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Showing posts with the label Operation Gladio

Elegies to Failed Revolutions - Part I

This story was first published on Ten Fifteen, a semi-regular blog/newsletter about art, philosophy and cultural theory. Sign up here .    Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better, Fail a Lot, Fail Up On the morning of November 17, 1989, Ludvik Zifcak got up and made himself breakfast and tea. He did not rush, because the work he was about to do would not have to be done until evening. He turned on his Soviet-era color television, with its two channels, blurry images and sepia undertones, dressed while he sipped tea and read the minutes of a meeting he attended the day before. He was a special undercover agent of the Czechoslovak secret police (StB) and that evening he was to lead a group of students protesting against the communist government into a trap. Just weeks prior the East Germans have breached the Berlin Wall and toppled its government. In just a couple of weeks, the standing Czechoslovak government will transfer its power to the new coalition of artists, actors, economists