Romana Křenková

“Our comrade teacher came into the class, and - being quite empathic already - I could see that she was close to tears and that something grand and magnificent had happened. And holding back the tears and clutching at her heart, she told us - she had also brought with her a model of the Sputnik, which was a common decorative element of offices and homes at the time - so she held the Sputnik in her hand as if in orbit, and with tears in her eyes she told us that this very day, the Soviet cosmonaut Gagarin was flying or had just flown into orbit around Earth. She was on the verge of crying, immensely moved, and I too, and the children held bated breaths. It was very profound for all of us. I dare say it was like no other announcement, except the birth of my daughter, which was also powerful, and the revolution in eighty-nine, when I felt like dying, I reckoned: ‘Let it all end now, I’ll never be happier or more touched.’ That Sputnik and Gagarin flying in orbit around the Earth, that was so orthodox, so full and true that I think that I have never experienced a greater truth or more deeply felt human sentiment.”

“Right after the revolution one friend told me: ‘Look, a friend of mine is a minister, would you like to be his chief of office?’ So I took the post of chief of office for one minister, and I was full of revolutionary zeal and enthusiasm, and those beginnings were amazing. But to be honest, in time I came to understand that the functions that had previously been held by various Communist leaders and people who had been very close to the previous regime, [these people] started switching over to new functions, new positions. So I was gradually burdened with a deepening feeling of disappointment. I don’t know how you see matters today, but I am dismayed by many things. But I have come to the conclusion that it is not so much political dismay, but rather I have realised that this is kind of how the human soul works.”

“I sent him [Charter 77] while he was in the army, and the consequences were that they started going after him. Basically, the situation developed into them persecuting him for giving people the Bible and reading from the Bible, and that he got the Charter there and was passing it on and reading from it, well, and they started going after him for inciting revolt in the army. In the end the public prosecutor filed charges against him, and there was a trial in Příbram, where they sentenced him to eighteen months of prison, unsuspended, for the crime of incitement to revolt.”

“They persecuted us for incitement to revolt at first. It began while we were still living in the parish house, where we behaved... My husband decided - after there had been no water in the village for a week - that he will go and wash himself in the house of the chairman of the national committee [something like the village mayor - trans.], who did have water. Well, but of course that was an act worthy of a revolution. So he went to have a wash, he put one foot into [the chairman’s] flat, which was presented as a violation of home privacy, and then he lost his permission to provide spiritual care, and it all went downhill from there.”

“Unlike people who were afraid of the Charter, I - why am I taking so long to say this - because for me, [the decision to sign Charter 77 - ed.] was no act of bravery, but deliverance, existential deliverance. I needed to be with someone, to be in a group with someone. I was alone for so terribly long, for everything. I needed to at least be part of something, with the Charter. Why not? I liked the ideas behind the Charter, so I really wanted to sign it. But fate took me down a different path.”