Czechoslovakia: Behind the Iron Curtain

There are timeless themes that humans deal with no matter the era or country and freedom is one of them.

The history of communist Czechoslovakia is an immortal tale of the struggle to be free. The book Czechoslovakia: Behind the Iron Curtain is a tool for remembering.

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” Milan Kundera

People and nations tend to forget all too easily, especially when it comes to painful and traumatic histories. The era of communism contributed to a long list of hardships endured by Slovaks. Many would like to wipe the negatives clean. Why? Because it is too painful or too inconvenient to remember.

In 600 pages, discover the good, the bad and the ugly of Slovakia’s totalitarian past, alongside the real and sometimes funny side of life under the Hammer and the Sickle. Find out for yourself what it was like to live, work and love in communist Czechoslovakia.

It was not all doom and gloom. Despite the hardships, there was still laughter and human kindness. But maybe it was not despite the regime, but rather in spite of it, that human decency prevailed. This is certainly the experience of the inspiring godfathers of the book – Peter ‘The Great’ Stastny, a top 100 Greatest NHL Player and decade-long member of European Parliament, and Anton Popovic, a Velvet Revolution student leader, composer, conductor and civic activist.

We are forever grateful to our parents’ generation for coming together in spirit, unity and vision to overthrow the monstrosity that controlled them for 4 decades.

“Courage is mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” Mark Twain

The story of the Czechoslovakia behind the Iron Curtain is much more than the struggle of a single country. It is a timeless reminder for us all.