Václav Mikušek

"That was exactly the period when purges were being carried out, called inspections or evaluations. There was a time when various people in leadership positions, if they did not approve of what was happening, were moved to other places. I joined and my supervisor lasted about four months. Then they suspended him and he became my co-worker. They put an engineer in the workplace, he was a prospective communist, but he had the slight disadvantage that he had no idea about the problem we were dealing with, electromicroscopy, which was a special topic. If I told him nonsense, he would have to accept it. So, the situation there was that the people who were actually building Tesla, the professional potential, was good. Almost what was done in the West was done here without professional machines. We tried, the results were kind of there, even though the parameters weren't that high-end and the technique wasn't. But it was at a pretty good level, there were a lot of good professionals working there, and if they had started anywhere else, they would have proved themselves successful well, which showed later. So, the atmosphere there was quite tense."

"It was instructive that there were fourteen of us and about sixty Komsomol members, and every day after dinner we met and discussed. One Czech, a group of Komsomol members around, we argued about politics and social issues. It was interesting to see how those boys, when they wanted to give an opinion, looked around to see if no one was listening, then whispered something and then disappeared. We once talked about the Eastern Bloc economy behind the Iron Curtain. I said that the economy of Yugoslavia is probably the furthest along, even though it is led by a person who in the West was said to be a bloody dog, but that it is led there on the basis of some market principles. So, we discussed what could and could not be done. The debate ended. I went to wash. One of the boys stopped by me, pulled me along and asked if I meant what I said about Tito and Yugoslavia. I said that of course it was my opinion. He looked around again, shook my right hand and disappeared into the darkness. So, I thought to myself: They probably have it a little stricter here than we do."