Ota Sik

Sad news from St. Gallen - Ota Sik, one of my University professors, has died at the age of 84. Here is a good obituary.

Ota Sik was one of those professors who impressed me personally, even though his approach of a third way between communism and capitalism - tempting though it may have been during the cold war period - never convinced me, with the exception maybe of a short period during high school. Most convincing though was his demonstration of how the Soviet style planned economy worked, or rather, wouldn't work. And finally, his hands-on mentality as a communist intellectual who survived the concentration camp of Mauthausen and took on government responsibility in the Prague Spring of 1968 was exemplary and deeply moving.