Mgr. Jan Kozák

“I had discovered Buddhism at the time, and I wasn’t going to rush anywhere, also because I’d begun to have a very critical view of how things were governed here in the early Nineties, I was in kind of a Kryllian position [referring to famous Czech singer and songwriter Karel Kryl - transl.], that means, I didn’t like all the stealing, I didn’t like that things were being privatised without a legal framework, I saw the beginnings of fraud, so I mostly quarrelled with those former Chartists or with the people who were all willy-daisy about the matter; and the more I did so, the less I wanted to get myself mixed up in some kind of political structure. As far as I know, I didn’t get many offers anyway. Now and then someone would tell me they’d take me in, say Dan Korte, I think back then he came up and offered me the post of head of HR at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I said: ‘Dan, please, don’t ask that of me. I don’t want to end up in a barrel in Orlík [referring to a series of dead bodies dissolved in barrels of lye found sunk in Orlík Reservoir - transl.] or something of the sort, I’m just not a good liar, I love honesty and truth and that’s how I am, I would never want to hurt anyone on purpose, that’s not the type of person for a political post.’ So he accepted that, and he didn’t come to me with any other offer again. By the by, I don’t like the way he’s been behaving politically recently, I think it’s high time he did an about turn and had a bit of a critical look at the whole period, at the loss of independence. I mean, even Vašek [meaning Václav Klaus - ed.] is changing direction, and he can also see that he pretty much acted the part of the useful idiot, because the loss of state independence is a serious matter, it’s not to be taken lightly. So in short, all I want to say is, I’m a patriot, and this whole hurrah embrace the West and open all our windows and doors to the West without any criticism, without any protection, without any self-government, without defending our own country - that’s always bad. And because we had this hurrah approach - it was done the same way in all the other countries around us - it got us into trouble... I discovered some awfully important and interesting documents, which hadn’t yet been translated into Czech, so I simply devoted myself to those translations from Latin and from Sanskrit.”