Jiří Klaban

"In 1973 we were camped under the Teplice Rocks. That was during totality, and we decided we should make a camp in (Red) Indian spirit, because every generation should experience the Indians. And we didn't want our members to miss out on that. But as soon as someone said 'Indians', that was a sign for the SSM (Socialist Youth Union) bosses that there'd be Scouts in and about that - so it was always risky. For instance the 6th Troop was disbanded for the sole reason that they had a totem in construction when the inspectors came upon them, and on the basis of that they accused them of doing Scouting, and they disbanded the troop. So it was something of a gambling game, whether we'd see it through all right. At the time I came up with such an idea, that if Engels wrote the book 'The Origin of the Family and Private Property', which discussed the primitive communal society as introduced on the Iroquois society. And I said to myself that it wouldn't have to be too bad, because if they started criticising us, then we'd say we were practising the primitive communal society. So we had it prepared like that in theory, but we were lucky, because the same year the Indians in America revolted because of the reserves, and so suddenly all the newspapers here were full of Indians, as they had revolted against the capitalists, and that was popular. So Indians were popular - we had a noticeboard in the camp, and when they published a long report about them in Mladý svět (Young World, a popular magazine - transl.), we cut it out and pinned it up on the noticeboard - so we were prepared, and when the inspectors came along, we talked our way through it."

"In '98, which was 600 years after Charles IV (Czech king and Roman Emperor, founder of Charles University - transl.), we founded the Scout University of Pardubice. In ten years, we had five lectures every year - one lecture every two months. We invited Scout personalities, and the purpose of the university was the search for a Scout programme for the next century - we had Břicháček, Šolc, Illnerová, Lemberk - he was here twice, Pilka was here to talk about music, we even had such an attraction here, that I got in touch with Tomáš Maršík, he lives in Alasca now."