Ivo Valent

“After about three days Mum finally got out of Parliament, when the soldiers received orders not to keep them there any longer. She said she was joined in the street by some men who then offered that, if she wanted, they could immediately arrange her emigration to the United States. Of course, I don’t know if it was a form of provocation, if those weren’t perhaps State Security officers, or if they meant it seriously. But what is clear is that Mum had her family here and her own mother, who was hard of hearing and very ill. So she immediately refused. The matter petered out. Her staying here meant that she and my father bore the consequences of their decision not to sign their agreement with the occupation.”

“It was interesting, I hadn’t counted on something like that until then. But it became clear that in practice, there was the Socialist Work Brigade, which was in control of certain lucrative lines, such as Prague–Bratislava. If I joined the Party and became a member of the Socialist Work Brigade, which would endorse me as a new employee, my advancement would be much faster. I had never thought of anything like that before. I did not such thing, of course. In the end what I did was I switched over to the [Prague] Public Transit Company at the turn of 1988 and 1989.”