Long on ice, the Cold War just got a little hotter. A 25-year-old representative of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) remains unapologetic for having posted a series of racy photos on her Facebook page, despite objections from some locals in her district after the pics surfaced in the national media.
Vendula Kroupová — a member of the Jindřichův Hradec town council dubbed “Red Vendula” by the Czech press — said the photos were taken by a professional and tastefully done, so she had nothing to be sorry for.
“I don’t think anyone should be offended, and if someone doesn’t like it they don’t have to vote for me next time,” the comely commie told ParliamentaryListy.cz, with no apparent sense of irony; freedom of expression and a choice at the ballot box were hardly hallmarks of the former regime.
The photos — which have since been removed from her Facebook page — show the half-naked young communist in a variety of sultry poses cavorting in the forest. In most of the shots, “Red Vendula” is wearing black pumps, partially torn fishnet stockings and a jacket, but no blouse or brassiere.
‘I’m young and I think I’ve got something to show.’
“I’m young and I think I’ve got something to show,” said Kroupová, who also has a profile on a Czech modeling site, fotoparta.cz, adding that the shots “are works of art, not some kind of porno.”
In one, she plays the part of a dominatrix, sporting a whip; in another, “Red Vendula” appears to be wearing a dog collar (and little else). Perhaps taking a page from East Germany’s Freikörperkultur (FKK) nudist movement, she poses in the buff, fishing in a stream (apparently, it was rather cold that day).
Jindřichův Hradec mayor Stanislav Mrkva, a member of the center-left Social Democrats (ČSSD) said Kroupová had perhaps taken a novel approach to raising ... political awareness. “From an ‘artistic’ perspective, they are very interesting, and from a ‘political’ perspective quite innovative,” he told the Mediafax news agency. “Anyway, personally, I don’t have any problem with it.”
“Red Vendula” is not the first Czech woman in politics to bare (most of it) all in public. Leading female members of the center-right party Public Affairs (VV) posed in lingerie and revealing outfits for a 2011 calander to raise money and publicity ahead of parliamentary elections, sparking debate as to whether the pin-up politicians were striking a blow for women’s lib or reinforcing stereotypes. Most saw it as harmless good fun.
The Czechs’ famous laissez-faire attitude to public nudity, however, isn’t always so evident. When a group of Czech girls from Olomouc decided to strip down for a high school graduation poster earlier this year, school authorities reportedly threatened them with expulsion.
Unabashed, unbanished
Unlike in some countries formerly on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic did not ban communists from holding public office. The largely unreformed Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) has 26 seats in the 200-member lower house of Parliament (the Chamber of Deputies).
But although a card-carrying communist, Kroupová is hardly the Red Menace, at least in the eyes of one Jindřichův Hradec resident, who identified himself as “Marek.” ‘It would be great if there were more Communists like her. Maybe then the party would truly begin to transform.’
“I would happily vote for her. It would be great if there were more communists like her. Maybe then the party would truly begin to transform,” he told ParliamentaryListy.cz.
Since the Velvet Revolution, motions to outlaw the successors of the totalitarian Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) have been put forth by right-leaning parties and lawmakers nearly ever year. In the Act on Lawlessness of the Communist Regime and on Resistance Against It (Zákon o protiprávnosti komunistického režimu a o odporu proti němu, zákon č. 198/1993 Sb.), passed in 1993 in the Czech Republic, the party was declared a criminal organization.
Red and proud
The KSČM is the only former ruling party in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe that has not dropped the “communist” title from its name although it has changed the party program to suit laws adopted after 1989.
In November 2008, the Senate of the Czech Republic asked the Supreme Court to dissolve the KSČM over its political program, which the Senate claimed contradicted the Constitution. Thirty out of the 38 senators who were present at the time voted in favor of the measure, saying the party program does not disown violence as a means of attaining power and adopts Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto.”
Six post-communist European Union members, including the Czech Republic, have urged Brussels to push for an EU ban on denial of communist crimes. However, the EU’s executive arm rejected the move in December 2010, on the rationale that crimes based on politics are an issue that must be dealt with on the national level, and conditions for drafting an EU-wide legislation “have not been met.”
