I bet on people without a future. It was the best thing I could have done

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Aleš Bartusek was born on 25 August 1965 in Ostrava. He grew up in Ludgeřovice in the Hlučín region. His father was a worker in the machine works in Ostrava, his mother worked as a nurse in a social care home in Hlučín. He had a happy and carefree childhood. While at high school, he began to realize the lack of freedom in a society under communist rule. He established contacts with dissidents from the Opava region and became involved in transcribing and distributing samizdat texts. In 1987-1988, alongside Ivo Mludek and Jaromír Piskoř, he published the samizdat magazine Protější chodník. In 1989, he took part in the production of the Severomoravská pasivita newspaper. He translated Polish samizdats and collaborated with Czechoslovak-Polish groupings. He also became involved in the creation of a Czech-Polish channel for smuggling exile literature across the border in the Beskydy mountains. After the Velvet Revolution, he worked in the Region newspaper. He got married to a Polish woman and moved with her to Opole.