Lubomír Kantor

“So we got ourselves together and all of a sudden we had our first meeting. Do you know where it was? It was in Kateřinská street, the later seat of the city police. We were meeting there and I didn’t like it at all. I was just lucky that I couldn’t come to these meetings because I was teaching evening classes. So my son Lumír was attending instead and he always told me after wards how the brothers were quarreling. You had these old great, experienced, sensational scouts. They were a bit older and they were nervous, so they would simply quarrel. The whole period was like this, judging from what I saw. Brother Drva told me that we must not have two girls there, two women. There can only be one. Because if we had two, they would constantly fight. Now, can you imagine we learned about how the old scouts were quarrelling? They’re all amazing lads, young fellows, about 85 or so. With their ulcers in the legs, wearing just shorts. They got a lot younger and more up for a fight. So these were the scouts. And the girl scouts, instead of quarreling, they founded the club of grandma scouts. So these were my feelings from the time. I saw or was told what’s going on and I went there every week. I went to see my parents in Zlín on Saturday. In Zlín, we would read it on the board that the scouts were holding a rally in Masaryk’s schools before Christmass. And we kept standing.”

“Look, we sensed the relaxation in the society in the same way we sensed it 40 or 45 years ago. In every period they had eliminated us, we sensed something coming and had such a premonition that we would be free to scout again. We expected this in 89 and were nervous because it was not forthcoming. The revolutions were taking place in all the other countries – Hungary, Germany, Poland but nothing was happening here. For instance in Poland – they had their famous trade union organization called Solidarity that dismantled the Communist regime. It actually broke up from within. First and foremost, it fell apart in Russia. And what was the cause? U.S. economic pressure. The biggest merit goes to U.S. president-actor Reagan who introduced so-called Star wars that cost too much money and exhausted Russia. The Americans basically armed Russia to death. That was a new word which originates in that era – to arm to death.”

“In 68 there was one revolution and in 89 there was another one. If you put the two figures next to each other, they seem to reflect each other in a mirror. They’re the same numbers just upside down. We used this theme for our posters – 68 - 89. We did a bunch of posters at our place in the cellar. Our Lumír somewhere got the stuff we needed to build a secret little printing machine. In the cellar, we pressed the posters and put them in the yard. I still have doubts about the wisdom of this activity. I only later realized how risky it really was. I told my daughter, who led the 5th girls’ troop of the 78th Pioneer group in Orava, to get some of her girls to help us out in the cellar with the printing. We were printing all kinds of speeches of our long-time leader, Plajner. He remained the leader of the Junák for an incredibly long time. We also needed to print some applications for the Junák. Within an hour, there were 30 girls lined up of whom I chose four to help us with the printing. It was beautiful! However, I dare not to think what would have happened if someone had looked inside our cellar and had seen the girls print posters and leaflets. It could have ended in catastrophe. But the Czechoslovak people were already in such a state that nothing like that happened.”