„I was an agent-smuggler in Prague. I would simply go and get an encrypted message. Basically, I would go to a location in Prague, find a chalk writing on the wall masked as a heart. And the letters in the heart would mean a date and the number would signify the specific dead drop. Well, so I would collect the dead drop, come to the next location and would stand there on a corner. Then a person would come to me and ask: ‘Do you know how to get to Husova street?’ I would reply: ‘Unfortunately I don’t, I’m not from Prague.’ Thus, it would be clear that it’s us. So, I would lead him and give him a backpack which I had hidden somewhere.”
„One time I came home from a night shift; I had been living in this poor farm close to Jindřichův Hradec. So, I came there from the night shift, it was still cold and didn’t make the fire, so I was wearing a padded jacket a winter ‘viper hat’. I slept for a while and suddenly bang, bang, bang! I opened the door and saw some two guys. One of them introduced himself as captain Čoudek and said they had come to make sure I wasn’t living a Western lifestyle. I stared at them and it was clear I wasn’t really following, so they told me that Western lifestyle lied in the behavior, clothing style or in conversations. And I just kept staring at them and they told me: ‘Well, goodbye then.’ And then I was notified that I haven’t met the parameters of a socialist archivist.”
„The morning of the second day I went to Wenceslas Square to buy a Bee Gees record which I had ordered. While walking down Wenceslas Square I was arrested by a police patrol and taken to Krakovská street, where there were other people too and I can basically say that for the next four hours – well maybe not four, but about two, two and a half hours – they really tortured me. It consisted for example in having to sit like this and some young boy would tell me: ‘Oh, my hand hurts from all the beating,’ and bam! – he hit me right in the face. I rolled from my chair and they shouted at me that I had to sit down again. And once more I had to put my arms like this, and they hit me again. In the meantime, they kept saying things like: ‘You’re done studying’ and the like. So, it was pretty rough. I ran through a gangway, then they beat me with batons. Blood was really splashing all the way to the ceiling, it was rough. It was rough. But it lasted – I said two hours, but maybe it was one hour, one cannot tell. Well and they kept asking me to tell them who had participated in the demonstrations. And I must say that luckily, I didn’t tell them. I tried to run away but they always kicked me down and so on. But in the end, I didn’t tell them any names and therefore I had a clear conscience after I had gotten out of it – I had suffered from posttraumatic shock.”
„Of course, it was a crucial moment for me, I must say it really was. In this kind of an existential sense of the word. Because my world collapsed. This general idea of how the world works collapsed. We had been in the Jizera Mountains on holiday back then and suddenly in the morning there were tanks and stuff and the shock was so great that I forever lost some general feeling of certainty in life. As if ever since that moment it was ‘A little while and you shall see me no longer; and again a little while and you shall see me’ – everything is just so uncertain. So, that’s how I experienced it. Then we were in Prague, so I of course witnessed a whole range of things, nights filled with gunfire and such. I have one very personal memory, a tough one. Because I had been gluing posters against the Soviet occupation and a Russian patrol caught me. They put me against the wall. And I stood there for I don’t know how long, and they were pointing their guns at me. And I had no idea what would happen. So, that was one of the most intense and most cruel experiences of the year 1969.”
Vladimír Špidla was born April 22, 1951 in Prague. His father Václav Špidla was a theatre actor and a director, his mother Dagmar Rychlíková was active in the communist resistance movement during World War II and had close relations with the highest Communist power structures in the 1950s. The events of 1968 and 1969 were a crucial life experience for Vladimír Špidla – during these years he parted with the Communist regime for good. In August 1969 he joined the mass protests against the Soviet occupation and was maltreated during an interrogation related to the protests. He studied history at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University and as a student he was involved in smuggling exile literature. He was active in the Civic Forum’ branch in České Budějovice in November 1989 and founded a regional organization of the social democrats there shortly after November 17th. His following life is closely bound to the Social Democratic Party and the gradual career progression within its ranks, crowned by becoming a president of the party in 2001. He was appointed the new prime minister of the Czech Republic the following year and the Czech Republic has joined the European Union during his presidency. After his resignation in 2004 he worked as an EU Commissioner and was further engaged in the high politics of social democrats.
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