“Then he, not personally, but via the head of the department, he wanted me to go teach at VUML. VUML was the Evening University of Marxism-Leninism [Večerní univerzita marxismu-leninismu in Czech - transl.], it was a kind of prep school, ideology training for people like the director of Mototechna, or for people who had some position, so they were required to graduate from VUML. I told him: ‘I can’t teach at VUML because I’m not equipped for it.’ He said: ‘Well, then you’ll have to go visit the Soviet Union. You’ll have to go to Moscow.’ And they actually negotiated an internship for me at the Philosophical Institute in Moscow, so that was my punishment for not wanting to teach at VUML - they sent me to Moscow.”
“VONS was more important for me - Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted [Výbor na obranu nespravedlivě stíhaných in Czech] - because it did specific and very important work. It kept note of persecuted people, it their cases made public, and VONS helped them become known both at home and abroad. I considered VONS to be of greater significance. The Charter was a way to have legal opposition. Because the state had signed the Helsinki Agreements, and people could organise themselves on this basis. I was always an adherent of much more practical and substantial matters. It’s not that I didn’t sign the Charter because I had some serious objections to it. Under different circumstances, if things had developed differently, I would’ve signed it, if I hadn’t yet, or already, been at the Academy at the time, I would’ve normally signed it. As did a number of people in my home. I had no serious objection. I know there were some who did have considerable objections to the Charter, but not me.”
“They just watched. I had a lecture there once, and Ernest Gellner was looking out of the window of my flat on to the square, and he called me up to him and asked: ‘There’s one car that’s still standing there, on the corner. There’re some men inside it.’ I told him: ‘That is... Professor, that’s them. They’re here like that every time we have a lecture. They keep watch, note it down, because they know you’re here, when you’ll leave, where you’ll go.’ He got an awful fright and said: ‘I’m staying with friends in Prague and I don’t want them to get into trouble.’ In the end we tried to loose them, we drove my Trabant, he was completely exhausted from it. One time I was taking Paul Ricoeur in my Trabant, and we were driving through Prague at night. I was taking him somewhere, where he had some lodgings, we drove somewhere around Charles Bridge, that is through the historic centre of Prague, I asked him if he liked it here, what it reminded him of. And he said: ‘Yes, the Bronx, it’s the Bronx.’ Basically, it was awful. So we tried to escape with Gellner somehow, and in the end we managed it, and he was terribly grateful.”
“One time they brought me from an interrogation, it was at night, they took me home to Valdštejn Square. They even dropped me off in front of my house, they said: ‘We’ll accompany you.’ I said: ‘I don’t need to be accompanied home, to my flat.’ They said: ‘No, we’ll accompany you there. You’re tired, you might faint.’ True, it was about two o’clock at night, but why should I faint after some nasty interrogation by State Security? Okay, so I told them: ‘Come on then.’ So they accompanied me upstairs, I opened the door to my flat and they asked: ‘Can we just hop in for a breather?’ I said: ‘For goodness’ sake, stop it already, we finished already. We finished the interrogation, you have everything, what else do you want from me?’ - ‘If you’d just give us a glass of water, we’re completely exhausted.’ Okay, so I said: ‘Sit down.’ One of them, I had a big office there with bookshelves, he walked around, saying: ‘I haven’t read this yet, that’s Patočka, interesting. Could you lend it to me? I’d love to read it.’ To which I retorted: ‘You know very well that if I have Patočka, samizdat in my library, you can’t do anything to me. As soon as I take it out and give it to you, I’ve committed a crime.’ - ‘Oh, I see you know your stuff.’”
Doc. PhDr. Rudolf Kučera, CSc., was born on the 10th of April 1947 in Prague. Between the years 1965 to 1970, he studied philosophy and history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague (FACU). In 1968 he was a member of the Academic Council of Students of FACU, he considered emigrating after the August invasion of the Soviet armies. After graduating he found employment at the Institute for Philosophy and Sociology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia while at the same time keeping in touch with members of the dissent. He was fired from his job and subsequently expelled from the Party in 1978 for attending Jan Patočka’s funeral. He then earned a living in working professions (a boiler man, construction worker). During the late 1970’s and the 1980’s, his contact with dissidents and signers of Charter 77 increased in intensity. He met with foreign supporters of the dissent, he organised house seminars, published Samizdat anthologies, and in 1984, he established the review Střední Evropa (Central Europe) and became editor-in-chief and contributor which he remains to this day. After 1989, he returned to academic circles, between 1993-2003 he directed the Institute of Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences of CU in Prague. Doc. Rudolf Kučera is the author of many commentaries, analyses, studies, and monographs (e.g. Omyly české transformace [The Errors of the Czech Transformation], Komentáře - politické analýzy z let 1990-1992 [Commentaries - Political Analyses from 1990-1992], Kapitoly z dějin střední Evropy (Chapter from the History of Central Europe)].
