“It was the last examination, and I already anticipated to be expelled from school just three months before my final state exam; I already accepted it as a fact. In the examination committee there was the faculty dean, my classmate, a member of the Communist Party, and two or three workers from the factory ČKD Sokolov. One of the workers asked me: ´So what do you then believe in, if you claim that Marxism-Leninism is not the philosophy that you trust?´ I honestly answered that what felt closer to me was the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza, which I think was the last sentence I said, but the dean probably wanted to save me, and so he stepped in and said something that I didn’t even know about at that time, that is that Karl Marx valued Baruch Spinoza as one of his predecessors. They told me to wait outside, and when they called me back, I expected I would be told that I was expelled, but they told me: ´All right, we’ll allow you to finish your studies, but when you graduate, you will receive a job placement in Košice. (in a company where the present-day East Slovakian Ironworks began to be constructed at that time). You will be a worker there and we hope that the workers’ environment will rectify your thinking and you will get rid of your wrong opinions.´ When I then came to the factory, the director called me, showed me the letter from the faculty and said: ´Look, they sent me this letter from your faculty and they write that we will teach you to think in the socialist way here, but just look at the mess we got everywhere. We got no time to teach anybody anything. I have to let you do the manual work, but you'll go to the army afterwards anyway, so I hope you'll endure it somehow.´ And so I began my employment as a worker there.”
“At the end of 1969 I lost my job again due to my work for Junák and KAN (Club of Committed Nonpartisans – transl.’s note) and my speaking against the so-called normalization of the new leadership under president Husák and the communist party. I was dismissed on the basis of Act n. 99 of 1969 on immediate annulment of work contract, which had been signed by the politicians of the Prague Spring president Svoboda, Dubček and Černík, who had stepped down and bowed under the Soviet pressure. After an unsuccessful job search I eventually began working as a construction worker again, and worked as an asphalt layer on the construction of the road from Děčín to Ústí nad Labem until my work injury and my retirement for disability pension. It is funny, but in my life I was actually able to do a job corresponding to my university education only for less than five years. During that time I was under constant surveillance and investigation by the communist Secret Police and based on the decision n. 196 of the Communist Party’s leadership issued on January 8, 1971, I was registered in the so-called unified central register of representatives, activists and supporters of rightist opportunism, organizers of anti-Party, anti-socialist and anti-Soviet campaigns and actions. I’m sorry, but that’s how it was really called.”
“In my opinion, scouting is the best education system for young people to teach them to live a good life as individuals and as a generation. With considerable anticipation, scouting had outlined the serious problems which threaten not only our human world, but also our entire planet, and found solutions and ways to attain them, but they require great responsibility and it is difficult to follow them. We see it in our ranks, too. It was already A. B. Svojsík, who correctly said in his time – and I will quote from his text: ´Only considerable danger which threatens our activity. Scouting is life on the small scale, and it mirrors all the vices of your public life.´ End of Svojsík’s quote. I would like to ask you, the younger generation, to remain faithful to the ideals of scouting. I know that there are not only Scouts living in this world. But all our three fundamental principles and the law of the scouting movement are well-proven signposts which show the way, so that people can live better in this world, and continue to live well.”
“I had one special privilege in my life: since I graduated in 1948, and I turned sixty in 1989, this means that all my adult life actually fit into the period of communist rule in Czechoslovakia. I had enough opportunities to get to know totalitarian governments. While it was in power, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia never allowed the development of the scouting movement. We still need to keep that in mind. They always banned or suppressed the Scouts, persecuted them, and they were punishing them cruelly and even executing them in the 1950s. Therefore I was never able to understand how some members of Junák could become members of the Communist Party at the same time. I asked a lot of them for explanation of this strange kind of schizophrenia, but in vain. When they didn’t have the courage to explain this to their fellow brothers and sisters themselves, I began with this work myself. I consulted this task with many Boy and Girl Scouts and with non-Scouts, whom I hold in high regard and whose advice I respect. Instead of publishing a trial version for gathering responses and constructive criticism, I used the opportunity to publish many articles on this, and to have several lectures, the most important of them being the one in the East European Modern History seminar at the Philosophical Faculty at Charles University in 2000.”
Karel Kay Lešanovský was born January 26, 1929 in Pacov. He has been a member of Sokol since he was a young boy, and later he became interested in scouting. Immediately after the war he founded a Boy Scout troop in Pacov. After graduation from grammar school in 1948 he began studying the university in Prague. The absolute ban on scouting was a heavy blow for him, but he remained firm in his views, and with a bit of luck he was able to complete his university studies in spite of the adverse political regime. However, after graduation he had to begin working in Košice as a construction worker in order to get rid of his “reactionary” ideas. After his military service he moved to Martin, but following the intervention of the Secret Police in Žilina he lost his job after he had not passed the political checks of the time. After a long job search he eventually found employment in Děčín, where he joined the local Boy Scouts. In 1968 he became involved in the restoration of the Junák organization (Czech Boy Scouts - transl.’s note). He was elected the chairman of the Association of Friends of Junák, and began participating in their activities in Prague, but after the failure of the Prague spring he found himself jobless again for the same reason. Karel Lešanovský significantly contributed to the restoration of Junák after the Velvet revolution. Since the beginning of the restoration process he has been working in the study department of central board of the boys’ unit and later in the historic committee of the Central Junák Council. He worked on documenting the history of scouting in Děčín and in other places, he thoroughly studied and organized the inheritance of Rudolf Plajner, collected extensive archival materials about the period 1968-1970, which he later published in a book titled “Short History of Czech Scouting in 1968-1970, the Events and their Consequences.” This work was firstly published as a samizdat. Afterwards he published another book, titled “With the Shield and on the Shield,” in the publishing department of the Ministry of Interior, about more than 600 Boy and Girls Scouts who were imprisoned or executed by the communist totalitarian regime between 1948 and 1989. He further studied the problem of Scouts’ membership in the Communist Party, and he lectured and published on this topic. At present he lives in Děčín, he is a member of the 217th Old Scout Club, Svojsík’s troop, Velen Fanderlik’s troop, and the Scout Institute of A. B. Svojsík. He keeps in touch with many Boy and Girl Scouts in the Czech Republic and abroad through letter-writing. Since his youth, scouting has always been his life credo.
