled “Ce soir en France” (This Evening in France)...

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