The story of The Taste of Power follows “Frank” (for some reason the names have been anglicized despite the obvious setting in Slovakia), a press photographer, during the two and a half days over which a state funeral takes place.

As Max Hayward, in his Preface to this novel, observes, “In its outspokenness Mňačko’s novel goes far beyond anything hitherto published in Russia or anywhere else in Eastern Europe.” Slovaks have not exactly been known for the boldness on the world stage, so congratulations are due. While other artists living behind the Iron Curtain had tried in various ways to make sense of what had happened to them, Mňačko’s book represented a new departure. By the time Mňačko wrote The Taste of Power, he was no longer an ally of the cause it was time to expose the lie for what it was. The old ways of greed, theft, and exploitation simply became new ways of greed, theft, and exploitation, and most of the time the new was worse than ever. Quite the contrary, he was supportive of the regime change in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and looked forward to all the ways Marxism would transform human society and personality for the better, working as a journalist to document the change from the old ways of greed, theft, and exploitation to the new era of solidarity and sharing.Įxcept… things didn’t turn out that way.

Ladislav Mňačko did not start out as a critic of communism. Ladislav Mňačko, The Taste of Power, trans.

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