Jaroslav Lada

"Fortunately, the comrades never figured that out (the copying of samizdat). We had three typewriters at home. Of course, my wife typed too; we used to make seven carbon copies. Then my cousin Líba came to us from Ostrava during the holidays; she had completed a school of economics and could type like 600 strokes a minute. That was absolutely fantastic. She also used to bring us carbon and copy paper. She was always able to copy a lot. Then also our neighbour Dáša Krejčíková, she's since passed on; she was a secretary and had also gone to that school, so she copied too. And my wife. So three machines were used."

"In the April issue, our illustrator made a national emblem with the Czechoslovak lion on the front page, but instead of the lion's head, he made a goose head to mock Husák (husa = Czech for 'goose'). The next issue, again on the front page, had a five-pointed star as a Ku Klux Klan figure with a Czechoslovak lion on its back between the figure's legs. This stuff was punishable under Sections 102 and 103, defamation of the Republic and its representative and defamation of a state of the world socialist system. We were sentenced for that. The editor-in-chief got eight months and the rest of us got three months each with one year's probation. It was only deleted from our records after five years. The sentence was quite low. Had it been in January the next year, in 1970, we would end up in prison for a year. Back then in November, the comrades were not so well established yet."