Just over two weeks after the death of Vaclav Havel, another Czech literary figure who played a key role in his country's Communist-era dissident movement, Josef Skvorecky, died of cancer Tuesday. He was 87. Once upon a time, Skvorecky had been a vital force behind the intellectual and spiritual current that culminated in 1968's pro-democratic Prague Spring. After the Soviets put an end to it all, Skvorecky and his wife Zdena Salivarova took refuge in Canada, where they founded the dissident publishing house 68 Publishers and lived ever since. As Matt Welch explains:
It was 68 Publishers, founded in 1971, that proved to be a lifeline to both Czechoslovak literature and dissidence, publishing samizdat works from the likes of Havel and Milan Kundera and Bohumil Hrabal that would often be re-smuggled back into the country.
Some people left Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet invasion (just as many escaped Hungary after 1956), and -- quite understandably -- turned their backs on the mangled countries they left behind. Škvorecký was not one of them. He was committed to helping his native land, helping his native language, and perpetuating the free flow of ideas under arduous circumstances.
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