"A lot of Czechs struggled with this. One of my relatives married I don't remember who, and had to adopt his wife's surname. Then you could go to a Moscow university - it was difficult there - and then you could work in a military enterprise in Kiev as an engineer. Otherwise you couldn't have been there at all."
"Czechs were seen as foreigners and agents in Stalin's time - as in working for foreign intelligence, and that meant execution. On top of that, some KGB volumes kept in Ukraine were declassified a few years ago, and my family is mentioned in them. They arrested somebody, started the interrogation and the person had to remember every single person. There was a Czech Sokol in Kiev in the 1930s... my grandmother, mother and all relatives went there... a Czech theatre, a Czech orchestra, and the place was called Stromovka. It's like here in Bohemia."
"See, it changed. At first, the Tsar promised economic benefits, but then a new Tsar came and the conditions changed. The new Tsar required the people who owned land to have Russian citizenship and convert to Orthodoxy, but they didn't have to serve in the army. Quid pro quo. These people, all Czechs, were peasants... It was, either you accept the citizenship, or we take your land and kick you out of the country. They bought the land fairly with their money; and sure they had to change their citizenship and convert. In my opinion, religion was not as strong an obstacle for Czechs as it was for other nations, so they converted."
Alexandr Gaupt was born in Kiev on November 1, 1953 a descendant of Volhynian Czechs who came to Ukraine in 1877. His family had handedd down many stories of oppression and persecution. During the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s, his mother and grandmother were abandoned by the family‘s father who fled from the Bolsheviks. In 1971–1973, the witness served in the army in Kharkiv, among other places, and subsequently completed part-time studies with a degree in engineering. At first he worked at the Academy of Sciences, then as a designer. As far as his work is concerned, he is most proud of the lighting of the St. Brother metro station in Kiev. He started planning to leave the country in the 1980s; he founded a compatriot association in Ukraine in the 1990s and in 1995 he finally moved to Strakonice in South Bohemia. He worked as a labourer, worked his way up to foreman, and recalls the early days of Bosch in České Budějovice. Thanks to his life‘s journey, he has always been active in helping his compatriots to resettle in their new homeland. In 2023 he lived in České Budějovice.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
