Ljuba Václavová

“And I really started working just on contract, so I wouldn’t have to explain anywhere that I was in the Party. I was terribly afraid to do anything about it and quit. I was scared of them for the first time in my life. For the first and last time in my life I was truly afraid of the silence, that dreadful organisation. I found a place as an assistant at the television, but again, like I said, just contract work, and again, I didn’t tell them about it. I just hoped that if I disappear like this, that they’d forget about me. Total nonsense. I was always a rational person, but my mind completely froze up back then. Well, and then some comrade roared at me in the corridor: ‘Václavová, come here! You belong to us. We’ve found you.’ Well, and then for another half a year or so, I kept telling myself I didn’t know what to do. Then I went to a meeting, and I asked the wrong question, and they basically told me not to come there again, that I wasn’t employed there, and that I should sort it out myself. That was Director Pelikán. And I came to the meeting, I handed in my membership card, and all I said was that I was ashamed to have been there so long, and that I was giving it back to them, that I was leaving. And he said: ‘You can’t leave. Only I have the authority to expel you.’ “Then expel me,’ and I really just left defiantly through their midst.”

“... and then I took the metro and went to [the staff office of] Respekt - I’d made my decision during that time - I went to Bolzanka because I knew they were there. I knocked. Hrabina, who managed the production side of things, or how to call it, opened the door and said: ‘I’ve been looking for you all day. I got a scholarship from America and I need a substitute here.’ And I said: ‘Well there you go, and I’m here because I need to work so I can get out among normal people.’ And I stayed there. I came up with their Respekt Club, so that a political weekly would have its own club, and I started shooting for Czech Television. My husband said: ‘You never cost me anything,’ and he lent me some cameras. Within a week we’d prepared a programme from a club in Řeznická [Street]. I edited it, brought it to the television, and they broadcast it that evening. And that’s how I caught on at the television. And I did those Respekt clubs, we called them Respektování [Respectation], I won a FITES Trilobit for it because the newspapers immediately wrote that this was the only correctly organised discussion, debate club. Because I didn’t do it live, that is, the stupid stuff got cut out, when people blabbed on. I invited politicians there, normal people, and then there were expert on the given subject at the middle of the table. So the first thing we did was the Czech Republic.”