Ivan Langer

“It was a success as in the hall there was no seat left vacant. There were college officials at a long table and they would talk and talk. There were also few of us who were sitting there with them. Their aim was to play it vague and don´t allow students to organise themselves in the first place, to stop it from happening. And I think that the breaking point was professor Jařáb´s speech which filled us with courage. After that, everything just happened somehow. And I remember myself. Maybe that was the part I had to play in history, as I stood in front of the microphone stating: “Let´s vote on whether we would join the strike or wouldn´t. And that´s it.' Then the question was how to vote. Should we raise our hands as the hall was full of people? Who would count the votes and how would be decided? You had no idea what the result will be and how the balance of power was shifting. As artists and fellow students would speak, you would get the feeling that it could end well after all, but the result had to be so decisive that no one could question the result. So no vote casting or ballot papers. So I had the idea to urge the people to stand up and tell those who want to join the strike to sit down. And that was interesting from the psychological perspective, as if it had been the other way round, if those who wanted to join the strike had to stand up, those who didn´t want to would just hide themselves and the ones who would stand up would risk that they would be standing there alone. Also, it would be difficult to count the people, to note who would sit and who would stand up. So I did the other way round. Those who agree, who want to join the strike, would sit down, and it was just an unbelievable sight, the hall in which just a few people, maybe in their tens, would stand there as poles in a fence, as Jakeš would put it. And it had been decided we would join the strike. And that was the beginning of those many amazing days and nights we would spend at the Faculty of Philosophy many many other places.”

“My mother came from a kulak family which was evicted from their farm in Central Bohemia in the 50s. My grandfather ended up in prison and they would put my grandmother with her two kids on a hay wagon and they would take them to Podkrkonoší, where they had been living in a cabin for years. I remember it, as I had been there several times. Of course, there was a latrine, and neither electricity nor water. In fact, there was a brook running through a part of the house.”