Milan Kundera accused of informing

Milan Kundera (pictured in 1967) the dissident Czech novelist, has been accused of shopping a spy working for Western intelligence to the Communist secret police when he was a student in the 1950s. According to documents released by the government-sponsored Czech institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, the celebrated author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being informed on the young man in 1950, a betrayal that saw his alleged victim narrowly avoid the death sentence.

The spy in question was Miroslav Dvoracek, a young pilot who illegally fled Czechoslovakia after the 1948 Communist takeover, and who was then recruited by US counter-espionage agents and sent back to his homeland. The police report at the time, which has been published in the Czech news magazine Respekt, reads: "Today at around 1600 hours, a student, Milan Kundera, born 1.4.1929 in Brno ... presented himself at this department and reported that ... Iva Militka [Dvoracek's girlfriend]... had met ... Miroslav Dvoracek ... who had apparently deserted from military service."

The report explained that Dvoracek was to pick up his case from Militka's flat that afternoon. When Dvoracek returned to the flat, he was arrested when he came to collect the suitcase. He was later sentenced to 22 years in prison for desertion, espionage and treason, although he served a total 14 years, mainly spent working in uranium mines.

The claims have been greeted with astonishment by Kundera, 79, who moved to France in 1975 and whose dissident reputation is based on novels that satirised the excesses of the communist regime, among them The Joke and Life is Elsewhere.

Accusing the institute and media of "the assassination of an author", he said: "I am totally astonished by something that I did not expect, about which I knew nothing only yesterday, and that did not happen. I did not know the man at all."

Dvoracek, who is now aged 80 and living in Sweden in poor health after suffering a stroke, made no comment on the matter. However, his wife, Marketa, told the AFP news agency yesterday that she and her husband were "not surprised" that Kundera's name had surfaced in the Czech media reports. Said Marketa: "He is a good writer but I am under no illusions about him as a human being."