As Russian forces continue to make their presence felt in Ukraine, I think of the Czech student Jan Palach, who burned himself to death in a Prague square 45 years ago, a few months after Russian troops ended the 1968 “Prague Spring.”

The Czechs had no easy time in the 20th century. They entered it as part of the empire of Austria-Hungary and lost thousands during World War I. Woodrow Wilson and the victorious Allies cobbled together the new nation of Czechoslovakia, which managed two decades of democracy between the wars. It was the last democracy in Eastern Europe.

Then came Hitler in 1938. The English and the French served up part of the country, known as the Sudetenland, to him in the hope of avoiding a second world war. They delayed it for a year. In 1939, Hitler swallowed the rest of the country.

After the Allies defeated the Nazis in 1945, Czechoslovakia had another brief democratic period that lasted until 1948.

No doubt some Czechs and Slovaks, hoped for economic fairness in the communist system. It may indeed have brought the children of peasants and miners into universities and other places where they had not been welcome. But something went wrong. Czechoslovakia became a tough place to live and breathe freely. Few young Americans, who in 1968 were finding new freedoms in universities and on their nation’s streets, would have been at home in Czechoslovakia.

In 1968 the leader of the Czech Communist Party, Alexander Dubcek, supported the popular reform movement known as the Prague Spring. It was supposed to bring “socialism with a human face.” Spring ended that August, when tanks from the Warsaw Pact nations moved in.

By January 1969, Jan Palach had had enough of censorship and repression. Enough of the Russians. Enough of the demoralization of his fellow Czechs. He went to Wenceslas Square, set himself on fire in protest, and died a few days later.

His Prague grave became a shrine for a few years. Too much of a shrine, apparently, for the police. They exhumed his body in 1973, cremated it, and sent the remains to his mother in his hometown.

On the 20th anniversary of Palach’s death, a series of protest later deemed “Palach Week” began. The stated purpose was to honor the Czech martyr, but another goal was to protest the communist regime. The demonstrations grew, and the police response was brutal, with beatings and mass arrests ―including a dissident playwright named Vaclav Havel.

The Velvet Revolution was the end of the Czech Communist government. It resigned and in January 1990, Havel was elected president.

Palach’s remains were returned to Prague. A bronze cross was placed outside the National Museum, where he fell, and the surrounding square was named for him.

A few years later, as the century with two world wars and two occupations of Czechoslovakia drew to a close, the nation split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Palach was not the first or only person to commit suicide by self-immolation in pursuit of a perceived greater good or in opposition to an evil seen. A few years earlier, in 1965, the Quaker Norman Morrison burned himself alive below the Pentagon office of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to protest the Vietnam War. He, like Palach, is little known in the United States, but well remembered in other places.

Such acts are beyond me, beyond my experience, and beyond the familiar world of friends and family. I can respect Palach’s memory, his passion, his goals, even if I cannot completely understand him. I could never advocate that anyone follow in his footsteps. It is no guarantee of changing anything for the better or even a guarantee of being remembered. For every Palach, there are dozens from all corners of the world who self-immolated in obscurity and were quickly forgotten.

Palach is so different from the suicide bombers who are in our headlines and nightmares. Their goal is to sacrifice themselves while killing as many innocents as possible in the most visible, dramatic, and horrific way. Palach’s goal was to sacrifice himself alone for a good.

Though Jan Palach was part of a painful 20th-century history, in this new century the tanks are rolling again.

By Michael Carroll

Michael Carroll is a Philadelphia-based writer. He wrote this for the Philadelphia Inquirer. ― Ed. 

(The Philadelphia Inquirer)

(MCT Information Services)