Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

 

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down / Zdena Salivarová
trans. from the Czech by Jan Drábek
Toronto: LarkWood Books, c1976.
165 p.

I found this little book a while ago in a second hand bookstore. It's the story of a young woman in Communist Czechoslovakia, and her doomed love affair with a Latvian basketball player. But it's also more than that; it reveals the daily grind of life for her family and how those who 'go along' with the new Communist regime no matter what they think do well, while those who don't (like her father) don't end up so well. 

The author, along with her spouse, the writer Josef Skvorecky, emigrated from Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet Invasion. They ended up in Toronto, where they started a publishing company, sharing the works of dissident Czech writers ie: Kundera, Klima, Vaclev Havel among others. They were also both writers, and this novel was first published in Czech and won awards, then was translated and published in English by a division of their company, 68 Publications. 

So the political situation in Czechoslovakia was a strong part of this writer's consciousness, and it shows in this book. It follows one family, through the eyes of Vera, a young woman who wanted to go to university but didn't have the right connections. Her uncle has managed to find her a job at a tv studio instead, where she ends up helping with coverage at a basketball tournament. There are teams from all over the Eastern Bloc, and she literally bumps into Janis, a tall Latvian player, in the halls. That's kismet for them, and they begin a desperate affair that only lasts a week or so, until he has to return to Latvia, which was at that time in the USSR. They both know it's unlikely they'll see each other again, but she attempts to get permission to go to Latvia, to everyone's astonishment -- people don't ask to go TO the USSR. However, all her wrangling leads nowhere, since just as she's about to succeed in her quest, she gets a letter from an anonymous Latvian acquaintance of Janis' telling her not to write to him anymore, he won't be receiving her letters any longer. That's the basic plot but there's so much more to the story. The details of political maneuvering shaping every part of daily life, of lack and scarcity, of lost opportunity, of desperation, of the recent political past in her Grandmother and Father's activities, of how all people are equal but some are more equal than others...it shows in the intimate story of one young woman's life. 

And it's a timely read in light of Russia's current behaviour; this shows that even in the 60s it was the same thing. The characters despise Russians, they mock the basketball teams from USSR countries, and nobody wants to let Russians in to clubs -- no matter if they are actually Russians or from a country controlled by Russia. Vera's Grandmother is an old Social Democrat, and she has no use for the new regime. She shares an article she wrote for an underground newspaper with Vera at one point: 

She handed me a yellowed mimeographed paper with the title "Will We Always Look On In Silence?". She wrote about how we passively witness genocide. "Killing off whole nations can not possibly be in the best interest of a workers' revolution. And just because certain nations don't want to give up their territory to those who claim it in the name of some highly doubtful class justice doesn't make it so. ... How come Russian imperialism suddenly develops a taste for the blood of workers and especially farmers and educated people in the Baltic? Isn't this a clear example of Russian imperialist designs? Don't they want to acquire new territory suitable for the invasion of countries in the West?

Lots to think about in this brief novel. From how women are always affected most harshly in these regimes to wider political discussions, to the very granular effect on one young woman's life and future. A small but mighty read.