Few contemporary Czech top politicians have been so admired and hated at the same time. As the saying goes, lightning strikes the tall trees, and he has undoubtedly exceeded most of his colleagues across the political spectrum. The Olympia Publishing House in Prague has conveyed his life stages to readers over time in publications The road to victory, Conspiracy a last year with the title The President's job.
The road to victory
The first in a series of books written by journalist Radim Panenka based on interviews with Miloš Zeman, it builds on their previous publications This country is ours a We can govern ourselves, co-authored by the President's spokesman Jiří Ovčáček. The road to victory was published in the spring of 2018, when on 27 January Miloš Zeman defended his mandate and became the Czech president for the next five years. A legitimate and democratic president, as the author Panenka underlines in his introduction to the book.
"Five years ago, two million seven hundred thousand voters gave me their trust. Now it is two million eight hundred thousand voters. So I am going into the next five years charged with the trust of these citizens of the Czech Republic and I believe that I will not disappoint such trust..." President-elect Miloš Zeman said on the day of his victory in front of his campaign headquarters. The book about his road to this victory maps the important moments of the first five-year mandate of the head of state, which included regional trips and hundreds of discussions with citizens. According to Miloš Zeman, these are among the main duties of a directly elected president.
Panenka's book gives us an overview of the period just before the election, of the decisive topics and the crucial debates of both candidates who advanced to the second round, when Zeman cut Jiří Drahoš to pieces with his arguments, to put it in the vernacular. The so-called Prague café was certainly not enthusiastic, but the thinking ordinary citizens were - as the people behind the polling station walls made clear,
The book has 150 pages, and eight chapters. It begins with a foreword by Ivana Zemanova, continues with Five Years of Full Squares, Every Week on Screen, Decisive Duels, Courageous Supporters. At the end we find Election Results and the Victory Speech. The publication is documented with a number of successful photographs by the skilful Hana Brožková, a freelance photographer who has accompanied Miloš Zeman on his major events and travels since 2013. It follows:
Conspiracy
The investigative work by Liboš Procházka and Radim Panenka, published in spring 2024, bears the following subtitle: The truth about the attempt to remove the President of the Czech Republic.
I'm sure we all still remember it. Autumn 2021. The Opposition has won the elections to the Chamber of Deputies and is about to take power, with the President of the State standing in its way. However, just after the elections, he goes to the hospital and does not deny that he is "at loggerheads" with the incoming Purple Party. A game is underway to strip Miloš Zeman of his powers on the grounds that his health does not allow him to continue in office.
Most of the media, including the "public" Czech Television, are happy to add their own spin, the verbal attacks on Miloš Zeman are becoming more and more rude, many opposition politicians are losing their gloss and are not shy about using disgusting vulgarities when assessing Zeman's health. In the book Conspiracy we can follow page by page how the game of certain doctors, media and public figures who wanted Miloš Zeman to be removed from politics developed. So that he would not get in the way of the formation of the new government and pay for everything he did to them as president. But to the great relief of the organisers and participants in the hideous conspiracy, the denouement came in the following weeks: the President of the Republic returned from hospital and was still in full office, albeit in a wheelchair, for more than a year.
The book of almost three hundred pages, full of irrefutable facts, testimonies and documents from the pens of our leading journalists and writers Luboš Procházka and Radim Panenka (collected, written and verified) is a unique and objective testimony of how it all was and was then. The titles of selected chapters from the publication speak for themselves:
Zeman is dead. Did the security say so, I hope there will be no photographers, Black tie, Senators in action, Without the consent of the president and the family, We will deprive him of his rights, Will he go in a coffin or to the poppies, Fatal conversation, End of the game, The door was not torn, Covid with a touch of government or Where the director is hiding.
An interesting appendix to the book is a series of interviews, which is opened by Cardinal Dominik Duka in the form of an afterword. This is followed by interviews with Miloš Zeman himself, Jiří Ovčáček, and JUDr. Marek Nespala, while another doctor, Professor Petr Neužil, also had his say. Professor Aleš Gerloch also expresses his opinion.
