Un Occident segrestat

Czech culture in the sixties of the last century enjoyed a surprising vitality: literature, theater and cinema displayed exceptional originality and diversity, in stark contrast to the accelerated decay of political structures and the onslaught of an iron censorship. This work contains two texts by the great Czech intellectual: his speech at the Writers' Congress in 1967, in which he bravely defends the autonomy of culture and the freedom of creators, and Un Occident segrestat (1983), an extensive article that at the time unleashed a lively political debate in the main European cultural publications. In the context of his small country, in full communist dictatorship, the author wonders about the weight of barbarism in history and in the lives of human beings, and in a premonitory way warns of the threats from Russia (then the Soviet Union) compared to the rest of Europe.