Klement Lukeš, czyli jak zostać dysydentem w Czechosłowacji

Pavel Kosatík, Zápasy slepého muže. Život a doba komunisty Klementa Lukeše, Praha 2023, ss. 191 + 32 nlb. Pavel Kosatík’s Zápasy slepého muže. Život a doba komunisty Klementa Lukeše [Struggles of a Blind Man: The Life and Times of Communist Klement Lukeš] (Prague 2023) is focused on a figure who did not play a decisive role in Czechoslovak history after World War II. However, Klement Lukeš (1926–2000), a blind member of the Communist Party, and an employee of its ‘ideological front’, occupied a separate place on the intellectual map of Czechoslovak communism. He joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia during his studies, but by the age of thirty, he was considered a revisionist, an opponent of the Soviet (i.e. Stalinist) model of communism and, in consequence, of the party leadership. Lukeš was inspired by Hungarian and Yugoslav social, economic, and political solutions. He was deprived of party membership twice (in 1961 and 1970). After the suppression of the Prague Spring, Lukeš became a dissident, a member of the democratic opposition, and a publisher of samizdat. He was also a signatory of the Charter 77 declaration. This review article offers high praise for Kosatík’s biography of Lukeš.