ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

from Columbia. They offered me a fellowship which covered tuition plus a living stipend
and was, not surprisingly, federally-funded to train foreign area experts, particularly on
communist countries. By that time, I had started focusing on Eastern Europe as an area of
interest, and Columbia had a very good program and reputation in this field. In addition,
it offered the attraction of being in New York City, which was very much the “Big
Apple” and place to be at the time. So I was very happy to be going there.
Q: You were at Columbia from 1967 until when?
PERINA: I was enrolled at Columbia from 1967 until I finished my Ph.D. dissertation in
1977 during my first tour in Ottawa, Canada. Also, from 1970 to 1972 I lived overseas, in
Munich, Germany, doing the research for my dissertation. I received what was called a
Foreign Area Fellowship to do this research, primarily at the library of Radio Free
Europe in Munich. My dissertation topic was very contemporary history. It was a history
of political dissent among Czechoslovak intellectuals from 1950 to 1969, that is from the
Stalinist years through the Prague Spring.
Q: Can you elaborate?
PERINA: Well more specifically my dissertation was the history of this newspaper called
Literarni noviny, which was the Czech equivalent of the Literaturnaya gazeta in Moscow.
It was the most prominent newspaper of writers and intellectuals. It was founded in 1952,
in the Stalinist period, and remained the most prominent voice of intellectuals through the
1968 Prague Spring until 1969, when it was shut down by the government. The topic was
interesting because I could chart the evolution of the newspaper from Stalinism until the
Prague Spring, when it was one of the major proponents of reform. I got into this topic
partly because during my first year at Columbia, during the Prague Spring, someone
called the University and asked if there were any experts on Czechoslovakia who could
serve as consultants on a documentary film being planned. The call was passed on to me
and I followed up on it. It came from a small, private film company called Saturday
House Incorporated that wanted to break into independent production of documentaries. I
later learned that the whole company was sort of a tax write-off for a very wealthy New
York convertible bond financier who had always wanted to be a film producer.
Q: This was while The Prague Spring was going on?
PERINA: Yes, this was in April 1968 when the Prague Spring was beginning to be in the
U.S. news. To make a long story short, I met with the company President, and he offered
me the job of going to Czechoslovakia with him and the film crew as a consultant and
interpreter. We spent about six weeks during April and May doing something like 60
hours of interviews with politicians, academics, dissidents, people on the street, anyone
who would speak with us. Among those whom we interviewed was the young Vaclav
Havel who was then a dissident writer but destined, as you know, to become President
some three decades later. We didn't interview Dubcek but we got film footage of him,
and we interviewed the Foreign Minister Jiri Hajek, the economic minister Ota Sik, and
many others involved in the reform movement. All of the footage, I think, comprised the
14