Čestmír Klos

“I remember, and this is connected to my later ecological activism, how as school children we kept hoping that the Colorado potato beetle, the ‘American bug’ that tormented the whole of society, would finally appear on our fields. Because as children we dragged ourselves across the fields, and those private farmers of ours managed their fields in such a way that the potato beetle didn’t come there. They certainly didn’t use any chemicals, because there was no talk of it back then. I remember how our headmaster led us into the potato field, and when we finally found a potato beetle, how proud we were that we found it. Later on as an adult, I found myself on some co-op field - it was full of the beetles and no one care one bit. I guess that at some critical moment a plane flew overhead, sprayed it, and the pest was gone. But back then, children and even society as such was constantly pushed to believe that someone was harming us, that they were planting the potato beetle here on purpose.”

“The military academy was incredible. They drilled us in political subjects. During our studies we had to manage both the construction of aeroplanes and Marxist philosophy - and those were terrifying moments, the pressure on the mind was enormous. But they were split internally because beforehand there was a strong generation of folklorists there, and the teachers had an affinity for that. It was in Brno, close to Moravian Slovakia. They even established a group focused on military folklore. To avoid losing their paid folklorist positions, they even defended our satirical troupe after their folkoristic groups disbanded. Considering that our troupe originated from a military environment, it was rather critical. For example, we trained for the Spartakiad [sports parade] with coffee mills.”

“Few people will understand the sobering-up during Socialism. Young people will stare. Those who were in a similar situation at the time, will say - he speaks differently now, but back then he got in line. But already at the time I had gotten in line knowing I didn’t want to take the dogmatic route - but people don’t see that today. I’m critical of memberships taking up during the Seventies. But people who naïvely wanted to change society in the Sixties, and then woke up, that’s another matter. I guess I never spoke of it so openly. As I said: at the beginning I was started off by the potato beetle, and as social pressures increased, I started freeing myself of them, until I did. But I guess it’s incomprehensible to young people nowadays.”