Jan Kaliba

“We kept to the plan. Everything that maintained enterprise services protected us from being destroyed by State Security. If it had occurred to them that [illegal] things could be made in this way, using offset, with quality. The interesting thing is they were much more harsh with cyclostyle printers. They destroyed hundred-copy print runs, but we could produce thousands of copies, but they saw us as a state enterprise that must not be endangered with failing the plan. Fulfilling the plan, that was their mantra. If they’d have locked us up, and we produced in large volumes, it would’ve meant they’d endanger other parts of the enterprise’s organisation. But we weren’t directly anti-state. We printed for the Jazz Section, an organisation that was interested in music. Just that the musicians had ran away and weren’t allowed to publish, that could have been called an undesirable publication from their perspective. For instance, [a publication] which mentions Matuška. So perhaps we were doing something dangerous there, but the Eighties were coming up, and nowadays it’s more for a laugh, really.”