Juraj Mesík

* 1962

  • On the 18th and 19th November 1989, the congress of The Green Party in Hungary took place. At that time, we were thinking in the environmentalist circles about establishing a Green Party in Czechoslovakia. It seemed logical to look at how are they doing it in Hungary, it was an opportunity to learn and prepare how to establish the Green Party at home. At that time it was illegal to establish a political party in Czechoslovakia. However, we came to the conclusion we are willing to take such risk and we would confront the regime and establish such a party. We did not have an exact plan, but the development headed towards establishing a Green Party. Also because of that, I went to the foundational congress of the Hungarian Greens. In Hungary, such activities were already tolerated, since the regime was much more liberal. On the 17th in the evening, I went by the night train to Banska Bystrica from Budapest, the train was leaving around 11 pm. Before that, we were listening with my ex-wife to the radio, to the broadcast by The Voice of America. They, of course, explained in detail what was happening in Prague, and I understood (together with many people), that it’s here. That now, something very important is happening.

  • “The interrogation went in a standard way many people experienced. There was good and bad interrogator. The bad one explained to me what a terrible subversive activity we were doing, what threat it poses to our Socialist homeland and I threatened with imprisonment. The good guy said: 'But we know that you are a talented student, you have excellent results at the medical school, you are interested in science. You could go to work in laboratories in Western Europe or America after graduation. If you want to save yourself from imprisonment, you have to work with us. Sign cooperation. And the good one said: 'If you want to have the opportunity to study and work abroad, you need to sign cooperation ‘I knew that I must not take on those offers or threats and I must refuse them. So I refused. Of course, they were not enthusiastic about it. The evil angrily went away, of course, they played the roles, he left almost slamming the door, pretending I would be sent to prison tomorrow. And the good one gave me instructions: ‘Think about it,' of course they were not using formal pronouns with me. He gave me a deadline within two weeks: 'When you come here, you just have to come down to the porter's lodge,' the man's name was Hnilička, I remember that name to this day, ‘ask to call Comrade Lieutenant Hnilička . I’ll go downstairs, we’ll sign it, and it's okay. 'And I didn't come and expected the negative consequences.”

  • “At that time I was already a university student, we founded an organisation within the structure of the Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Protectors, which was an official organisation. We founded a basic organisation called Ekotrend. At Ekotrend, we started to do two things that caught the attention of the State Security: one was communication with conservationists, boys and girls of our age who were ecologically involved in the West, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The second thing was that we started to make such exhibitions on environmental problems in Slovakia. They were entirely amateur. It was a time when there were no copiers. When we wanted to use an image at the exhibition, we redraw it manually. Such pictures were, for example, the cartoon jokes of some authors who commented on the ecological situation. Czech authors such as Jiránek and Renčín had very funny cartoons that talked laconically about environmental problems but in a hidden way. We combined these cartoons with newspaper clippings that talked about environmental problems. The propaganda was not totally bulletproof, occasionally there were relevant information about the problems, and those journalists who wanted it and risked it, who were lucky or inadvertently smuggled it into the press. We searched for this information, cut it out of the paper, and combined these reports with those jokes. With such exhibitions, we went to high schools. It was pinned to the strings, absolute amateurism. Since we were the official organisation of the Union of Nature Conservation with a stamp, the headmasters of schools allowed us to exhibit at several schools in Banská Bystrica. But somebody reported our subversive activities to StB.”

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    Bratislava, 13.12.2018

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According to official communist propaganda, environmental problems existed only in the “rotten West”


Juraj Mesík was born on 19 July 1962 in Zvolen and grew up in Detva. His father was an economist. Both parents worked in Podpolianske strojárny. He attended grammar school in Banská Bystrica, where his family moved. He became a member of the Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Conservation (SZOPK) and participated in the summer camps of the Tree of Life. After graduation, he studied biology at Jessenius Medical School of the Comenius University in Martin. During his first year, he founded the Ekotrend organization with friends within the SZOPK, he became its chairman. They organized small exhibitions on environmental pollution in secondary schools. These activities did not escape the attention of the State Security and all Ekotrend members were gradually summoned for questioning in the summer of 1985. Juraj was threatened with expulsion from school. In 1990 he found out that he had been saved before expulsion from his studies by the chairman of the Communist Party faculty committee. After completing one year of compulsory military service, he entered doctoral studies at the Medical Faculty in Martin in September 1989. On 18 and 19 November, he attended the founding congress of the Hungarian Green Party in Budapest. After returning to Bratislava on November 20, he attended the second meeting in the Umelecka beseda,he imported copies of the VPN statement to Martin and Banska Bystrica. He was actively involved in revolutionary events. In December, he co-founded the Green Party. Before Christmas, he accepted an offer to fill the vacant seat in the Federal Assembly for Banská Bystrica and on December 29, he already voted for Václav Havel as president in Prague. In February 1990, he became chairman of the Slovak branch of the federal Green Party. After the elections in June 1990, he ended up being a professional politician, engaging at the local level in the Democratic Party in the time of Meciarism. In 1993 he became director of the Ekopolis Foundation.