he massive, red-stone headquarters of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) -- named after the two main regions of the Czech Republic -- is located on Prague's Street of Political Prisoners, just across from the capital's decayed art nouveau train station. The road was named in 1946 -- the very year that the Communists won a plurality in a democratic election -- in honor of resistance fighters imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II. The Gestapo had located its headquarters on this same street, in a massive building once owned by a prominent Jewish family. So it is that the twin horrors of Nazi and communist oppression continue to haunt this corner of the Czech capital.
When I suggest to Jiri Dolejs, KSCM vice chairman and member of Parliament, that the location of the party's headquarters on a street named after political prisoners is a grim irony, he chuckles and admits that there is an "obvious paradox."
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