Vít Růžička

”There was no accessible literature. There were a few books from 1968, treasures which were guarded, not lend. I got some bound volumes of the Junák magazines from Mr. Jelínek’s son, our group leader. I devoured them as magazines where some information about scouting was to be found. What was permitted in the 1970’s, surprisingly, were Seton’s books, so I bought the Book of Woodcraft [Czech: Kniha lesní moudrosti; it comprised of several E. T. Seton‘s books]. That was such a book which partly inspired the Czech scouting. This book was a good lead. There were a few books related to scouting, Mirko Vosátka wrote such books. Old scouts wrote books, from time to time, something got published during the 1970’s. Something by Zapletal and Foglar’s Rychlé Šípy [Fast Arrows] was at home. We thus had a certain idea about scouting. It was indirect, though, because many books were impossible to find. I got the information from friends and from witnesses. Then, later on, when I led the club, there were two older guys who were scouts in 1968 and before WWII. On one occasion, this old scout let me go to his cottage in Krkonoše with him and I spent two days in the attic. He had stacks of magazines and books there. I was reading non-stop for two days and I gained an insight and got information that I had not found anywhere else until then.”

“I know that I made my civics teacher feel uneasy because she asked what’s the difference between capitalism. I said that in capitalism, there are rich and poor people and in socialism, there are only the poor ones. And the teacher was a bit uneasy about it. I meant it seriously, it was not meant as a provocation or some sort of joke. I really thought that this is the way it is because whenever I wanted something from my parents, my mom said clearly that we cannot afford it. And when I read some books for children, all the main characters were poor there. It was a virtue to be poor, it was right. Being rich was negative. So I thought that socialism is good, everyone is poor there and it is the right way to be. Miss thought that we were all rich but I disagreed.”