The celebrated Czech author Milan Kundera has rejected accusations that he denounced a Western intelligence agent in his country when he was a student 58 years ago.
The claims by local historians are based on a 1950 police report stating that Mr Kundera informed on a young Czech pilot who worked as an agent for American intelligence and was arrested on his first mission in Prague following the tip-off.
It was also alleged that Mr Kundera’s supposed denunciation prompted the arrest of several people who helped the agent enter the country, one of whom was later executed by the Soviet-controlled Communist authorities of former Czechoslovakia.
Mr Kundera, who is known for his reclusiveness and has not spoken publicly since 1985, broke his silence yesterday with a brief statement to deny the claims, which he deemed an “assassination of an author”. Speaking to the Czech News Agency, he said: “I am completely taken aback by this story, of which I know nothing and which never happened. I never knew the person involved. It is a lie.”
Famous not only as the author of such modern classics as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, but also for his relentless opposition to totalitarianism, Mr Kundera, 79, was one of the most prominent Czech dissidents and critics of the Communist regime. Himself a target of the communist secret services, Mr Kundera opposed the Soviet-led invasion of 1968 and was forced to immigrate to France, where he still lives today.
He was 20 when he is said to have reported on the agent Miroslav Dvoracek, then 22, who was subsequently arrested and thrown in prison for 14 years, some of which he served in a uranium mine labour camp.
The historian Adam Hradilek of the Prague-based Institute for Study of Totalitarian Regimes published his claims in the local magazine Respekt yesterday, along with the alleged police report that bears the number 624/1950-II. The report, made in a police station in Prague on March 14, 1950 reads: “Student Milan Kundera, born April 1, 1929 in Brno... reported to our department... Dvoracek, reportedly a deserter who had illegally fled to Germany.”
Mr Dvoracek had fled Czechoslovakia for Germany after the 1948 communist coup. He was recruited in a refugee camp near Munich by the US-sponsored Czechoslovak intelligence in exile co-ordinated by General Frantisek Moravec, who also worked with the MI6.
After receiving basic intelligence training, Mr Dvoracek was sent back to his home country, now in the grip of communism, to collect information about the chemical industry. He crossed the border with the help of local farmers and went to Prague, where he visited a female acquaintance and agreed to spend the night in her room at a student hall of residence, but was subsequently arrested and charged with desertion, espionage and high treason.
At the trial, Mr Dvoracek faced the death penalty but was eventually sentenced to 22 years in prison. The family of the farmers who helped him enter the country also received lengthy prison sentences and one of them was even executed.
But Mr Dvoracek, 80, who now lives in Sweden and is in poor health after recently suffering a stroke, has refused to speak with the historian Mr Hradilek about his arrest as he apparently does not accept the claims about Mr Kundera. His wife Marketa Dvoracek Novak told AFP that he was not interested in the identity of the informer.
“We’re not surprised that Kundera’s name has surfaced in Czech media reports as the informant. Kundera is a good writer but I am under no illusions about him as a human being, “ Mrs Dvoracek said.
Mr Hradilek, the historian, was not available for a comment yesterday, but his associate Vojtech Ripka told The Times that they had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the 1950 police report.
However, it remains unclear why the communist authorities of Czechoslovakia never used the document to discredit Mr Kundera, who was monitored by the secret service as one of the most vehement critics of their regime.
“The document was not in Mr Kundera’s vast file kept by the secret service. It remained with normal police and it could have been forgotten in the archive,” Mr Ripka said.
He admitted however that there was no evidence whatsoever that Mr Kundera had any contact with the country’s secret service and that there were no other known reports that the writer denounced anyone else before or after 1950.
A Communist Party member since 1948, Mr Kundera was infatuated with socialist ideology and supported the regime until his first visit to Moscow in 1954 when he witnessed the true extent of totalitarian oppression.
The claims have caused a severe controversy in the Czech Republic, where Mr Kundera is considered a national hero. According to some, even if the document is authentic, the possibility remains that the young Mr Kundera simply acted as a patriot and reported the person he considered to be a foreign spy.
Sonja Zemanekova, 58, an art historian, said: “When I was a student Kundera was not only a great writer but also a role model who encouraged us to think differently. Even if in his youth he reported on someone who he felt was a threat to his country, it does not make him a morally flawed person nor does it affect his later contribution as a writer and a champion of free speech.”
But others, like the former dissident Jan Urban, called on Mr Kundera to come clean. Mr Urban said: “He’s one of the greatest writers of today - if he could just say ’yes, I made a mistake when I was a 21-year-old and probably someone paid for that mistake instead of me’ he could even make a great book out of that. Instead, he has pretended that nothing happened, and I think that that is a mistake.”
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