Mgr. Josef Hladík

“At the next plenary meeting of the District National Committee in Levice, the representatives of the Communist Party no longer sat at the head of the table. I attended the meeting as a member of the planning and construction committee for the Mochovce power plant, because we had quite a lot of demands for housing construction. Two members of the Federal Assembly were present. In the discussion, I was the only one and, perhaps, the first to present myself officially. I wrote down a few lines very quickly and asked that the District National Committee plenary approve the mandate for these two members of the Federal Assembly so that they’d propose the dismissal of the President of Czechoslovakia Gustáv Husák. There were suddenly murmurs coming from the assembly. Naturally, it was already known in plenary or among the present that the November events were on, but there were communist chairmen of National Committees and Communist Party deputies present, and none of them dared to make such a proposal. The District National Committee plenary meeting naturally did not approve it, then one of the MPs of the Federal Assembly stepped forward and said that Comrade Husák was such a great man and politician that he knew himself what to do.”

“Prague companies Škoda Praha, Potrubí Prague, Elektrotechnické závody Praha, Armabeton Praha and others brought “A Few Sentences” to the construction site of the nuclear power plant. It was a petition of the Charter 77 movement that called for the release of political prisoners and reforms in general. A few nuke engineers signed it. It was mostly boys one to four years after college who had internships in Jaslovské Bohunice and got in touch with those construction workers. A few days after the petition was signed, their names were already read in Radio Free Europe broadcast. Then a deputy came to me and said: 'These people must be dismissed.' It was the summer of 1988 ('89, in fact – editor’s note). And I tell him: 'No, I will not sign the notice, because they didn’t cause any trouble, didn’t come drunk, didn’t cause damage to the factory, their work discipline is in order. On what grounds am I to give them notice?' 'Then it will be you who gets dismissed.' Well, you can try to have me fired, but it’s not possible, the law – Workers’ Statute – applies here.' I know that people from the district council of the party then came there completely furious, they had bloody eyes. They were enraged at how it was possible that someone signed “Niekoľko viet” at the construction of socialism."