“It was November, Prague was full of demonstrations, the situation seemed quite clear to me, so I went to the - what was it called, I don’t know any more - some sort of Czech deputation, it was a military mission I think, and I applied for a visa. I was hoping that because my German passport has my name as Michal Reimann with two Ns, that the computer would be fooled. So I slid a passport application under the window, and I had it back in ten minutes. I opened it, and no visa, so I asked: ‘Where’s the visa?’ The answer they gave me was: ‘Mr Reiman, you’ll never get a visa to Czechoslovakia!’ So I went to the consul, I talked to him, it was no use. I went home, I told the story to a journalist I knew from the Berlin news, I said they hadn’t given me a visa. ‘Okay, we’ll put it into the newspaper.’ They next day the paper carried an article about what the Czech mission thinks about peaceful cooperation. I marched back into the mission, it was a Friday, with the same request as last time - I want a visa. I got to the consul, he was a bit shaky, because things were starting to happen in Prague, he’d probably had a few drinks, because he was very shaky, so he said: ‘I have to discuss it with Prague, come back after twelve o’clock and I’ll give you your visa.’ I said: ‘You’ll be closed after twelve, I’d better stay here.’ I had some books with me, and I was decided to stay there until I got my visa. So he said no no, he said he would guarantee they would let me in. I came back after twelve o’clock, they really did let me in, and I went to the consul. Of course, he didn’t have any answer from Prague, I reckon he didn’t even ask. So I said: ‘What’s with the visa? Will you let me through or not?’ He thought for a while and said: ‘Okay, I’ll give you the visa, which access point should I specify?’ I said: ‘Prague - Ruzyně.’ ‘Okay,’ he said. I received the visa in my passport, I turned round, my wife was with me, I went to a travel agency to book a flight to Prague. I cried, I’m not ashamed to say it, I cried so much - even now when I talk about it, I feel the emotions.”
“And then I wrote the first article, they came to me when it was the anniversary of the October Revolution: ‘Write something.’ So I wrote an article for L76, I think it was called that, it was published by the German Left, Günter Grass and people like that. So I gave it to them and it didn’t do anything there. But it got to Italy. A man came to me, he translated everything from the dissent into Czech, he was from the Italian Left, he came to me and said: ‘I read the article,’ and he asked if he could use the article. I said: ‘Why not, it’s been made public.’ Then he wrote to me that Rinascita, that was a communist weekly at the time, might publish it. They’ll be really angry in Prague, but if the Italian communists publish it, it could cause some progress. They can froth as much as they want, but they can’t say a thing against it. So they published it and the result was that two three months later I got a letter from Prague saying I had committed some acts of sedition by publishing a defamatory article in Rinascita, and apart from that I had also taken part in a biennial about the dissent.”
“It was pretty big, but all the equipment was for summer. So they brought us there, I don’t know how many of us children. I guess they counted on us being back by winter, like it was just a temporary measure. We didn’t even have food supplies there, no wood, practically nothing was there and practically nothing went on. But I can understand that, as they must have had absolutely different problems - because when your battlefront starts collapsing, everything works a bit differently. So we stayed in the houses which it was not possible to heat without a sufficient supply of wood, in other words we had to collect it ourselves before snowfall, because it wasn’t possible when snow came. Us children heated it up ourselves quite a bit. Luckily there were birches in the area, which was considered to have a good fuel efficiency. So we would stick a few logs into the fire and take a brick out from the chimney so that when the wood burned out the warm air would waft into the room we slept in; but that gave plus minus zero. It was a pretty harsh winter. There wasn’t anything to eat. Mostly it was just oats, but not like the flakes you know today, but ordinary oats for horses. That means they made an unrefined porridge out of it, sometimes with a spot of grease in it, but mostly without. Sugar, that was a rarity whenever they gave us any. We didn’t use it, but kept it instead, because we knew that there should be some feast days sooner or later.”
