PhDr. Přemysl Červenka

„ ​​At that time, an association of states of the socialist camp was formed within the Council of the Mutual Economic Commission. I have already explained these opinions of mine. I took the creation of the RVHP as a completely logical response to the creation of a similar association of Western countries. In the beginning it was the European Economic Commission, which later grew. These were four states, but later it grew into a group of large countries cooperating in Europe. I took it as a logical retaliatory move by the Soviet Union. What I didn't like about it: I got a position, I was accepted into the subcommittee for machine tools of the permanent engineering commission of the RVHP. Its aim was to jointly study the development of the conjuncture in the whole world and to exchange opinions about it and to prevent mutual competition, since most of the countries of the CEEC also had their own production of machine tools. That work was connected with a whole series of foreign trips to all member countries. It was initially seven countries including Albania. Albania dropped out, so there were six members. There I consolidated my knowledge of German and French, so that I then interpreted for all three language groups as well as cabinet translation during discussions. I was very compliant with it at first, I thought it was a very good thing, but then I found out that the knowledge from our meetings, instead of being used, was being misused. Specifically, directly in Strojimport. No one, not even the CEO, who attended and signed the final minutes of those meetings, made any changes, but he was interested in how they assessed the situation on the markets, and how other machine tool manufacturers reacted to it. In other words, even our company was abusing rather than using this knowledge.“

„ That pamphlet of the Central Committee of Lessons from ("Crisis") Development, I took it as a collection of half-truths. That's when I realised that some phenomena can really be judged from two sides: one winner and the other victim. And here the half-truths were given unequivocally that it was so. And it wasn't like that. No reason was given. Why was that? So I took it negatively. I took the whole pamphlet negatively. I expected the Central Committee to issue, as promised, a final analysis of this period, an honest analysis, but that never happened. There was a period, it was part of the normalisation at the very beginning, when the exchange of party ID cards was announced and it was connected with background checks. Those checks had a clear theme: to find out if I agree or disagree with the occupation, if I take it as brotherly aid, as it was presented, or as an act of violence. I clearly took it as an act of violence and a huge mistake by Brezhnev, which means the end of the socialist movement in the whole world, which has been proven. I guessed that very correctly.“