I do not regret anything; I would do it again
Štěpán Machart was born on 26 January 1950 in Jablonec nad Nisou. He started to study at the Secondary School of Land Surveying in Prague in 1965. As a student, he participated in activities concerning so called Prague Spring in 1968. After the invasion of the Warsaw Pact Troops in former Czechoslovakia, he and his classmates got into occupation tanks and tried to explain to the soldiers that they were there by mistake. At the beginning of 1969, he and an organized group of students tried to convince Soviet officers of the fact that no counter-revolution had taken place here. Subsequently, the group was arrested and imprisoned at the Hotel U Haštala. They then faked their execution at the yard. He joined the military service in Prešov in 1969 and he was sentenced to serve six months in prison for public defamation of the leaders of the nation and race in the military correctional facility in Sabinov in the spring of 1970. He served part of his sentence in an isolated workplace in a stone pit in the military area in Valaškovice. After his military service, he worked as a land surveyor for various companies. He became a pilot and became an entrepreneur after 1989. He lived in České Budějovice in 2021.