Ing. Jiří Boček

"They eventually recalled the director in 1990. I think it was 1990. They put him at South Bohemian Breweries and appointed his colleague Tolar instead. He did it for a while. Then the discussions started around the privatisation by Anheuser-Busch, who met whom and who didn't and so on. Then, if I'm not mistaken, sometime in March 1991, the Minister of Agriculture sent his deputy with a recall order to Director Tolar. There was a vacuum as to who was going to run things goring forward. Then my colleague Tolar came to me and said, 'Take it even though you refused, because they will otherwise put someone else in and it will be stupid.' The minister said, 'All right, I'll sign the provisional appointment decree. There will still be a kind of oversight committee.' He set up a committee to oversee how I worked or would work as the director. He finally dismissed the panel in August 1991. It was all up to me from then on."

"Remember, there was a system. I got into this system because I had very good results in high school. The principal of the high school was responsible to the district Party unit for selecting young promising cadres as future members of the Communist Party. When I was in my third or early fourth year, the principal came in. He was a very stern gentleman; we were all in awe of him. So he sits you down in his office and starts explaining that he has chosen you as a candidate for the Communist Party. My jaw dropped. I knew my dad was a Communist, though, so I said, 'Well, let me ask my parents.' I went home and asked my dad what he thought. He said, 'Well, it's your choice.' Since I'd followed in my dad's footsteps - he was my role model - I said, 'Okay, I'll give it a try.' You had to have three 'guarantors' or whatever they were called. You had to approach a few dyed-in-the wool communists to sign your party candidateship application form. You spent two or three years as a 'party candidate' but at the same time they put you in some position. All of a sudden, I was chairing the SSM [Socialist Youth Union] cell because that's what a young or potential communist was supposed to do. That's when you fell into the system, and then it was like an endless thread."