Jiří Lukš

"Genghis Khan was not promoted in Mongolia at that time. Everything there was under Russian influence and the Russians organized everything. I can tell how inappropriately they treated the Mongolian people. They had Russian shops and a Mongolian citizen was not allowed to enter a Russian shop. They wouldn't let him in. They had their guards there. But they let us Czechs, because we are similar to the Russians, into those shops. Usually there were a few Mongolians standing in front of the shops, wringing a few tugriks in their hands and wanting to buy something. So we Czechs were loved. Because we bought it for them. We were buying for those Mongolians in the Russian shops."

"Often in Mongolia I would come back at night heavily drunk because it was impossible not to drink with them. And I'm going to digress a bit. When I was in Russia and we were talking about Mongolia, these Russians were convincing me how they had improved Mongolia. How they taught the Mongols to eat with a fork and a knife. I told them they only taught them to drink. That's all they brought them. That was my reaction to the Russian boasting about what they brought to Mongolia. Of course. When the Russian army went in, they destroyed all the historic religious buildings. There was one temple left in Ulaanbaatar. Everything else throughout Mongolia was totally destroyed. And then they used that temple in Ulaanbaatar as a tourist attraction."

"It was really due to the decision of the new government - Prime Minister Klaus, who stopped all funding. The Mongols wanted us there. We had an amazing position in Mongolia. They didn't want the Russians. They drove them out. But it was mainly the English and everybody else who were pushing in. There was gold to be mined there. Precious stones. It was all being taken over by the Western countries, and the Mongols were fine with that. They begged us to stay. Unfortunately, the decision of Prime Minister Klaus stopped it."