Václav Bláha

“And then came a pleasant surprise from the teaching staff, because they were asked to sign the Anti-Charter [a text denouncing Charter 77 by notable artists under state coercion - trans.]. They summoned us all to the staff room, the whole teaching staff. And the headmaster came in and started laying out all the sauce, that the Charter was [made by] some renegades and enemies of Socialism and that the Anti-Charter is being signed by all active citizens who disagree with the Charter, which is bad. Well, and I must say that the teaching staff refused it as one man or one woman. They said they wouldn’t sign it. That none ofthem had read or seen the Charter. That they should bring them the Charter, so they could read it, and then they would sign [the Anti-Charter]. But that was a Pyrrhic victory. When the headmaster found out what had happened, he went to his office and signed it for all of us. He took it on himself and wrote that the whole teaching staff is against the Charter, or whatnot. And that was that.”

“What preceded it was, I think it was after the young artists’ exhibition in 1968, which took place in Špála Gallery, where the pictures of several artists were arrested. They just seized the paintings that were there. They didn’t allow us to display them. They withheld the pictures. That’s why I said they arrested them, it was so bizarre. They said we were people who should be treated and that we should be re-educated. That the art was good but wrong. I know there was a big discussion around it, because things were loosening up back then. It caused a big commotion. Some four days later they allowed us to take the pictures back because they had already been pulled from the exhibition, and so there wasn’t one any more.”