Daniel Vychodil

“The defining moment was when I discovered books by Foglar during the 1985 summer holiday in Rýmařov where my father was born. My older cousin did his compulsory military service and he had several books by Foglar and also 'Rychlé šípy' in the form of a comics. Before that we didn't see anything like that, me and my brother, so we were amazed. Right after we had come home we founded a club inspired by 'Rychlé šípy' and we got into this stuff. And since I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old I was sure that this was the inspiration, the way I wanted to take.”

“I felt that it was this deliberate, subtle manipulation that was going on and on quite discreetly. There were various rituals in which one had to take part in. Like celebrations of various anniversaries with film screenings. We had to declaim poetry celebrating the regime, at the anniversary of the so-called Great October Revolution and on the 25th of February. Those were the rituals the school had to engage in and we had to participate in this. As they watched closely whether you came to the May Day March and so on, on those collective, herd-like activities. I would say that we weren't brought to be citizens but sheep. Children were brought up to obedience like sheep. They had been hammered by ideology. This had, I think, quite deep impact on the child's soul. It was going on on so many levels, from the Czech classes to the civics. There was this subtext everywhere: the Communist ideology is the only valid worldview and it is necessary that young people would take it over.”