Jiří Pošepný

* 1963

  • “There was this funny thing, as I was getting married, it was during the Communist era, so I went to a shoe shop to buy myself shoes and they didn't have any. At that time, you could buy maybe just two types of shoes, that's how it was, just a poor selection of shoes. Especially with my feet that are quite large. So I went there and they didn't have any. So I said: 'Never mind, I will take my slippers.' Then I said: 'Well then, so...' As I would just like to show you how powerful they were, how much power the Party had. So I went there and... I walked maybe hundred meters to the local Party office and I told them: 'I am getting married on Saturday, there are no shoes in the store, I can't buy shoes as there aren't any and they aren't able to get them. So I will go in my slippers and be assured that there will be photos of me wearing them.' The next day, there were shoes in the store. So that's how it was being done. Rather then... Out of fear they managed to get just about everything”

  • “If you wanted a car back then you had to... people were standing in a queue for a week or so. They would just wait. So they could register. I had been waiting for two days to get a colour TV. So... To buy a freezer, I had been waiting till morning... like from maybe 7PM or 8PM till morning. Outside. And there were quite a few of us... They brought five of these freezers. So the first five in the queue... And we didn't know how many they had. But the first five of us had a chance.”

  • “Let's get back to the year nineteen-eighty-nine. As I wanted to ask you: What were the songs people were singing in that theatre, besides the anthem and the Prayer for Marta?” - “We were singing... this son by Hutka... what was its name... oh this forgetfulness... 'Beautiful is to live, more beautiful is the sea, who is the most beautiful...' Right. That was just... People would sing it a lot back then and I still resonate with this song. As they would play it during some theatre performance from time to time... and it would all come back immediately... or if I would hear it playing on the radio, the whole November would just come back. As it had been a part of it, in a way... As there was this verse during which... during which you just had to wish something while humming, so I supposed that we all wished the same thing, that there was some meaning in what we were doing and that we would achieve something. And we all believed that.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Velké Hamry, 28.11.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 52:45
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Out of fear the Communists managed to get just about everything

Jiří Pošepný, a portrait
Jiří Pošepný, a portrait
photo: Žáci z gymnázia U Balvanu

Jiří Pošepný was born on May 15th ¨1963 in Lomnice nad Popelkou. His first memories of political events relate to Soviet tanks occupying the city of Liberec in August 1968. After the events of 1968, his father, a Communist party member, had left the party. After that, his whole family had to face the consequences. In the summer of 1989, Jiří Novák signed the Just a Few Sentences (Několik vět) petition and joined the mass protests in Prague (Praha) during the Velvet Revolution. At that time, as an ardent amateur actor since his youth, he had been attending meetings in the Žižkov theatre, where he had the chance to meet Václav Havel and other important figures of that time.