ABSTRACT
Czechoslovak literary critic, professor, and human rights activist. Vaclav Cerny studied at Charles University in Prague, and at the universities of Dijon and Geneva, be coming a professor of comparative literature at Charles University. During World War II he was a leader of the Czechoslovak resistance against the Germans and was ar rested by the Gestapo. After the Communists came to power in 1948, he was dismissed from his position at the university and forbidden to publish. He was employed in a minor position at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sci ences until he was rehabilitated during the Prague Spring of 1968. After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslo vakia on August 20 of that year, he was again banned from the university. He was an author of the Charter 77 document.