“They began by telling me I was one of the head ideologists of the Right. I said: ‘That is an accusation, but you must prove it!’ It was found out that they weren’t prepared at all, they didn’t know what proof to show. About an hour later they said they were hungry, that it was time for lunch, that they want to have something to eat, so I said: ‘Okay, what can I say to that?’ So they went to the canteen and I went with them, we joined the queue; then they sat down and there was one free seat, so I joined them. The conversation turned to children, and I just thought to myself: ‘You’re supposed to throw me out of all my positions, and now you start talking about children, won’t you get yourselves into trouble!’ So we finished (lunch), we went back, it lasted another two hours, or thereabouts. Towards the end I was put before the question of what was my opinion on the incursion. I said: ‘I have not yet seen any evidence to show that an incursion was necessary here.’ To which they immediately replied with a second question: ‘Do you know that you cannot stay here with such a stance?’ I said: ‘If we’d began with this, we could’ve saved ourselves three four hours!’ So the meeting came to an end. I came to work the next day to begin packing the necessities. I came to the party officer and he showed me a paper: ‘Look what the committee wrote!’ So I looked, and there it was: ‘Michal Reiman - one of the head ideologists of the Right, prohibit any work in his line of profession, manual labour only.’ ”
“And then in autumn 1943 we began... It was necessary to make the harvest at least around Moscow, so they brought us out, I don’t know how many of us children, I think it was several classes of us, they took us some fifty kilometres to the west of Moscow. Nowadays it would be near to the Istra and Novi Ierusalim stations. They took us to a village in the region. That was such a horrifying experience, the village was completely burned down, nothing left. Only the one cottage which they herded us into, being children. All the villagers, those who were left, were huddled up in zemlyankas (dugouts). We worked on the fields, with various bits of leftover ammunition and the like scattered around us; we were clever enough to know better than to try anything with the ammunition. So we were there I don’t know how many weeks, slogging away in the kolchoz. In the end they gave us a payout of sorts. I remember it was a sack of potatoes and some cabbages, it must have been about thirty forty kilos.”
photo: Dobová: Michal Reiman, Současná: Vladimír Kadlec
photo: Dobová: Michal Reiman, Současná: Vladimír Kadlec
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The distinguished historian specialising in the history of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe in the 20th century, Professor Michal Reiman, was born on the 14th of July 1930 in Moscow. His father was Pavel Reiman, a top member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC), his mother was Russian. He grew up in Žižkov (Prague). After the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, his father went into exile in London and Michal returned to the Soviet Union with his mother. They lived not far from Moscow. When the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, Michal was evacuated together with other children to the Gorkovsky District. He spent two years in harsh conditions. He found his way back to Moscow in 1943, where his mother worked for Jan Šverma. After the war he returned to Czechoslovakia. In the years 1949 to 1954 he studied the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University, he applied himself to the beginnings of the social-democratic movement. Upon coming back to Czechoslovakia he began teaching at the Political University of the Central Committee of the CPC, and later worked at the Institute of History of the CPC. During 1968 he was active as an advisor to the representatives of the revival process of Prague Spring - he worked in the group formed around Josef Smrkovský, he helped prepare Alexandr Dubček’s speech for the anniversary of “Victorious February” (the communist coup d’etat in 1948), he was co-creator of the first draft of the Action Programme of the CPC. He later worked in the Committee for Rehabilitation. In 1969 he went abroad on a scholarship to study in Tübingen in West Germany. After his return he was fired from the Political University, he was employed as an interpreter at the Prague Information Service. In 1976 he was allowed a two-year scholarship stay in Tübingen. He was accused of seditious activity for an article published in Rinascita, the Italian communist party weekly, for the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution, and for taking part in the dissenter biennial in Venice. He was stripped of Czechoslovak citizenship. He lectured at various German universities, finally settling down in Berlin, attaining a professorship at the Freie Universität. He became one of the speakers of the exile group Listy (Pages), he supported Charter 77. He began regularly visiting the Soviet Union in 1987. He came to Prague shortly after the Velvet Revolution. He decided not to make his return permanent - he lived in Berlin, but visited Prague frequently. Michal Reiman passed away on March, the 10th, 2023.
Michal Reiman (first from left) with Soviet non-conformist politologists during the first German-Soviet Politological Conference in the spring of 1989 in West Berlin
Michal Reiman (first from left) with Soviet non-conformist politologists during the first German-Soviet Politological Conference in the spring of 1989 in West Berlin
