Jiří Maršík

“My teacher Eduard ‘Eda’ Havránek was a communist too. He approached me (while at the technical high school) saying they needed some young folks to bring some life into the local communist group. He asked me if I was interested in joining, arguing that if you want to do something for society, you need to approach it from within; there is no way to achieve anything from outside.” – “What did it mean, ‘approach it from within’?” – “It meant being active inside [the party] while remaining able to keep communism within the confines of democracy… or decency, as we used to say back then. To make sure that there are people [in the party] who are pro-country and pro-people and do things to benefit the country and not primarily to gain personal benefits. He convinced me that I had all it took to bring something to the table – and I agreed to join the communist party while still in high school. At first, I became a candidate for membership, and then I obtained a full membership.”

“I think we didn’t grasp it completely at first because it wasn’t too forceful in the transitional period; no one said, you must stop now. We were told the scout movement needed to regenerate. We kept hoping it would regenerate into something passable. Many people who had witnessed 1948 didn’t believe it, and said matters would only get worse.” – “Did they say there could be a way to do it?” – “Some said there could be a way, and others said it was all over. We were undecided; we didn’t know what would happen. We tried to run our camp as usual to give the children a great experience. When the camp was over, we were told not to wear brown scarves or lily badges anymore, and to join the pioneers if we wanted to continue. Some of us didn’t want to just shut down and tell the kids, go play in the streets again, because we saw they were enjoying it and we wanted to be with them, so we said we would continue.”