Thursday, May 16, 2013

Valtr Komárek: 1930-2013



He was born out of wedlock to a Jewish family in Hodonín, Moravia, in 1930. Both parents died in a concentration camp. Valtr himself was saved from the Holocaust thanks to his foster parents, the Komáreks. As a young kid, he was educated as a "hip" anti-Semite, much like most kids in the region, before he learned he was a Jew and the parents were not biological ones when he was nine. After the war, when he was still a teenager, he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, partly because he was grateful to his poor adoptive parents who brought him up and who were communists, too.

He completed a degree in economics in Moscow, USSR, and in the 1960s, he worked in the State Planning Commission. What's even more remarkable for foreign readers is that he worked as an adviser to Che Guevara, an educated Argentine left-wing mass killer, between 1964 and 1967. So you would think that Komárek symbolized the ultimate extreme left wing in economics.

However, in the following year, in 1968, he returned to Czechoslovakia and became a key economist behind the Prague Spring, trying to construct a more viable i.e. more capitalist form of socialism. He remained in the top economics after the Soviet occupation but in 1971, he was moved to the Federal Bureau for Prices which was a somewhat "lower" institute that didn't affect the national economy this much.

In 1978, he returned to the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences and since 1984, he was the director of the Forecasting Institute. In his institute, the bulk of the Czechoslovak (in some cases) Chicago-school-like reformers including Klaus, Dyba, Ježek, Dlouhý, as well as a top communist Ransdorf and (after the fall of communism) Zeman have worked at various moments.

He was a highly visible character during the Velvet Revolution; see his name in 5 previous TRF blog entries. A well-known slogan "During [the reign of] PM Komárek, a crown will be like a mark" shows both enthusiasm as well as a slight shortage of realism (the slogan rhymes in Czech; the actual exchange rate was always above CZK 10 per DM). While he was pointing out his differences from Václav Klaus, he would do so in a friendly way. In this sense, he was unusual among the members of the Social Democratic Party that kind of attracted him in the following years. He left politics in 1993 when Czechoslovakia disintegrated. Three years ago or so, Komárek received the highest awards from ex-president Klaus.

He died after complications from heart surgeries. His son Martin Komárek is a highly productive and well-known journalist.

Incidentally, the Czech Republic became the 26th DAC country, switching from a recipient of development aid within OECD to donors as the first post-socialist country. Less optimistically, the Czech economy saw a 1.9% year-on-year decrease of the GDP. We lost to Switzerland (surprisingly undefeated so far) in the ice-hockey championship quarter finals.

The world media are most interested in the video of president Zeman shot during the traditional (every 5 years) ceremony opening the exhibition of the Czech royal crown jewels (7 top people of the state and the church have to lend their keys to open the treasure). Zeman has explained his strange motion by a virus infection ("virosis"). Most Czechs and the world media believe that he had gone through several glasses or bottles of virosis before the ceremony. ;-) I am not sure who is right.


  1. if the guy lived before Stalin killed millions he would have had a good excuse. but being a holocaust survivor and helping Che? and insisting on being on the left?

  2. by the way i saw this . before he would not do this kind of videos but after Perimeter started supporting the minute physics channel, he created this one about earth and now this post.

  3. Jesus Christ. It's really everywhere.

    It's such an amazing hype and it's so self-contradictory. For example, they say - Yes, you may be smart enough and not one of the gullible alarmist sheep and you may realize that 400 ppm is just a random point on the axis that is preferred by our choice of the decimal system etc.

    But anyway, it shows that we are entering a new phase of the global experiment.

    Well, it doesn't. It doesn't for the previous reason. It's a random figure and nothing special happens around it. The Earth has seen 280 ppm for some time but it also saw 6,000 ppm or 10,000 ppm or anything in between earlier - even when most life forms we know were around.

  4. "we go into territory uncharted in human history. after 400 ppm who knows what will happen?" hahahaha

  5. Brought up as anti-Semite then discovering that you are Jew, thats a bummer. Socialist discovering that you prefer capitalist economy, its okay. A beard that shows he is schizophrenic with additional bipolar disorder. Dr. Klaus was right to give him highest Czechian awards.