Nohavica: From informer to teacher

Jaroslav Hutka has composed and recorded a song about the informer Jaromír Nohavica, and the reactions are mixed. Some say Hutka envies Nohavica's popularity. Others say Hutka's rhymes are ridiculous. Both opinions could be true, but there is no need to argue about it. But it's good at any rate that Hutka wrote his song about the informant. It re-ignites debate about the issue, the curative effect of which has been missing in Czech society.

It is not material today that Nohavica informed during the normalisation era. What matters is that he keeps refusing to talk about it. People like him carry information they would like to stay covert, or, to be precise, misunderstood.

In other words: The Czech problem today is not that representatives of the cultural elite informed against their colleagues to the communist secret police. The real problem can be seen in a recent survey of young people born after November 1989. They associate communism mainly with queues for bananas.

Maybe this is how parents have explained the communist era to their children. But besides queues for bananas, communism was characterised by something considerably worse, and worth remembering. Nohavica and all the other unmasked artist-informers know what it was, because they had an opportunity to look into the belly of the communist system while meeting secret policemen. Now they should be able to tell us…