About the Author
Milan Šimečka, a writer and political scientist, was a professor at Comenius University in Bratislava until he was expelled from the faculty in 1970 for his dissident views. In 1981, he was charged with “subversion of the republic” and was held in custody for a year, but never brought to trial. He is the author of The Restoration of Order (1984), an analysis of the return to communist control in Czechoslovakia after 1968. He published samizdat essays and articles for many years and is regarded as one of the finest political commentators in Czechoslovakia.