The (forgotten) myth of Jan Palach
In the wake of reenactments of the 55th anniversary of the Soviet tank invasion that shattered the Prague Spring, a reminder of Jan Palach and his sacrifice
In recent reconstructions of the Soviet intervention that broke the Prague Spring 55 years ago, there were few who recalled the most tragic event of that failed revolution. Yet for decades the myth of Jan Palach, the young university student who set himself on fire in Prague's central and symbolic Wenceslas Square, influenced generations of students, poets and songwriters across Europe. Today, however, Jan Palach seems to have slipped into the oblivion of history.
Yet in Prague the plaques that commemorate him are almost everywhere. Those features that the fire mortally disfigured forever you can follow them carved in stone or drawn with a white thread on the black slab that lies right at the feet of Wenceslaus the Saint, the patron saint of Bohemia who stands on the back of the bronze horse at the top to the square of the same name, the heart of all Bohemian passions, from the failed revolution of 1968 to the successful one of 1989, from the acrid lead of the tank cannons to the colored flowers of the velvet revolution.
Jan Palach's face shows the pronounced cheekbones typical of the Slavs, the proud eyes, the jaunty forelock of a fearless twenty-year-old. Below, the dates of birth and death, the too short arc of a life burned around a vanished hope.
It was January 16, 1969 when this student, wrapped in a wool coat, approached the base of the statue with quick steps. Wenceslas Square is a huge open space, when you get there it's hard to imagine it as a square. Rather, it looks like a long boulevard, one of those found in the large spaces of Paris. It rises steeply from the alleys of the old town, from the parts of the Charles University, to the intersection of two large avenues, the Vilsonova and the Mezibranska. If you go all the way through it, you also cross two subway stops, Mustek and Muzeum, it's so long. The cars glide slowly along two carriageways, one going up the other going down, flanked by shops of all kinds, souvenirs, bookshops, newsagents, jewelers, antique dealers, the ever-present fast food restaurants of the new era, and then the luxurious large hotels, in the whose coffee on the ground floor has passed the cosmopolitan multitude of writers who have made Prague one of the most vital centers of European culture. Between the two carriageways a large pedestrian space also in the centre, such as on Unter den Linden in Berlin: tiles, flower beds, plants, benches. Life is sweet in San Venceslao, the square that looks like a boulevard.
But that January 16th forty years ago the sweetness had gone with the Soviet tanks and the Prague spring had faded into an autumn, and then into a winter, full of terror and resignation. In August, the Soviets had forced their hand and taken the path of restoration: the Brezhnevian doctrine of limited sovereignty had blocked the way to socialism with a human face, and with it to any hypothesis of reform of communism. Moreover, the demolition of the reformist dream was entrusted to the same hands that had built it: it was the worst humiliation for a people who had shown courage and independence and who had tried to challenge power with the weapons of kindness and irony. . The Dubcek who had embodied the reformist bet was forced to lead the reverse, to dismantle the acquired freedoms, to restore the gray past.
Bundled up, Jan Palach walked all the way up to the base, leaned his bag on a stone, took off his coat and doused himself in petrol. Then he lit a match and it became fire. The first to help him was the driver of a tram that was passing through the square in those moments. He rushed at Palach and threw his greatcoat at him.
She managed to snatch him from death but only for a few days. Three, to be exact, that was how long his agony lasted. Admitted to the hospital in the capital, in the rare moments of lucidity he inquired about the reaction to his gesture. The entrance hall of the hospital, as well as the place where he set himself on fire, were covered with flowers and candles. The news tore his last smiles. He died on January 19th.
It was the last jolt to the restoration policy. His funeral gathered almost a million people behind the coffin, along the path and in Wenceslas Square. The procession was opened by the brass band of an industrial establishment in Prague and by the academic body dressed in medieval togas. It was a rainy and cold day. Heavy black drapes were unrolled from the buildings. The emotion was strong but once again no violence erupted. In the following months, other young men immolated themselves, emulating the sacrifice of Jan Palach. The chain had been announced by Palach himself, in a letter found in his coat pocket. Among these was Jan Zajic, whose image now stands alongside that of Palach on Wenceslas Square. But nothing happened. The machine of power inexorably closed all the remaining free spaces. Dubcek himself was the victim, depressed and now a shadow of the courageous and determined leader he was. He too disappeared into the folds of forgotten places in the east.
But how did Palach come to become a symbol of freedom? He was born on August 11, 1948 in Melnik, a handful of kilometers north of Prague in the very year in which the communist party took power in Czechoslovakia. Having lost his father at the age of thirteen, he graduated in the local high school in 1966 with the hope of enrolling in university. Despite an excellent exam in philosophy, he had to wait two years before entering university studies due to the overcrowding of enrollments. He enrolled in 1968, the year of the Prague Spring. And he began to frequent the student movements which, together with those of the factory workers, represented the backbone of the Prague revolt. He lived the hope of the reforms and the disappointment and anger for the intervention of the tanks of the Warsaw Pact, on the night between 20 and 21 August. He had turned twenty a little over a week ago.
In the autumn, when courses resumed, the Charles University went on strike, but in the following months, political events took the path of restoration. It was in this climate of disenchantment that Jan Palach, together with a group of friends, developed the idea of shaking up his fellow citizens and students, so that they would resume fighting for betrayed ideals. The flames of Palach and his friends (there were still four suicides) no longer warmed the Prague spring of 1968 but were the comets that the Czechoslovakians followed until the 1989 revolution.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/il-mito-dimenticato-di-jan-palach/ on Sat, 26 Aug 2023 06:03:47 +0000.