Barbora Štěpánová

“So based on how this Major Šára arrested me I was charged with assaulting a public servant. So there was a trial, unfortunately I don’t remember the judge’s name, she acquitted me because it was obviously nonsense. But they appealed so a trial again, it went to Doctor Bělohradský, a beautiful judge, tall, looked like he graduated from Oxford. So it was an obvious choice for him, he had to find me guilty. And we knew with some of those people that we would go to those trials at least as moral support. And the Committee for Defending the Unjustly Prosecuted had been working for a long time. So thanks to the fact that I was found guilty and had to pay some sort of fine… and if I didn’t pay it I’d be sentenced to two months in prison, so the fine was quite significant. I have to say that when we came to Petr Uhl back then, who took care of these things with Mr. Benda, they paid the money for us.”

“He (Václav Havel – ed. note) became a sort of unofficial president of the dissent. Because everyone, all of those initiatives always wanted to know what Václav thought about that. Everyone wanted him to like them. He was simply on the top, the highest judge. I don’t know, I’d like to know what the others say, but I think my impression is correct. He liked our Společnost za veselejší současnost (Society for a More Cheerful Present), he even did this happening with us. We, and I’m not bragging here, we were the best of those initiatives, Společnost za veselejší současnost. So we did this happening, we invited representatives of the Peace Club of John Lennon, there were simply five of them and Václav and we put them in a sandpit. We gave them all their own toys to do something in there. And that was supposed to be a symbol of how everyone only does their own thing. And then, we wanted a big truck but that wasn’t possible during totality, this car arrived, with Společnost za veselejší současnost written on it. It was full of sand and our sand covered, it all covered all the toys and castles of the others and all that remained was a pile of sand called Společnost za veselejší současnost.”