There's no soldier like a soldier.
At the beginning of the year, when we were planning the topics for this year's debates together with the director of the Václav Havel Library, Michael Žantovský, we agreed that it would be good to recall how many Russians, mostly fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution, found a second home in interwar Czechoslovakia. No one could have imagined the emotions that the phrase 'Russian general' would evoke in just a few weeks' time. But Sergei Voitsekhovsky was a different kind of general.
He was originally a Russian nobleman, a fearless and brave soldier, a member of the Czechoslovak legions in Russia, who identified with the ideas of the Czechoslovak state. After his arrival in the Czechoslovak Republic, he continued his military career. In September 1938 he was one of the commanders of the Czechoslovak Army. He was one of the leaders of the army, determined to oppose Hitler. During World War II he joined the anti-Nazi resistance as part of the Defence of the Nation. Immediately after the liberation, on 12 May 1945, he was arrested by the NKVD and taken to the USSR. The Czechoslovak government remained silent. Vojtsekhovsky was convicted and died on 7 April 1951 in one of the Soviet gulags. Is his story typical of figures like him? And what does it say about the times in which he lived and worked?
The story of the unjustly forgotten general will be discussed on 20 April at 7 pm at the Václav Havel Library by Gabriela Havlůjová, who, among other things, walked the Siberian route taken by the legionnaires and also initiated the creation of a memorial plaque at the forest cemetery near the Siberian gulag; and historian Petr Hlaváček. Moderated by Jan Kalous.