Tomáš Křivánek

* 1955

  • “The family managed it fantastically, my wife was a real trooper who led that little group of wives, or – as it were – widows, she did a lot of interviews, and took perfect care of our two children. She had at that time a monthly salary of 600 crowns, some allotments for two kids, so Václav supported us with his own money and the Charter 77 Foundation ran by František Janoucha helped with the foundation’s money. So, economically speaking, there was food on the table. When they were able, once or twice a year, to get hold of bananas, they had those too. Personally speaking, that jail gave me quite a bit. I realized where my limits were, what I was capable of, and what I wasn’t. Even my values changed a bit, till today they remain mostly outside of the material world. Overall, I’d say that my time in jail enriched me relatively quite a lot when it comes to my personality. It didn’t pull apart the family an ounce. At the beginning it was a bit of a problem when I got back from jail when my younger son, who had just started to crawl, didn’t recognize me and I spent a number of weeks afterwards trying to convince that I was his father and not another one of his uncles who’d been coming there in droves to the flat to be interviewed. I remember one thing that I would like to add: From the material side of things, like I was saying before how Václav Havel and František Janouch were supporting, that it also happened that my wife would go home, open the mailbox, and find an envelope with ‘Hey, were worried about you’ written on it. It was left unsigned and it had, let’s say, 747 crowns in it. We found out later that they had met somewhere in the bar, in the mountains, or at someone’s summer house and said: ‘Hey, the Jazz Section’s in the can.’ So people tossed some money into an envelope and then someone anonymously put it in our mailbox. What a nice memory.”

  • “During the interrogations which followed the first one, they said: ‘Your wife out there is making trouble, so we arrested her and we’re going to send one of your sons to an orphan home in Aš, and the other to Košice. You know they’re at an age where later they won’t even know each other or you either. So you’ll be helping your wife and kids if you talk.’ They were constantly using these ways. Or they used this, that they took me from Ruzyně to Bartolomějská Street, there they stuck me in a cell, and without a single interrogation and ten hours later they took me back to Ruzyně. From the beginning there was an absolute, later a bit less so, censorship of my correspondence, not only did they black out texts, but they principally refused to accept letters with any sort of human encouragement whatsoever, from both my wife and other people. The pressure was constant, this, what we’re talking about, was the pressure of the investigators, the prosecutor, and then of course the pressure from the prison staff, from the guards. All’s quiet and then suddenly they started banging the metal doors with their batons, storm in with a dog, face the wall, two steps back, frisking. There were these metal drawers there where one had one’s let’s say tiny property, they would throw everything in them into one pile in the middle of the floor. Now the dog starts barking, when there was some salami there it slobbered all over it. Then they left. The law mandated that once a week we had the chance to go out for a walk, but I didn’t go. The first two, maybe three months I didn’t go on any so called outing. It meant in some corridor in the courtyard, watch towers overhead, and them staring at you holding machine guns, I didn’t go. The hygiene there was what it was, once every week they wouldn’t send you to the showers, saying: ‘The others were there too long, you’ll go next week.’ The conditions there were how they were.”

  • “Once a culture inspector came there and his eyes about popped out of his head: Jaroslav Jeroným Neduha was on stage, the band Extempore was playing, hair past his waist, hair to his bum, cigarette in his mouth, playing guitar. He stared at him and then started yelling at me: ‘What about the fire regulations?! For crying out loud, he’s smoking up there! End the concert at once!’ But I was ready for him, (the Prague) Jazz Days were long gone and everything always played out the same way. I said: ‘I won’t do it, go up there yourself, and tell him that you are ending the concert. Nothing doing. I like it, it’s fine with me, I’m not going to end anything.’ He called someone saying they were going to shut off the electric. My then wife and Alena had a certain foresight, so they locked up the circuit with our lock, the breaker. And I said: ‘Well, if you won’t have it any other way, alright then, let’s turn off the electric.’ We went to the breaker, we tugged at it, nothing happened. I’ll cut the chase: the concert went on to its end, but it was the last concert we had there.”

  • “Mom was worried about me then, she said: ‘They’ll kill you, those Russians, they’re savage.’ She worked as a mail carrier and she said: ‘I won’t let you, you’re coming with me for my rounds.’ She delivered mail in Hanspaulka nad Dejvicemi. Back then mail carriers wore a dark grey-black uniform with orange shoulder markings; they had caps and a huge leather satchel. I said: ‘I don’t want to, but I guess I’m coming with you on your rounds if you say so.’ Once we drove out to Hanspaulka, Mom was stuffing the mailboxes with letters, and suddenly a Russian jeep stopped by us, they swooped down on Mom, and tackled us to the ground, twenty centimeters away from my face I saw a machine gun aimed at me, and they started rifling through Mom’s bag. Later we realized that they hadn’t known who we were and had thought we were relaying something. Everything was flying around. In those times mail carriers delivered people’s pensions. They had a relatively big sum of money in those bags, during that time, eight to ten thousands crowns; it was all over the street. They didn’t take anything, hopped in their jeep, and left. I said to Mom: ‘See, how dangerous it is when I go on your rounds with you! If I had just delivered my newspapers nicely, everything would have been alright.”

  • Full recordings
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    Praha, 08.12.2018

    (audio)
    duration: 01:59:45
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 18.12.2018

    (audio)
    duration: 01:25:05
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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We didn’t have more opportunities than the others. We just tried.

Tomáš Křivánek during filming
Tomáš Křivánek during filming
photo: natáčení Post Bellum

Tomáš Křivánek was a former member of the committee of the Jazz Section and a producer of concerts of alternative musical groups. He was born on 4 January 1955 in Prague as the son of a mail carrier. A trained machinist, it was the Jazz Section of the Union of Musicians that played a larger role in his life, which he encountered for the first time during the Prague Jazz Days in 1975. Soon after he got involved with the activities of the Jazz Section and became a committee member. He became a producer of concerts for alternative bands and a dramatist for the short-lived amateur stage of the U Zábranských Club. Later he also was engaged in production work for bulletins and other publications of the Jazz Section. On 2 September 1986, along with other members of the Jazz Section, he was arrested and accused of economic offences. After a wide wave of international solidarity before and during the trial, all involved were given lighter punishments than originally expected; Tomáš Křivánek would serve eight months’ time. After his release, he was behind the birth of Unijazz, a successive organization of the Jazz Section. In November 1989 he worked in the Prague headquarters of the Civic Forum, and then from December he founded the office of the Charter 77 Foundation. He started the recording label Globus International and in the 1990s he founded the internet center for the Open Society Fund. He is also the founder of the Bratrstvo Keltů (The Brotherhood of Celts) organization.