Hope Dies Last: The Autobiography of Alexander Dubcek [Hardcover]

Alexander Dubcek (Author), Jiri Hochman (Author), Paul De Angelis (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1993

Like my parents, I sought only the modest goal of a safe job and a small house where my wife and I could raise our children. But that, I think, was almost everybody's little dream, and for most people it still is... When Alexander Dubcek died on November 1, 1992, people on all continents mourned the loss of a hero. While global leaders paid respect and homage to the man from 1968, the common people knew they had lost one of the strongest voices in the ongoing struggle to build democracy and autonomy for all smaller nations. It was Dubcek's ill-fated experiment in "socialism with a human face", known abroad as the Prague Spring, that destroyed most of the world's illusions about the Soviet system and his vindication in the Velvet Revolution of 1989 provided the new Czechoslovakia with a living democratic tradition. Alexander Dubcek was the son of two Slovak-American idealists. Born in the same village house as the founder of Slovak nationalism a century earlier, he was raised on a socialist commune in Soviet Central Asia. Dubcek's story leads readers through the guerrilla battles of World War II and the tangled modern history of the Slovak people. The climactic chapters of the book unroll in a tension-filled point counterpoint of negotiations, threats, and maneuvers, as Dubcek and his reformers scramble to secure their changes before the Soviets and their allies can counter-attack. When the attack did come - a brutal invasion and a bungled palace coup in the early morning of August 21, 1968 - Dubcek found himself kidnapped by the KGB and hijacked to the Kremlin. Paratroopers burst into my office and closed and blocked the windows and connecting doors. It was like an armed robbery.Without thinking I made a move toward a telephone on my desk, but one of the soldiers aimed his tommy gun at me, grasped the phone, and tore the cable out of the wall. After the death of the Prague Spring we follow Dubcek's life in exile as a forestry worker, to his role as a catalyst for Eastern European liberation in the early days of perestroika. Alexander Dubcek finished compiling his memoirs only a month before a car in which he was riding plunged down a ravine in Bohemia. In the weeks before, he had been picked repeatedly in public opinion polls as the over-whelming favorite for president of the emerging Slovak Republic. Known to the world as the conscience of Czechoslovakia, he seemed poised to become the voice of the youngest nation in Europe. That voice lives on in these memoirs, bearing witness to the hopes and heartbreaks of a man, and the twin causes of social justice and self-determination.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this vigorous, engrossing autobiography, Dubcek (1921-1992), the Czech communist leader whose brief experiment in liberalization was crushed by Soviet tanks in 1968, charts his transformation from Communist Party reformer to democratic socialist. Dubcek's parents were Slovak-American "socialist dreamers" who returned to Czechoslovakia from Chicago shortly before his birth; they then moved to a commune in Soviet Central Asia, where Dubcek was raised in harsh conditions. In WW II he took part in the guerrilla uprising against the Slovak collaborationist regime which abetted the Nazis. He rose quickly through the ranks of the Czech Communist Party, but only gradually became a reformer. Because he was a trusting, moral man with deeply ingrained Lutheran traditions, Dubcek did not believe that the Soviets would suppress the Prague Spring of 1968 by military force. This valuable memoir, written with former Czech journalist Hochman, also makes clear Dubcek's catalytic role in the coalition of democratic forces that ended communist control of Czechoslovakia in 1989. Photos. $50,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Dubcek occupies a crucial place in the history of modern Czechoslovakia (now split into two separate countries). It was his fate as a courageous and reform-minded Communist leader to lead Czechoslovakia through the "Prague spring" that was crushed by Soviet tanks in August 1968. This absorbing "now it can be told" memoir details Dubcek's effort to reform a hard-line Communist regime, describing the Soviet invasion, his kidnapping, and his desperate effort to salvage "socialism with a human face" against overwhelming pressure from the Brezhnev regime. Dubcek vividly brings alive events and personalities (particularly the Soviet "gangsters," as he calls them). His book is no less interesting for the light it sheds on Czech and Slovak national feeling, on the character of internal Communist policy, and on Dubcek's life. As shown in Zdenek Mlynar's Nightfrost in Prague ( LJ 7/80), which also deals with these events, there is still much to learn. Dubcek's recent tragic death from injuries sustained in an automobile accident stills an important voice; this volume, then, stands as his final testament.
- Henry Steck, SUNY Coll. at Cortland
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 354 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha America; First Edition first Printing edition (May 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568360002
• ISBN-13: 978-1568360003
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,897,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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