Petr Hořejš

“When I wrote Volume 14, which mainly concentrates on the figure of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and culminates in a deep-diving depiction of World War I, so I was obviously already reading up on the First Republic. And I found that contrary to the previous interpretations, I could see so many problematic moments in the First Republic, central of which were the less-than-ideal or honest relationships of the Czechs especially to the Slovaks, to minorities in general, which meant that Czech kind of – and there are myriad arguments to support this – brought the hostilities with the Sudeten German minority on themselves. So I decided not to write the First Republic. It must first be described by expert historiography, to open eyes and see the mistakes not just of the others, and to accept a degree of responsibility for the tragedy that befell us with Munich, the Protectorate, and World War II.”

“The year ’69 came, after those problems. Dubček left, replaced by Husák’s leadership, and unless I’m mistaken, at the end of ’69 or in ’70, the screenings took place. Everyone, all the Communists, came before the screening committee, which was made up of so-called Yodasites, pensioners, Communists who didn’t even know where they were, had no idea about the working of the enterprise, who behaved like arrogant dolts. So I also stood before this committee, and I said what I told a moment ago, that I had once pledged my word to the revivalist line of Dubček and that I’m not the sort to change faces now, and to please strike off my membership, that I had already made the request to our organisation. Those were external members. Well, so they sent me outside for a bit, and then they called me back in and these old men told me: ‘Comrade, you are expelled.’ I had tried to game it, hoping to be ‘struck off’, which was a less severe punishment. And I said: ‘What for? I tried to be completely honest.’ And they said: ‘You expelled yourself, you told us you don’t want to be in the Party.’ So they expelled me, and thus began a new phase in my life, one which was much more complicated, although it gave me the greatest piece of work and, in a way, personal satisfaction I ever had. It took about a year for them to fire me from Albatros on these grounds. From Albatros, which I had described as a Japanese-style company, where people arrive young and leave as pensioners, truly such a quiet, calm, pleasant publishing house, but it got hit the worst in Prague. No other publishing house fired 19 people, like they did from Albatros. In some places two, maybe three, but in our case it was 19.”

“The atmosphere of building up Socialism, those five-year plans, the various Zápotockýs, Gottwalds, and so on and so forth... that was an atmosphere of complete inertia, of course at a time of constant fear-mongering about warmongers, capitalist methods of exploitation, the misery of life in the West, mass unemployment, and so on and so forth... they tried to frighten us day in day out. But besides the fear-mongering, we had to repeat the stuff in all manner of subjects, from civic education, national history, to history, or even Russian. And above all that there hung the universally present awareness that someone... first Stalin, then his successors... have that briefcase or that red button, which signifies that any change of political circumstances here or on the side of Peace and Socialism would mean utter tragedy, that is, World War III, with all the horrors of nuclear war.”

„In Stříbrná Skalice the liberation celebrations began already on 1 May, 1945. There was no liberation as such, but it was known that Hitler is dead and lost the war, so everyone went out on the square. Suddenly many Czechoslovak battalions appeared and there was a parade. Although I do not know the context, since I was only six years old boy, the leaders of the procession came up with an idea of going to Chocerady. The way was along the river Sázava about four or five kilometers downstream, a small town, where the famous doctor lived, whose name I forget, who healed many people from concentration camps, it was a kind of a regional hero. So a big parade full of battalions began marching to Chocerady, with music and such, and so we as boys obviously had to join in. It was a great glory and now we got there and there was so many Germans. There were armored vehicles, motorcycles with machine guns, it was totally packed. And then the whole procession went to the doctor proclaiming his glory. And the Nazis were just staring at it, and I realized, that they talked about it in the parade, it was enough just to push the faucets."

„While Clementis went to the gallows, my father got sacked from the ministry in connection with the events. We were just listening to the news about all the people who signed the petition. I remember that my father wept on the one hand and on the other hand, when I was trying to ask him, what happened at that ministry... and how about him, as he was jobless. Basically he refused to tell me anything and I did not get any answers. At the time and in the family situation, I began to realize that something was wrong about the socialism and things are actually quite a bit different with the propaganda. It seems to me that since then I stopped believing in how they manipulated in a pioneer movement, and so forth."

„Czech university students were basically manipulated in the context of international tensions between America, the Soviet Union and Cuba to demonstrate outside the US embassy for peace. While those missiles that were aimed at America were Soviet ones, so here there was a peace demonstration. So I had to report on the Czech university students rebelling against the American regime in front of their embassy. That was one of my first reportages, and I was terribly ashamed, because I knew well what was going on. Suddenly I was in a moral conflict. I disagreed with it after all, and still had to report about it on the radio. So I whispered into the coverage so I didn’t get instant spanking from those college students. Then I gave the microphone to one of them, and he answered the way he was supposed to respond. The reportage was even a success and on the radio they told me I was being transferred to the reporters department and for example on the next May Day I could have the tape back again and stand under the horse's tail at the St. Wenceslas square and scream for example: 'Long live the Zizkov women! ' I got so horrified that I immediately started looking for something else I could shirk.“