The unlucky sculptor was really more a victim of malicious fate than of just stalinism. Only one item of hos oeuvre survives. It stands in the garden of the Art Academy in Prague and captures a motorcycle driver taking a sharp curve--a most unusual, exquisitely beautiful rendition of motion in stone. It is an early work. After it, the gifted student began to get commissions. ...When Svec was asked to participate in the nonpublic competition for Stalin's monument, he had already been pretty frustrated* and thought that he stood no chance anyway, with all the National Artists for competitors. So he reportedly concocted a model in the course of one single afternoon, with the help of two bottles of vodka--and he won." --Josef Skvorecky, Talkin' Moscow Blues (1988)

[*his Masaryk & Hus were destroyed by the Nazis; his FDR wasn't finished]