Rudolf Vévoda

„The Poles had a huge trauma. I remember when Adam Michnik almost tore his shirt into pieces in Warsaw in the summer of 1987 and said: 'I was in prison back in August 1968. I wanted to commit suicide when I learned that my parents went there…‘ Till now it sounds in my ears as he told me. It was really a trauma for them and they wanted to atone for it, and maybe they like us better than we do, because they feel such a debt there. It has shown itself a few years ago at the Wroclaw championship, where many Czechs began to think deeper about the Poles. We won over them and now there were groups of Polish fans and shouted, 'Nothing happened!' I think it was good in that respect and it shows exactly the relationship they have with us.”

“He (Petr Pospíchal) was primarily trying, like any dissident representative, to expand some space of freedom and narrow the space for the Bolsheviks. Few had any clear idea of how history would evolve. It was actually interesting that as I talked about the trip to Prague, it was around June or July 1985, so I experienced first serious discussion there, just between Miloš Rejchrt and Miluška Šustrová about how much hope and confidence to put to Gorbachev. This, in my opinion, proved to be very crucial and actually what happened in the Soviets had an immediate impact. But this anyone could hardly imagine that it would all go this direction back in the 1955. In any case, the aim was to limit the rate of repression by drawing attention to it. On the contrary, the aim was to expand the scope for free initiatives. And Poland was suddenly starting to seem like a very interesting and powerful player in this process.”

“I leave disputes over the word totalitarian; I leave it aside. It was normalization, as some say a kind of tired totalitarianism. Terror was not all over. What came out and came to light about the founding period of the communist regime... So I thought to myself: Damn, if at at the age of twenty-one - if it was not 1985 but 1955 – if I had been doing what I do, I would have gone to Jáchymov and get twenty-five years, if not worse. The horror jumped out of it, and so I began to perceive that the free world was much more based on respect for human freedom and freedom of expression. That was one thing, and the other was that I began to perceive religious freedom much more intensely.”