Hana Malevičová

"Then we went to meet people every day, and we didn't care if we ran away from work or whatever. We just left and went there. It was the way it was. The Letná experience was really incredible back in 1989. One of those protests was, I think, on 25 November. It was two days in a row. An unbelievable number of people. There were maybe 250,000 people or so. The frost, bitter frost; we were just freezing. I would say we had frostbites too. We kept jumping and screaming. We were listening to what they were saying. It was a lovely experience. Unforgettable. My cousin came over from Pardubice. I was still experiencing all of this with my husband, together. I'll never forget that in my life, those things."

"It was a big change because we would meet them everywhere. Officers were everywhere with entire families all over the place, the barracks were occupied. We used to like the Soviet Union, you could say, even though they forced us to learn Russian in school. After 1968, I grew resentful. I resented Russia; didn't even want to hear about Russian. It was terrible. You had to shut yourself in a cell at home, in the family, and take care of ordinary human things because the politics were atrocious; it was not a good time. There were bans, some singers were not allowed to perform and various people were persecuted. There was no freedom."