Někde se stala chyba… Komunismus jako omyl v samizdatové a exilové tvorbě autorů sedmdesátých let
Representation of Communism as “a mistake” in the samizdat and exile production of the 70’s

Summary/Abstract: In the 1970s there emerged a group of authors connected by their common experience: in the 1950s they had participated in “constructing of socialism,” but they gradually came to regard this participation as a mistake and definitively separated from the regime after the year 1968. These authors such as Milan Kundera, Ivan Klíma, Jaroslav Putík, Pavel Kohout, Eva Kantůrková and František Kautman wrote novels, often autobiographical, about the path “through modern history”. Their works have a few common elements: the “Bildungsroman” genre, the irony of history as a motif, reflection on the protagonist’s own share in the unlawfulness and maleficence of the 50’s and, the new element at that time, the motif of responsibility of each individual, not only the impersonal regime. Writing about this experience was a way to “plead guilty” and explain reasons for their behaviour. The main reasons are, among others, youth, inexperience, and immaturity – the aggressive, resolute period after the year 1948 provided opportunities for enthusiastic and overzealous youngsters who longed to find the “real” world and become “mature”. They then had to cope with this first mistake and guilt for the rest of their lives.

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