It remains to add that one contribution is more interesting than the other, and in its entirety the book, like the previous ones, opens our eyes wide.
For the third time, all the best
"I sit down at the typewriter to write my last book. I'm thinking of a title, and the first thing that comes to mind is 'Ten Years as President. However, this title seems too trivial, something like 'hilarious stories from the set'. So I finally decide on the title "The Presidential Destiny", partly inspired by André Malraux and his "The Human Destiny", partly by Bondarchuk's "The Fate of Man".
This is how much Miloš Zeman wrote in his own hand on the back cover of the book, which also saw the light of day in Olympia in the second half of last year under the title The presidential destiny. It is written, as it were, in the first person and in a lively language full of simile, puns and puns or situational humour, where sometimes the ex-president does not spare even himself. Above all, however, he gives us lessons on how things work in the world of politics, even at the highest level, including basic information on the constitution, legislative bodies, the powers of the president, and so on.
More than meaningful is the chapter on the Vision, where Zeman reminds us that he is one of those who devoted themselves to writing political programs after the November coup. Miloš Zeman, a visionary without fear or reproach, wrote the first such programme for the Civic Forum, the second for the Liberal Social Movement and the third for the Social Democratic Party, entitled A society of education, participation and solidarity. In international politics, he irritated his opponents with his vision of trade and cultural cooperation with the People's Republic of China, in which history will undoubtedly prove him right, as we can also see from the present day, when despite various embarrassing flip-flops, our tiny country has undoubtedly benefited from cooperation with the second largest economy in the world, which can be multiplied many times over.
"To accuse any politician of lacking vision is almost a death sentence. Often a vision is a vague idea of a distant future or, on the contrary, a set of short-term measures that have nothing to do with vision. A real vision must be long-term but sufficiently concrete and, above all, feasible," ex-President Zeman says in the chapter's introduction, before concluding that if any politician wants to become a true statesman, he or she must have a vision for which he or she fights more than for his or her seat.
"That is why in this, my last book, I am writing down the thoughts that have accompanied me almost all my political life."
Interesting photographic attachment
About halfway through the publication, after the passages devoted to the so-called participatory society, where Zeman deals with such important matters as referendums, including the national one (who is afraid of them and why), the reader will find a collection of photographs of Miloš Zeman on various state and private occasions. He smiles not only when meeting Donald Trump, Queen Elizabeth II, but also Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the planting of the memorial tree in Lány. But also with Pope Francis at the Vatican, his long-time friend Robert Fico or Viktor Orbán and other figures of world and domestic politics. Moments with Karel Gott, actress Jiřina Bohdalová and several family snapshots were not left behind either.
This is followed by an appendix of inauguration speeches, from Zeman's first mandate on 8 March 2013 to a series of Christmas messages, including his speeches in the Chamber of Deputies and on the occasion of the Czech Presidency of the EU Council and many others. It is an extremely important and rich reading, both in style and content. There are no general platitudes, no paint-by-numbers and no idle chatter from those irresponsible in the current government, which are being hurled at us from most media outlets, including the biased Czech Television.
Conclusion
Readers who look forward to sensations and tabloids will surely enjoy the passages Budget, Migration, Peroutek's article, Pussy Riot or Crown Jewels and the odour of Becher. On the other hand, the reader who craves the truth, as well as serious political scientists and objective journalists in our time of various media restrictions, censorship, self-censorship and brazen lying and rewriting of history will be interested not only in Zeman's views, but also in the illumination of the long time he was in top politics. With visions that, for example, Peter Fiala, the holder of the title of the worst post-war prime minister of the Czech Republic, can only dream of.
Ivan Cerny
PHOTO - archive of Olympia Publishing House
English 
Czech 
Spanish 
French 
Italian 
German 
Russian 
Chinese