Vasil Mohorita

“To learn... I don't know what we were expected to learn there. But the aim of the one-year study was just to be there, in Moscow, I would say. They would take us to excursion; from time to time we would go to some theatre or to see some of the Moscow´s essential historic sights. And of course, we would read Marx and Lenin and everything related to that. It was a kind of a course. Like VUML, but on a daily basis, not an evening school.” - “It´s hard for me to understand. You resented the Soviet occupation like anyone else yet you were in Moscow, studying at a school ran by the occupying power. Did it rise any questions in you, regarding the morals of it?' - “It didn´t. I knew things were already in motion and everything just has to end well.”

“For me, the only important thing was that I began to notice it. The game. There was no way you couldn´t notice it. Me and my father, we were watching the famous ice hockey match, the one we defeated the Soviets. And the phone began to ring and on the phone was my uncle. A he told my father on the telephone: “So you did lose.' Never in my life, before or after, have I seen my father so flabbergasted. And surely it wasn´t because the hockey. My uncle was a head waiter at Jalta, which itself was a quite strange institution – the Interhotel Jalta – and of course there was a hidden meaning in what he told my father. As he would just get angry because of the hockey, he would start cursing or something. But this was like he was revealing some sort of secret obviously.”

“As the head secretary would read us the Charter 77 during the presidium meeting, I stepped forward and said that I would sign it myself.” - “That´s exactly what you said?” - “Sure. Me and the trade union chairman. The chairman of the district trade union council and I, we did say that on the OV KSČ presidium meeting. We weren´t members but we were allowed to sit in the back as regular guests. During that time people would complain that they had to sign petitions but the things had already gone to far for them to stop it. They had to inform some of the officials what the Charter 77 was about. So they would read us the Charter declaration, what was the Charter trying to tell in the first place, what Husák and Brezhnev had signed in Helsinki. So we stated openly that we would also sign it. That there´s nothing wrong with it. As the Charter didn´t come with anything more than what the representatives of the communist worker´s parties signed. You see, even Husák signed it!”

“I wanted to go to the Nad Štolou gymnasium where my sister had been studying before she dropped out. So I wanted to go there as well as I did the exams, it was just a matter of formalities, but my father came with the idea that I should become an auto-mechanic. He declared that it´s just a beautiful profession. So in the end I agreed, even though we didn´t have a car, I never drove one and I wasn´t really into it, but I considered it a decent solution. Instead of going to gymnasium where I would have to do much studying. It wouldn't be like at the elementary school where I didn´t open a book for nine years. So I went to the Military Construction. We had a workshop at Strahov, at the Strahov Stadium, made from changing rooms. There were those changing rooms and they would put pasteboard on it and make us the workshop. That was where I spent my first year.”

In a distinct constellation which can emerge during a war or a in battle, a single positive signal can change the entire situation and overturn the odds unexpectedly and that´s exactly what happened.” - “And what the positive signal was?” - “It was me. As I gave them the printing works... Consider that all the documents had been printed on Saturday and on Sunday in the ÚV SSM printing works. Everyone knew it of course. On Monday, Mladá fronta newspaper wrote that I attended the Presidium of the Municipal University Student' Council and that we condemned the police crackdown against the protesters...” - “So in short, you think that the SSM, and you, played the crucial part...” - “Yes. On Wednesday, as ČKD men went, as Miler and his men from ČKD were marching to join the protest in the Wenceslas Square, on their way from Vysočany they had been passing the SSM headquarters, and as they went they were chanting ‚SSM, SSM, SSM!‘, that was on Wednesday. That was the positive signal that had been given. Someone brought down the wall, crossed the river and gave others an example.”

“I met an important and politically engaged neighbour on the street and he told me that we would have to wait for twenty years.” - “So you knew already back then how it is going to be?” - “Of course. And I wasn´t even seeing the people. That was my greatest problem after the revolution as I expected that everyone had been living like I have been living. That everyone knew it was just temporary. That nothing last forever, neither the Soviet Union nor the regime in our country. That nothing lasted forever and it would just end one day. In such a spirit I have lived with the people whom I had been meeting here. With whom I had been working or with those who had been working for me. But after the revolution I realised that they were shocked by what was happening, by the regime change. Even today a read the nonsense they are capable of thinking and writing, being not able to imagine they could believe such things.” - “As you studied Marxism and the ideology in the USSR – did you believe it, did you take it seriously?” - “No, not at all. There was the first lecture and a professor would come, with maybe twenty decorations from the war, and he would tell you: 'Do you know what the difference between the student of Marxism before the Revolution and the student of the Komsomol University is? The student of Marxism before the revolution, during the Tsar era, would sit at home and on the table, he would have The Capital by Marx. And as he would hear that someone is banging on the door, he would close the book and he would hide it under the table, and he would put a bottle of vodka and some glasses on the table. But the Komsomol University student would have vodka on the table and as he would hear banging on the door, he would hide vodka and take out The Capital.' That´s what our professor told us during the first lesson. And he was one of those who had been liberating Czechoslovakia and you could see how insulted he was by what happened in August 1968. Those people were affected by that. They would let you know they are, all the time. You could feel it in the air everywhere you went.”