Conspirators

In his novel The Conspirators, the German-writing author with Czech roots, Friedrich Bruegel (1897–1955), reveals the principles of how the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia functioned in the spring of 1949, one year after the communists seized power. He paints a horrific picture of Stalinist practices that stop at nothing to eliminate the enemy (an individual with dissenting views or an inconvenient comrade). An assassination attempt on the head of the secret police provides a welcome opportunity for the Communist Party and its repressive apparatus to stage a show trial with a supposed network of conspirators who are alleged to have committed the worst possible crimes, including high treason and espionage for enemy powers. The fictional characters and events, set in Prague during Easter 1949, are a chilling reminder of their real-life counterparts, including Rudolf Slánský, the political purges, the manipulated court trials, and the judicial murders of the 1950s.
With an immense emphasis on suspense, The Conspirators illustrates the structure and dynamism of totalitarian power, much like Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon or George Orwell's 1984. However, none of these, nor any other similarly focused works, are tied to the Czech setting with its specific historical context. In this respect, Bruegel's book, written as early as 1949, remains utterly unique to this day.
Thanks to Jiří Stromšík's translation, Czech society now has the opportunity, seventy-five years after its first publication, to discover this work and, through it, a piece of its own history and character. The novel reminds us that even though there are no good solutions under certain conditions, this does not relieve us of the need to act in accordance with our own conscience. Bruegel chose to resist evil by capturing it in a novel. His book forces us to ask ourselves the question: What would we have done? What would I have done?