Ing. Jiří Jiránek

“There were consequences in every place in which the Soviet troops were stationed. It wasn't so obvious here in Pardubice, but the troops stationed in Bohdaneč were behaving in quite a Soviet manner as well. The worst consequences of their stay in this region could be found in Vysoké Mýto, but most of those had been cleared away by now. I think that nowadays it's the mind of the people which seems to be polluted the most. As it had this immense impact on the society, it was just terrible. Many people had a hard time accepting it. But there were exceptions, some had no problem with accepting it and they were keen to collaborate with those troops. I witnessed it while working as a forester, as this Mýto garrison kept doing quite a lot of damage and they would always sweep it under the carpet. They behaved like they were used to in Soviet Russia, that was the problem.”

“I remember the Minister of Interior back then joining this debate. As we had a lot to say against how things were organized at that time regarding nature conservation and heritage preservation. So this discussion went on and I would come up with this quite harsh critique of Mr Minister, for which I got scolding right on the spot from his press agent, it was Karel Merhaut who did the job. He was trembling with fear, but there were no consequences. Mr Minister didn't know what to say, what to answer, and that was the end of the debate. Mr Minister walked away, quite angrily, and we would carry on, promoting events that took place in the past.”

“In August 1968 I was in Pardubice and I joined this protest march to confront those Polish soldiers stationed under Kuňka. Several thousand people went up that road. But yes, as we were reaching our destination, there were maybe half of us. Then we found out they were Poles, led by the Soviets in those armored personnel carriers. They didn't know what to do, apparently, so they would just depart and leave the Poles standing there. So we would talk to the Poles for maybe two hours. Then negotiations between the city and the occupying forces started. They occupied the airfield, of course, but they would not enter the city. They would stay outside and only those Soviet armored cars would patrol the city. They would go back and forth, keeping an eye on what was happening.”