„There were people coming from different spheres of life. Which was extremely important in those factories. The biggest problem was, of course, to make people in factories understand that it’s not a matter of the “Prague café” – as you would say today. Notice how the analogy is very similar to the vocabulary of Communists and the vocabulary of some our politicians and their spokesmen today. So, we tried to explain that this is not a problem of Prague intellectual elite, but that it’s a situation which concerns the entire society. Because of that a very varied spectrum of people would go there. We always had certain municipalities or factories to visit and in some specific composition of people we tried to persuade the others to join and get involved.”
„I was extremely worried how many people would come, given the fact that I was still working in the Bytex textile factory. I saw how people had reacted there when I was convincing them: ‘So come. We need to go.’ In the shop floor next to me worked a… I think it was the president of a local Communist Party cell. We had always argued together in the changing room near those tin lockers. So, there we would discuss matters vehemently. I think that the majority of the factory workers were not willing to go on strike. First, they were afraid of what would come, worrying about some possible ex post persecutions and part of them wasn’t sure if they wanted that in the first place. And so I was really shocked how many people turned up in the end. It was probably my strongest experience, when I climbed up the podium and suddenly saw the Horní square crowded all the way to the post office. And I said to myself: ‘Man, they really came.’ It was maybe the first time I actually started to believe that it could end up well.”
„It was not a pleasant feeling at all, to be in a hotel not knowing what’s going to happen next. Because every day we would ask the person who was taking care of us when are we flying home. And he would say: ‘The passports have not been found yet.’ They of course confiscated them when we arrived, so we had to give them away. And then they gave them back, but as I’m saying it was with like a four-day delay. I had a small kid back at home and so it was not a pleasant feeling at all. But Hrdinové played back then in a concert hall for fifteen thousand people and it was packed to the roof. Peter didn’t speak Russian, I remember that, and he came to me before the concert and said: ‘Hey, how do you say: ‘Build houses for people, not fallout shelters?’ I said: ‘You cannot tell them that. Don’t say that.’ ‘No, tell me how to say it in Russian.’ So, I told him and he said it out loud on stage which then sounded kind of as peace activism. And when they started playing the song Tanks, Peter had said beforehand: ‘This song is for 1968.’ So, at that moment I thought we’d never get out of there. Maybe the passports were because of that. I don’t know, no one ever told us. But looking back at it, maybe we were slightly too impudent than what was safe back then. But we did get home after all.”
Bedřich Musil was born July 30, 1967 in Jindřichův Hradec, but had moved to Jihlava when starting primary school, where he then spent most of his life. He graduated from an industrial high school. Because of his fascination with punk music, he and his friends formed a small punk community, he also played in a band called Sidol and later worked as a sound engineer and technical support for the band Hrdinové národní fronty (Heroes of the national front). They performed in numerous underground events that were often intervened by the National Security Corps (SNB). He experienced the harsh manners of the SNB officers who would check his ID and drive him to the police station solely based on his appearance. The problems with SNB passed on to school as well and the director informed him that he cannot continue his studies at university. Because of that, he went to work as a laborer in a textile factory Bytex after high school graduation. He joined the Prague manifestations during the so-called Palach week in 1989 and signed the „Několik vět“ petition. He then joined demonstrations in Jihlava after November 17, where he even made an appearance with several speeches. He got involved with the Civic Forum (OF) and helped to distribute information regarding their demands for the Communist ruling elite by putting up posters or going on meetings with people in factories and nearby municipalities. In 1990 he became Civic Forum’s manager and took part in the general election preparations. However, he then left politics and worked as a presenter, programme director and a director of broadcasting in a radio. He graduated from media communication and sociology at Masaryk University and also founded a project called Mediagram, which strives for better teaching of media literacy at schools.
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