Richard Stára

"My parents didn't even get ration stamps, their property was confiscated, all the fields, the cattle, the equipment of the farm, they were gradually taken away from them between 1951 and 1952. They let them live there until 1953 and then they were evicted completely. My father told me that an administration of about five people came, some of whom he even knew, they were also from Počernice. And they told him that they were going to evict them. And there was a forced administrator who was in charge of everything, and he told them that they had a week to do it. That they would seal the house and that during that week they had to arrange a place to take all their things. Like furniture, china, glass, paintings, cabinets, everything. And my father went there the next day and the house was unsealed and people were coming in and taking things that were there. So, he went to complain to the forced administrator and he told him what can he do about these people, so he let them take it."

"It was a shock for me, for a little boy who was thirteen years old at the time, to see, for example, a convoy of sixty Russian tanks going by. I probably didn't realise it at all, it was a very strange thing. And it didn't occur to me that if somebody threw a stone at them, he might get shot. I basically didn't get the 1968 straight until 1992. I realised that it was just that the younger clique of communists, who were pushing up and the older clique stopped them, so it turned out the way it did. I still think that even if it had been the socialism with a human face, not much would have changed. We'd still be that communist state. And at that time, the Soviet Union would never have allowed us to build any kind of democracy here. That democracy was a little bit in the sixties. That was a really relaxed time. It wasn't like today, that everybody could do whatever they wanted to do, but small businesses were being created and things like that. But that all came to an abrupt end in August 1968, and it went back to the rigid normalisation that it was before."