Who Are You, Actually, Mr. Pernes?

16. 3. 2010 / Petr Jánský

Reporter plunged right away into the historian's past in connection with having been chosen for that function: Where you a member of a Social Democratic Party body commission dealing with history? Although in the past he admitted to have been part of it, now for a change he claims that he "was never" part of that group.

Did you study at the Marxist-Leninist night university?, the journalists wants to know. "I was forced to frequent" that faculty... Follows the obvious question "Who forced you to do it?" Nobody, is the answer, but if I had refused the offer, I would probably be fired from my functions".

Why then he did not register that period of studies in his Curriculum Vitae? "Nobody asked", he enlightens.

Here it is appropriate to make a short stop. Resumes are written by ourselves, we add there what we wish, nobody tells you which questions you should be answering there... If a candidate hides some piece of information which is key to judging him, he or she should be automatically disqualified from the dispute for the position.

If the historian's name appears in a list from the former regime's secret police (StB) as a candidate for spying on his fellow citizens, how to explain it?, the reporter wants to know. "In 1968 I spent 12 hours in jail. I was then taken to a restaurant and was offered to cooperate with them. I refused, saying that I was afraid of them". The following question should have been "what did you drink and eat in that occasion and who paid the bill?"

The interviewer mentions that the historian's is the author of a book about Austerlitz, which celebrates the communist overturn of 1948... "If there is anything I am ashamed about, then it is just that. I didn't have the courage to protest against it".

The reporter mentions that from the historian's pieces he perceives a lot of tolerance when writing about former communist top names. "I try to write in a way that doesn't show that I am personally biased against the communist ideology", he tried to defend himself, adding that "the communist regime was not imposed on us, it did not arrive here on Soviet tanks. Our parents freely chose it themselves between 1945-48"...

At this point I quit reading the interview. If a historian describes the putsch of February 1948 in Czechoslovakia this way, then he should either give back his university degree or become a candidate for the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM). But certainly not become the director of an institution that has as an objective to document the crimes from the past regime...

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