How Milan Kundera became an ‘informer’ and what came of it?

Abstract

In 2008, the Czech weekly “Respekt” accused the writer Milan Kundera (1929–2023) of having denounced Miroslav Dvořáček, a young collaborator of American counterintelligence, to the Czechoslovak security services in the 1950s. The victim of the denunciation was sentenced to years of heavy imprisonment but miraculously avoided death. The publication, which unequivocally proclaimed the writer’s guilt, was based on a single police memo found in the archives of the USTR (the Czech equivalent of the Polish Institute of Remembrance – IPN), in which Milan Kundera’s name was mentioned. The media widely covered the case in the Czech Republic and internationally. A storm was also unleashed in Poland. Today, as the world bids farewell to Milan Kundera, it is worth revisiting that publication, looking at its form, language and stylistic procedures, which strongly undermined the reputation of the famous writer. In the end, nothing was proved against Milan Kundera, and the writer himself issued only a laconic statement in which he denied everything. This article focuses on the 2008 “Respekt” publication itself – its form and the reliability of its coverage. What image, what reality have the authors of that text managed to create? This article attempts to look at the events of 2008 from today’s perspective. An important question seems to be: should accountability texts be published in the press at all or should they better be the subject of research and academic publications only? If the public should learn about similar issues from the daily press, what basic standards should it meet?