Josef Šubrt

“Even after 1968 I used to walk around Russia with a tricolor on my lapel. Everyone could easily realize who I was. People were intrigued and asked me: ‘What is happening in your country?’ I replied: ‘Nothing is happening. We just wanted to live our way but did nothing wrong in the meantime.’ Sometimes they would reply: ‘The newspapers are telling a different story.’ So I always explained: ‘Anything can be written in the papers but not everything is true.’ So I repeatedly defended the claim that 1968 was an occupation. I also stood my ground when discussing it with the regular people whom I met often. And never had anyone sent a secret agent after me and never was I afraid to speak up.”

“In the case of this helicopter it was somehow unusual. We couldn’t go investigate ourselves – there was a lot of supervision in this single case. We couldn’t even touch anything ourselves. Everyone had their own issue to investigate to and had to work completely independently, not discussing anything with the others. We must’ve kept shut. My task was to find out whether the engine caused the accident. That is what I was asked to answer and nothing else.”

“I think everyone was looking forwards to Velvet Revolution. People were hoping that the political totalitarianism – the concentrated power or how to call it – would change. That totalitarianism would disappear and wouldn’t be applied. In the course of time I realized that the political totalitarianism based on communist ideology was replaced by totalitarianism of money. I don’t really know which one is worse. In fact, I think the totalitarianism of money is much crueler.”