Additional to your account of Janusz Bogucki and different heroes who smuggled banned books into communist Poland within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties (‘It allowed us to survive, to not go mad’: the CIA book smuggling operation that helped bring down communism, 22 February), there was additionally a smuggling operation of books, literature and different banned materials from the UK into communist Czechoslovakia within the Seventies. It was organised by the Czech exile Jan Kavan, who went on to change into a senior Social Democratic politician and overseas minister of the Czech Republic after the collapse of communism in 1989.
I’m proud to say that I used to be one in all possibly dozens of British anti-Stalinist leftists posing as bizarre vacationers who smuggled banned literature, paperwork and even unlawful film cameras throughout the closely policed Czech border throughout that interval. These nerve-racking journeys had been undertaken in an tailored camper van, fitted with cleverly designed secret compartments. As soon as in Prague we met numerous courageous oppositionists, primarily at evening, at hand over the banned supplies. Jan Kavan was our liaison man in London who organised these journeys, and so far as I do know none of Kavan’s couriers had been ever detected. Sadly my companion on the journey I made in 1974, Peter Gowan, an instructional in japanese European research, died a number of years in the past.
I’m now 76, and if requested to undertake the same journey in the present day to a repressive regime, I might do it once more – though I’ve clearly now blown my cowl. I might love to satisfy up with different couriers who undertook related journeys, to share our experiences.
Carl Gardner
London
Your report of the CIA smuggling the Guardian Weekly together with books into japanese Europe in the course of the chilly conflict (Report, 22 February) delivered to thoughts my father’s efforts to the identical finish. In defiance of the censors, for 3 years after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia he engaged in an intense and sustained correspondence with a Czech physician. In June 1970, the physician thanked him for the Guardian Weekly and “your hilarious letters sandwiched into its pages”.
A couple of weeks later, acknowledging the arrival of a some saxophone reeds for his son, he famous “how fastidiously and skilfully you might be at all times wrapping the packet with the Guardian”. Happily the circulate of letters, newspapers and a even handed number of books, meant to supply some hope and reduction from isolation, had been by no means minimize off, though generally opened by the censors. My father in fact had nothing to do with the CIA, being a member of the British Communist social gathering.
David Parker
Holmfirth, West Yorkshire
