Clementis

Vladimír Clementis was born in 1902 in Tisovec. He was a Slovak politician, lawyer, writer, and translator. He grew up in an Evangelical teacher's family. He studied at the Faculty of Law at Charles University in Prague. In 1924, he joined the Communist Party and, together with other left-wing intellectuals, began publishing the magazine DAV. In 1939, he emigrated to France, where, in the presence of Viliam Široký, he criticised the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and condemned the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland. Later, his friend, the Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg, warned him that Stalin remembered and did not forgive such things, but it was already too late. Široký made sure they were not forgotten. As State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak Republic after the war, he was instrumental in ensuring that Jarovce, Rusovce and Čunovo were ceded to Slovakia. He was also largely responsible for Czechoslovakia supplying weapons to the newly formed state of Israel in 1948. Without them, it probably would not have been able to defend itself against the Arab numerical superiority. Clementis was a bohemian and part of the left-wing intellectual elite. He played a large part in the establishment of the communist regime, of which he himself eventually became a victim. In 1952, he was sentenced to death and executed in the trial of the Anti-State Conspiratorial Centre led by Rudolf Slánský. The book is a fictionalised story of this prominent figure in our modern history. Ľubo Olach (1948) graduated from the University of Agriculture in Nitra. He worked as an editor for the daily newspapers Roľnícke noviny and SMENA, the weekly SLOBODA, and for Slovak Radio and Television. After the revolution, he became the editor-in-chief of the music monthly POP HORIZONT. He founded the advertising agency AURUM and the teleshopping company TOP SHOP. He has published collections of poems Keď zomriem tak nech.!, Pri víne s bohémami, Kaviarenská poézia Ľuba Olacha, Na Paríž nepozerám zhora, Triezviem., the novels Nádenník pera vo francúzskych službách, Posledné varovanie, Žraloci, Lobista, Rozhovory za oponou, Politik, Prezident, Advokát, Prezidentka and Predseda, and the monographs Vavro Šrobár, Guvernér Imrich Karvaš, Osuský – zabudnutý diplomat, Juriga – kňaz, buditeľ, politik, Tido J. Gašpar – pomýlený bohéma, Clementis – minister na popravisku. He is a member of the Slovak Writers' Association and the prestigious PI-klub in Pezinok. He lives in Bratislava, is married, and has two children.www.luboolach.sk