The Prague Post Online: Tempo: Jiří Pehe: No escaping scrutiny

July 4th, 2008

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Jiří Pehe: No escaping scrutiny

The commentator and former dissident now fires up NYU students

By Julie O'Shea
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
March 21st, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

As director of New York University's Prague campus, Pehe has won the hearts and minds of new rebels.

If Jiří Pehe had never been a writer, perhaps his life would have turned out differently. Perhaps, for instance, he would have never found himself stuffed in the trunk of an old Citröen, hoping to stay alive long enough to escape a communist Czechoslovakia that had little tolerance for young political reformers.

His story begins in the early ’80s. Pehe was 26, married and living in Prague. He’d studied law at Charles University but was working for a publishing house, a job he wasn’t in love with — “but at least I wasn’t a lawyer,” he recalls today with a wry smile.

His passion was writing short stories and poetry. As it turned out, it was this passion that ended up getting him into a bit of trouble.

“I started writing a book about the nature of the system I was living in, which I wasn’t happy with,” Pehe says. “And I put my name on it.”

And the title of this mild critique?

“The Totalitarian Nature of Communism,” Pehe says, laughing.

As he recounts the tale, he leans back in an office chair in a cozy fifth-floor conference room at New York University’s Prague Center off Old Town Square. Pehe, now 51, has been running the university’s study-abroad program here for the past several years. In the ochre-tinted Baroque building, Pehe, dressed in casual academic clothes, tells his story in a dispassionate but direct manner.

He made six copies of the manuscript and passed them out to friends, never anticipating they would go any further.

Then the phone call came. His writing had apparently struck a chord, and more copies had started circulating around the community. Pehe knew it was only a matter of time before the authorities knocked on his door.

Not thrilled about the prospect of jail, Pehe and his wife at the time, Jana, began planning their escape.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The couple was supposed to be heading to the Yugoslav seaside for a vacation, not writing goodbye letters.

“The decision happened in a matter of days,” Pehe remembers. “It was a highly secretive enterprise.”

They told just one friend of their intentions.

“The people we could not trust at all were our parents,” Pehe says. “Moms don’t part easily with their kids.”

If they made it, Pehe told his friend he’d call to report the “weather is wonderful” — a signal to let their families in on what had happened.

There were many moments during the long journey, however, when Pehe thought he’d never be able to make that call.

“We didn’t know if we’d be successful,” he admits. After all, “we had no experience in escaping.”

Two Austrian students agreed to take them, hidden in a car trunk, from Yugoslavia to Italy.

The risks were incredibly high. Border patrol officers were checking every 10th car that crossed. The couple lay sweltering in the trunk for 45 minutes, willing themselves not to pass out.

Pehe’s tale is hypnotic. He recounts the details with an amazing clarity that comes from years of telling the story over and over again.

He remembers the seemingly endless stop-and-go line of the border-crossing station. He remembers how the exhaust fumes kept seeping into the cramped hiding place he and his wife were curled up in. He remembers the panic, his determination to stay alive and the utter relief he felt when the trunk finally popped open, and he got his first look at life outside the Eastern bloc.

“We fell to the ground,” Pehe says. “My first sight of the Western world was of these two Austrians. They were screaming, ‘Freedom.’ ”

“It was a dramatic escape,” Pehe says.

‘A thorn in Klaus’ flesh’
His current role at NYU is altogether more pleasant but also seems to be one from which he could not escape. Quite literally, the position was made for him.

“I never considered anyone else for the job,” says Karen Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at NYU’s School of Law. Greenberg was one of the guiding lights behind the school’s Prague program.

The director “had to be someone who understood Prague from the inside out. And that was Jiří,” Greenberg says. “He’s just a one-of-a-kind person. He’s one of the things I love about Prague.”

As for whether Pehe’s steadfast opinions could be disruptive in academic circles, Greenberg says that doesn’t trouble her in the least.

“I was never worried that he was going to alienate people with his political views,” Greenberg says dismissively. “Jiří will listen to other sides. He is open-minded.”

That point is open to debate — and Pehe is the first to admit this.

“Let’s put it this way: I’m a controversial person. I express strong views,” he says. And, if the country’s politicos can’t handle it, well then, that’s just too bad.

Oto Novotný, an adviser to Social Democratic chair and former Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek, says he thinks Pehe’s “leftist liberal” political views, drawn from his experience at home and abroad, are “an integral part of modern social democracy.”

“I think that Pehe often provokes with the depth of his commentaries, because [they] sort of distort superficially anchored political opinions,” Novotný observes.

“The question is to what degree Pehe’s opinions can sort of disturb the comfort of the establishment. ... Pehe is a thorn in [President Václav] Klaus’ flesh, as well as the conservatives’,” Novotný argues, but adds, “In our still-adolescent democracy, the power of ... opinions is still very negligible.”

Members of the Civic Democratic Party, of which Klaus is honorary chairman, often find themselves on the receiving end of Pehe’s criticism. They did not respond to repeated interview requests for this story.

“They don’t like to be criticized,” Pehe says, shrugging his shoulders. “Of course we clash, but that is normal. I like political analysis.”

Over the past two decades, Pehe, who spent several years serving in former President Václav Havel’s Cabinet, has come to be seen as something of an expert on East European politics. An outspoken advocate of transparent democracy, Pehe has written dozens of commentaries over the years that have appeared in prominent newspapers around the world.

Whenever any kind of major shift in power or proposal is on the table, Pehe is usually there to offer his take on the situation. While his presence on the television circuit has waned in recent years, the media clearly still love him. And why shouldn’t they? He learned long ago how to give great sound bites.

“I really get many, many requests for interviews,” Pehe says nonchalantly. “Sometimes I even have to turn people down.”

At times, he adds, “it’s a burden.”

A whole new world
After escaping Czechoslovakia, Pehe eventually made his way through the U.S. visa process and landed in New York City in 1981.

“My first encounter with New York was overwhelming,” he recalls. “New York was something else. It was a different concept.”

The chaotic city, with all its high-voltage power plays, confusion and mystery, also represented endless life opportunities for the young refugee.

Pehe worked as a busboy in a Czech restaurant, then as a night guard in a Manhattan hotel. He learned to speak fluent English. Eventually, he gained U.S. citizenship and his master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, which led to a job at the Freedom House, a political and civic advocacy group. All the while he continued to write.

“I started anticipating the end of communism around 1985,” Pehe says.

In 1988, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty came calling and eventually persuaded him to move to Munich as an analyst.

Pehe had been working for the radio for just a year when the Velvet Revolution came along. Within days, he suddenly found himself on a plane heading toward a country he never thought he’d see again.

He’d been away for nearly a decade, and, as the plane dipped closer to Prague, Pehe remembers peering out the window and feeling a little surprised by the scene that unfolded before him.

“The country looked very sad,” he says. “There was a lot of smoke everywhere.”

As for how much he’d missed his home, he says, “terribly.” But then adds, “It’s a different kind of nostalgia.”

Going back wasn’t easy.

“You keep a certain image,” Pehe says. “I remember how shocked I was when I got here.”

For years, he has had the same nightmare of the city, of the friends he left behind and of suddenly finding himself living in communist Czechoslovakia again, trying desperately, endlessly, to escape.

These days, he sleeps a little better, though, knowing he’s doing everything in his power to make sure the past never repeats itself.

Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Julie O'Shea can be reached at joshea@praguepost.com

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