Orchestration of one denunciation

In 1950, the cultural weekly magazine Tvorba launched a smear campaign against Jaroslav Seifert. The catalyst was the poet's 'Song about Viktorka', but political motives were the primary driver behind the literary arguments. Party functionaries wanted to silence Seifert due to his rejection of the new regime. The writer and literary scholar Vratislav Maňák (FSV UK) examines the case within the broad context of literary, media, and political history, using it to describe the mechanisms of a cultural life where literary criticism was not a partner to poetry, but to propaganda and censorship.