“Newspapers Mladá Fronta, Smena, and Mladý svět, the illustrated magazine in Bohemia, had great circulation, thus they could have had a correspondent abroad. And there were two places for this – the Balkans and Moscow. I was interested in Balkans, but some Czech got this spot and so I was assigned to Moscow. But there was no newscast, phone calls from the conferences or news reports. For three months I had to prepare my language skills, it was set up on the level of diplomatic service, even Dubček´s chairing approved it. I flew to Moscow. I took my wife with me so that she could see what school shall our children attend, where would we live, since we knew nothing. Our airplane was escorted by two interceptors from Soviet borders, as this all happened in time of negotiations in Čierna nad Tisou. The taxi driver asserted there were innocent people being shot dead in our country, but when I argued with him, he sacked us from the car and didn´t even want the money. I went to Komsomolskaya Pravda where I wanted to rent a car to be able to show Moscow to my wife and see where we were supposed to stay. Neither the managing editor, nor the head of the foreign department were there. Then some secretary had a huge pile of Smena clippings on her desk, among which was also an open letter to President Novotný. Supposedly they didn´t have any free car and they were very busy, no one at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had time for me. It made me angry, so I called to ambassador Koucek, who told me I was persona non grata, meaning an unwanted person, and so we returned home.”
“Somehow, I automatically got ready to be a member of an illegal group since we received an order to cancel issuing of the newspaper. Russians were so naïve that they took over our editorial office and drove us away; later they also got control of printing office that is today behind the National Theatre. They seized the entrance, but since the newspapers were printed in the back, one could come out that way. Next to this building was a pub U špinavého, we used to meet there and then we spread out to flats. I was the head of a group called Slimák (a Snail). We used to meet at one editor´s place, there we were instructed what to write, we met again afterwards and brought the articles into the printing office. This is how we worked app. for ten or twelve days, until they took over the printing office as well. The biggest surprise that happened there was, when the commander of Soviet troops wanted to negotiate with the home minister on media and press. Since Gavril Gryzlov spoke Russian, he interpreted. That´s where a saying ʻprašivaja gazeta Smenaʼ originated, what Gavril, as a Smena´s editor, translated. Then the normalization came and Smena had strict printing supervision, although, we used to smuggle things in anyway.”
“Then they did a swinish thing, although brilliant in a professional way. Officially during the normalization they cancelled censors. However, if there was any article published against the regime, the author would be fired at once. So each had own censor in himself, the managing editors especially, as they used to be always fired. So they wrote only positive, committed news, those were the ones being paid for. When someone in the West asked how it worked by us, we would say there was no censorship in our country, but it was hundredfold higher in us.”
Jaroslav Kalný was born on April 27, 1929 in Veľké Rovné. His father was a post office administrator and his mother was a housewife. The family had to move quite often because of his father´s work. Slavo Kalný grew up in Ilava, later in Trenčín, where he studied at the local grammar school. More than a school he was keen on sports; he played soccer and table tennis. However, he exchanged the auspicious career of a sportsman for journalism, where he transferred after a year of his law study. Slavo Kalný is one of the first four journalism graduates in Slovakia. Yet during his studies he began writing for Smena daily, what was the central body for Youth Union back then. In February 1955 he got married with Valéria Schmitzová, later their sons Igor (1957) and Peter (1959) were born. As an editor at the educational department in Smena, in 1956 he experienced so-called Pyjamas Revolution and the related following studentsʼ resolutions criticizing the ruling regime and unbearable conditions at universities. Grouped around Gavril Gryzlov at the editorial office, he managed to become a renowned journalistic personality of 1960s. He focused on social issues of the population and he wrote news reports on this topic. To the first ones written as well as published belong fates of Romany people across the Eastern Slovakia named Cigánsky plač a smiech (Romany Weep and Laugh) (1960). Later on he moved with his wife to Košice for three years, where he was supposed to map life stories of people for Smena daily. In 1963 he returned to Bratislava editorial office and since 1965 until 1968 he was its managing editor. The invasion of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 meant the end of socialism with a human face. The normalization process affected not only the daily, but also its employees and Slavo Kalný had to leave the newspaper from political reasons in 1969. He resorted to literary-dramatic centre of the Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava. He couldn´t write under his own name, however, under his baton there was broadcasted a popular radio program Čo nového, Bielikovci? (What´s New, Bielik Family?) He experienced the Velvet Revolution at the SNP Square in Bratislava, but after the fall of the regime he decided to leave to retirement in 1990 and focus on a non-fiction literature. He wrote several valued books, for example Drámy na hraniciach (Dramas at the Borders) (2003) about escapes of people from Czechoslovakia after the communist coup, or Bombardovanie Apolky (Bombing of Apolka) (2007) about the youngest spy girl in Europe. He honored his journalistic colleagues in books Páni novinári I. and II. and a book Svedkovia mojej doby (Witnesses of My Era) (2011) is some kind of summary of author´s life memories and people in his surroundings. Slavo Kalný was a widower and lived in Bratislava at the time of documentation. Jaroslav Kalný died in December 2022.
