Mgr. Zdenka Skorunková

“It was very moving and beautiful. Sense of belonging. We felt that we were part of something big and we knew that what was happening was a revolution, that the history was changing and that we were participating in the change. It was in the air during those years. We were telling each other that it was not possible to continue like that, that it was exceeding all limits. It was an enormous enthusiasm which I naturally lost when I arrived to Prachatice which was a provincial town and people did not know a lot there. So, we organized a meeting with students of Secondary School of Education and of Grammar School. Then our friend, who had already become a member of Civic Forum, came from Prague. We arranged with him what other steps we could take and what we could do. We were putting posters and the sad thing was that the city officials were tearing them off at night. To put it simply, it was a moment when people did not know if it would change or not. The situation was uncertain. We immediately prepared a general strike that was according to us very important and that started 10 days after the 17th of November. The Civic Forum was established. We started to be on strike and of course, the students from the Secondary School of Education and from the Grammar School came and so did people from different institutions. VTS was the only big factory in Prachatice. We thought that as well as in the rest of the Republic if the blue-collar workers came to the general strike, we would win. We were waiting for them in the square. It was also the first confrontation with representatives of Regional Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. For the first time, people spoke there and told them face to face what they thought about them, the told them what communist had been doing to them, what they were not allowed to do and how they had been persecuted. For the first time, people stated it publicly, it was unbelievable. Every one of us was happy when we saw the whole factory coming because we knew that we would develop if the blue collars workers were with us. We welcomed them with a thunderous applause. The square in Prachatice was full. It was clear although there was a confrontation with a ruling political party. They did not have arguments. People who had been persecuted by State Security and who had had problems could finally say it and they did not mince their words. They did not have arguments to tell them that it was not truth, and everyone knew that it was truth. The issues were indisputable. There was the first confrontation and then things started to move and then Civic Forum started to work."

“I took part in athletics races and as a bonus got a trip to the USSR, Odessa. I might have been twelve years old. It was very interesting. I was a hard-working student at that time. They were setting us SSSR as an example at school and I believed them. When you are ten or twelve years old you cannot judge it and moreover, you trust your comrade teachers, we respected them. So, the ten or twelve days in today´s Ukraine came as quite a shock because suddenly I could see things that I could not see in our country. I saw people begging near a church. I saw empty shops which were not in our country even though we were queueing for goods. I saw many things and I started to think about them. I thought that it was strange because we should have seen the example here. We could see little village houses from the train that did not stop anywhere because it was not allowed to stop. We thought that they had them for animals, that the houses were hutches or pigsties. Then we found out that they were little houses in the countryside. All those things mingled in me and I started to search for the truth although I did not find out until several years later. When I was sixteen years old and when I was studying at Secondary school of Education, I had a possibility to go to Switzerland. So, all of sudden I could see the second side of the matter that was so gossiped about, so criticized. At school they were always telling us that SSSR and Eastern countries were the example and that we should not like the Western countries just because of their façade and because of the luxury since they were not true. That there was exploiter and people were suffering. When we came to Switzerland we could once again see that it was completely different. We were staying at houses of completely usual workers who had a wonderful family house and two cars. We could see full shops and when I compared it with SSSR it did not fit. Of course, that was my first existential crisis. My mum got involved in it at that moment and started to tell me the facts. Then my father´s sister, who had old newspaper from Prague Spring in 1968 in the attic, got involved in it. She took me to the attic, and she said: ‘Deal with it here now. Read it.‘ I can remember that I was sitting there reading completely unreal headlines in the newspapers. We did not know it. ‘People unite; the tanks have come‘ and so on. The Russians. Warsaw Pact. They want to ruin democracy. So, I was sitting over the bunch of newspapers and my eyes were filled with tears because I did not know what to think.”