The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had this love for people in its program: We will hang you or you will hang yourself
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Vladimír Myslík was born on 15 July 1921 in Prague. His parents, František and Emílie, were active in an anti-Austrian resistance organisation called Maffie during the World War I. His father was the director of the Workers’ Accident Insurance Company and died when Vladimír was twelve years old. Vladimir graduated from business school in 1940. From 1942 to 1944 he was forced to labour in Germany in the Berlin Argus company, where his knowledge of German made him work in the office. After the war, he married Jiřina Suchá and joined the UNRRA organization. It is alleged that thanks to his travels to Germany he was also visited the court of the Nuremberg Trials. In the UNRRA he met the pre-war communists Eugen Löbl and Vojtěch Schlesinger, respected and trusted them. They initiated him into the issues and entrusted him with the transport of goods in Western European ports at UNRRA. In 1947 Vladimir joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Since 1948 he worked at Centrotex as a transport officer. In 1949 both Löbl and Schlesinger were arrested and detained. Löbl was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1952 in a mock trial with Rudolf Slánský et al., and was rehabilitated in the 1960s. Schlesinger was found hanged in his cell in Pankrác four months after his arrest. He was later rehabilitated as well. The way the Communists began to behave after taking power shocked Vladimir and he had reservations about the Communist Party leadership. In 1950, in his own words, he publicly defended the director of Centrotex, Ludvík Kalina, who was arrested and convicted of alleged high treason the same year, at a workers’ meeting. Vladimír was interrogated by the StB and threatened with 25 years in prison. Communists at Centrotex reportedly warned him that he would end up as bad as Schlesinger. He was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia because of mistrust and was to be transferred to work in Jáchymov at the request of the Centrotex communists. To avoid this, he took a job as a worker in the Kladno steelworks, where he worked until 1955. In 1954, a disciplinary hearing was held, during which he admitted his mistakes and the Communist Party returned his membership card. Between 1955 and 1966 he worked in clerical positions in several enterprises. From 1967 he was employed as a clerk in the general directorate of the Hutnictví železa. He experienced the Prague Spring with hopes for changes and trusted Dubček. He did not agree with the entry of troops, but during the vetting this did not affect his further work or his membership in the Communist Party. In the summer of 1971, the State Security (StB) began recruiting him as a candidate for cooperation. He worked as a computer specialist in the iron metallurgy industry and was in contact with representatives of English and American companies. According to the files, the StB stopped cooperating with him after he took up a new job at the general directorate of Prago-Union in November 1971 and ceased to be useful to the StB as an informant. Vladimír Myslík was then approached by the StB twice more, in 1973, when he worked at the general directorate of TST and the cooperation lasted three years, and then again in 1983, when it lasted less than a year. However, Vladimír Myslík denies that he cooperated with the StB. He had already retired in 1984. He and his wife raised a son and a daughter. He died on 19 April 2022.
