"It is clear that the second half of the 1980s was different from the first half. Since 1985 Gorbachev had ruled in Moscow, some people began to follow this and to associate their hopes or signs of a certain relaxation with it. In Poland, Solidarity started to strengthen again after the state of emergency. In America, Ronald Reagan was in power and he contributed his perspective. And I think we were more of one of those countries with a higher degree of immobility than Poland, for example. However, even in our country it started to show, and it was related to what I call the generational debate in the Charter. Of course, generational means older-younger, but I would say that those who had the experience of the beginning of the Charter and those who got into it in the 1980s, you also have a difference there between those who were in the centre, the so-called leading dissidents, and the dissidents who were in the smaller towns. And for those, suddenly this form of political existence started to come more into question – to go out on the street and start demonstrating. I don't have it mapped out in my head right now, but the famous, the only permitted demonstration that happened in that year, 1988, but even before that, on national holidays and around August 21, something started to emerge, well, in 1989, of course, it culminated in that demonstration on October 28, which was the last one before the actual Velvet Revolution. So those demonstrations definitely brought a new element. The non-political politics took on this dimension. For intellectuals it was, let's say, not a simple thing to think about. Because at the demonstrations you have to have the courage to go there and shout slogans with the others or to take out a poster. This is not a philosophical seminar where you think. But as a symptom, it was definitely important."
"I've always been in a kind of opposition to the regime, that's what I had from home. It was clear that we were not supporters of the regime and I would say there was a degree of accommodation. We all paid with money with stars and Gottwald, everybody respected that, but certainly the degree of accommodationism was quite limited. So after 1968, one naturally sought one's life options. Some people decided they couldn't take it, so they got out and emigrated, and those who stayed had varying degrees of adjustment to the regime. Two worlds were important to me - one shaped by Patočka and, let's say, all the people who were influenced by philosophy in one way or another, and the other was more in the Christian sense, in my case Catholic. I started to go to various societies and there we gave talks that helped us to survive in the world, where questionnaires were filled out to see whether one agreed or disagreed with the entry of troops."
"I think the Czechs have their own historical disposition [to adapt], but that it is not only a Czech trait. As I study [Hannah] Arendt, she gave an interview to German television in the 1960s and they asked her what it was like when the Nazis came to power in the early 1930s, how she experienced it as a young Jewish woman. And there she says to him: 'You know, what surprised me wasn't even what our enemies were doing, because we could sort of see that already, maybe not in terms of the ends that it came to. What was worse was what our friends were doing. How quickly they were able to adapt to the situation.'"
"I would say that I would consider it very unfair if someone said of me that I believed in socialism with a human face and its reformability. For me, socialism was a daily reality, and if there suddenly began to appear features that excited me, features of freedom, I cheered it on and hoped that this trend would not turn into its opposite, which is what happened in the invasion of August 21 [1968]. That is, when they began to let us go abroad, when we suddenly found that we were the same as others, young people from all over the world. I was used to Mladá Vožice and Prague, that was it. I remember the first time we were able to go to the seaside with my parents in Poland, that was so 1966. I crossed the border and suddenly the whole world appears in front of you, with all its complexity, so you don't really understand it, you have to learn the language, but you have the feeling that the world is full of possibilities."
Martin Palouš was born in Prague on 14 October 1950 into the intellectual family of Radim Palouš and Anna. He spent his childhood in the 1950s, during the time of fabricated political trials. His father, Radim Palouš, was fired from the Orbis publishing house for inciting dissent against the execution of Milada Horáková and then worked in the ironworks in Kladno. Martin Palouš spent his adolescence in the 1960s and, according to his words, it was a real „Golden Sixties“, culminating in a trip to England in 1967. After graduating from high school in June 1968, he felt that the world was fully open, but by August 1968 everything was about to be different. Czechoslovakia was occupied by Warsaw Pact troops. In November 1968, Martin Palouš took part in a student strike at the Faculty of Science, where he had just started his studies, and it was there that he met Václav Havel for the first time. In 1973, he graduated from the Faculty of Science of Charles University, after which he took the rigorous examination. In the meantime, in 1972-1977, he was studying philosophy. However, there was no place for him in the labour market, so he started working in a boiler room, from which he was called to the compulsory military service for a year and in 1976 he got a job as a programming teacher in the Kancelářské stroje company. However, he was fired from there immediately after signing Charter 77 and he returned to the boiler room. He sees Charter 77 as a turning point in the opposition. Martin Palouš was engaged in samizdat translations, wrote philosophical essays and finally in 1986 accepted the role of spokesman for the Charter and handled foreign relations. After the Velvet Revolution, in October 1990, he stood as an opponent of Václav Klaus in the election of the chairman of the Civic Forum, which he did not win. Until 1992, as Deputy Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was close to Václav Havel on his first post-revolutionary travels to Germany and the USA. After leaving the ministry, he spent a year as a visiting professor at a university in the USA, then taught at the Central European University and was chairman of the Czech Helsinki Committee. In 1998, he returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as Ambassador to the USA from 2001-2004. At the time of the recording (2021), he was Director of the Václav Havel Program for Human Rights and Democracy at Florida International University in Miami.
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!
