Radomír Vítek

"It was a demonstration on Wenceslas Square, quite a large one. I was there with a group from Zlín. I remember that my wife Blanka Vítková was also there. And we met the correspondent of the Voice of America, whom we knew from earlier meetings, when he interviewed us and asked us for some information about our activities. And while we were sharing our experiences with him in Wenceslas Square, a group of plain-clothes State Security officers approached us. They immediately took us, put us in cars and drove us to Krakovská Street. When we asked them what we had done that was illegal, they brazenly said that we were talking to a member of a foreign enemy power. They kept us there for four or five hours. They didn't use violence, but there were a lot of threats. They took them one by one. We had already been taught how to respond, that there was no point in explaining or discussing anything. We even knew the correct paragraph number and refused to testify. That's how most of the detentions were conducted."

"There was a gentleman sitting next to me who looked a bit like Brodsky, he seemed modest. We were already in the mood. I took out the gummy bears and handed them out to the boys. And I don't know what I thought, I gave him one red one: 'And one here for the Communist.' He looked at me so sweetly and said: We started talking and he turned out to be Jan Lopatka, a literary critic who wrote for Tvář. We got on so well that he invited me to his house the same evening. They lived on Vlašská Street. His wife was beautiful, she resembled Brejchová again, and right then he lent me his samizdat books. I remember that it was a book called The Sixty-Eighth by Sládeček. Later I learned that it was a pseudonym of Petr Pithart. From then on I went to Prague, exchanged books and lent them. Even at work some people found out about it and wanted to borrow something. Mr. Lopatka directed me to Standa Devátý and the dissent in Zlín, so I went to them and the cooperation began to develop."

“It was this peaceful manifestation with candles and it was suppressed in a violent way without reason. If they’d let the people go away quietly they’d just have expressed their opinion and they’d have gone home. I remember they drove cars into people, I saw spraying vehicles drive into crowds. It was my first experience with how a totalitarian power will even use these kinds of measures to intervene.”

“My father was proud of me but my mother didn’t take it well. She was trying to talk me out of it because of this motherly worrying. I think that that was one of the most sensitive points of the whole totalitarian era. There were conflicts within families about how much you should cooperate with the regime. That’s a huge difference from today.”