PhDr. Milan Šmíd

“Each of us has this border line for compromise set at a different level. Some people claim that I had set mine too far, but I have set it in accordance with my consciousness and conscience. I have somewhat divided this system for myself: one part is formed by universal human values, and within this part it’s important to remain honest, and then there is an additional level, which is formed by political values. I have a theory that every person who didn’t want to be in the absolute opposition against the regime and thus be separated from all activity, had to make some smaller or greater compromise…”

“It was 1970, and unlike in 1968-69, the normalization was already pressing heavily on you. I was married, my wife was in the sixth month of pregnancy, I had no place to live, I couldn’t expect anything from my wife’s family; on the contrary, her mother had been sacked from her job and her father had died, my parents were retired. In a situation like this, one begins to think differently. I had such a theory which proved helpful, I thought: It doesn’t matter whether I want to be there, but what matters is whether they want me to be there. If they don’t want me, I can’t do anything about it, if they do, I will be there. Thus I wrote a letter of two paragraphs, while others were writing lengthy essays and donning sackcloth and ashes. I wrote a very brief letter, stating: ´Dear Sirs, I had joined the Communist Party because the ideals of socialism, or Marxism, respectively, were not alien to me, and neither are they now.´ And I expressed my wish to remain there. – ´Dear comrade, what you wrote is not sufficient. You need to express yourself about the event more extensively.´ So I really did write a letter. Later I had my son read it, and he said: ´Well, that really had to be tough.´ I told him: ´You don’t understand it, we were using such language, and I obviously did not approve of the entry of foreign armies. I only wrote that I understood that in the international context of the situation which occurred in the course of the Cold War, from the perspective of our allies it was possible to understand this entry of their armies. I used such roundabouts to avoid it.´”