Luboš Starý

“I think it was the summer holidays. We were at our grandma’s. Then they locked us up, and then we fled. This was a huge experience for a boy: we jumped at the moving ZiLs and ripped the Russians’ rearview mirrors off, and it was fun to just throw them in a heap round the corner. Whoever got the most of them was the biggest hero.” – “Did you do it with your brother, or with others too?” – “My brother got lost; it was so chaotic…” – “Were there more boys like you in Slovanka? And for the ZiL – is that the big truck?” – “ZiL was the big truck that Russians drove… I was running home, and there was a crowd on the corner – people were curious to see what was going on; who was coming. It was near our house in the main street towards the army barracks.” – “Is that the [former] Lenin Square, then Jičínská Street, and T. G. M. Street up the hill? Did you live on the corner of S. K. Neumann and Lenin?” – “Exactly.” – “So, is that where you ripped those rearview mirrors off?” – “That’s where we did it, like madmen. I’m glad to have survived and lived this long.” – “What did the soldiers do?” – “Luckily, they had their orders – drive on and avoid contact if you can. I don’t know; had anyone jumped off the truck bed and started shooting, well, you never know… You see, we were thirteen years old boys and we needed some action, we had to do crazy things… something like that.”

“As the society was transforming slowly and the official ideology was turning into a farce, really, I once got into a strait during a written test in a Marxism class. It felt awkward. We were asked to write about Marxist categories.” – “Was that at the CTU?” – “At the CTU. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So, I wrote the first two sentences the way we were supposed to, and then I added something like: ‘This is what the answer should be, though in reality, it is just a tool kit for harassment and distortion.’ It was quite daring; it was in the fourth or maybe even the fifth year, which means 1980. I could have followed in Mirek’s footsteps, which I only realised later. But since the atmosphere in society was already completely different, the assistant professor who rated our papers said: ‘This one gets an A, this one gets a C, this one gets an E, and Mr Starý – well, a very interesting paper in a sense.’ Actually, he may have even said ‘essay’, a word CTU students didn’t know and everybody just stared. ‘An interesting paper in a sense. I will not grade it, but we can talk about it later.’ He got over it elegantly like this, so luckily, I didn’t get kicked out. I never told my parents about this.”