Pavel Chalupa

“The students’ activity was incredible. We immediately set up various departments, independent sections, it was very structured. The sit-in strike actually gave functions to people from individual classes. We had – I can see it here – a strike committee, a financial department, a dispatch bureau – that was for dispatching student delegations, which travelled outside of Prague, on so-called ‘beauty rides’, to tell people what had actually happened in Prague. Back then Czechoslovak Television, Radio, and the press were still all under the influence of the ideology of the Central Committee of the CPC, and the misreported the situation in National Avenue, they didn’t report the truth, it was greatly distorted. The regime tried to hush it up of course, but what with the theatres joining in – I can’t actually imagine now how we managed it, there were no mobile phones, nothing, all the communication was through state lines, the witnesses remember they awful double lines and triple lines; but the phones to the theatres worked, and people phoned from schools, from theatre offices – we managed to get the theatre network up and running, and that enabled the truth to get out to people, about what actually happened. The travel groups were organised in the dispatch bureau, where they’d always give the address, where to go to, whom to go with, who was in the team, they got things to take, pamphlets and so on. Then we had an economic department, a reception – the school had to be guarded, there was a constant threat of militia or police incursions in those first days, then guards, staff – mostly girls on hand who wrote down, implemented our decisions, then the kitchen, the production at DAMU [the Theatre Faculty - trans.], the coordination, press, and information department; someone was at The Disc for long-distance correspondence, Michal Čech and his so-called Čech Chamber were in charge of posters and banners, then promotion and education. We were able to set up a system immediately. It only took two days.”

“When I came out at the National Theatre as one of the audience – I wasn’t on the stage, that was really brave of the actors on the stage. And when I came up there and started to read, there was applause after every sentence. People had suddenly broken through the barriers of that we can finally start expressing what had been kept suppressed within and dampened by the regime the whole time, we had kept it inside like a pressure pot, so now we can let it out. I was almost too moved to speak. There was an enormous energy and power to it. I could see that they wouldn’t be afraid to show solidarity with us, that the public would join in. It was also connected with the anthem. Then I was invited to the National Theatre, where Boris Rösner organised it every evening. At first the way it was, was that the declaration was read out, there was applause, we sang, and then off home again, but gradually the evenings started turning into public debates, where the issues of society were discussed. People from the Civic Forum were invited as well, who were already given posts. I remember Miloš Zeman’s speech, in which he asked the people whether the answer should take ten, twenty minutes, or an hour, and he then responded accordingly; or I remember Valtr Komárek – those were powerful moments. The people chanted: ‘Zeman for president! Komárek for president!’ All of the speakers were always to be the president.”

“I didn’t know anything about the occupation. I remember that all we did in Varnsdorf was to exchange belts and cartridges with the soldiers for beer, which was good for us. When the boys came, the soldiers, sovetskaya armiya, they gave us badges, and that was enough for us and our games. That was our contact with the Russian, or rather the Soviet army. I remember how one time when I was walking with Mum and a colleague of hers down the main street – called Stalin Avenue, how else – I suddenly pointed: ‘Look, the Ruskies are there!’ The colleague gave me a slap, said those weren’t no Ruskies, but Soviets! That’s how muddled people were.”