Lukáš Pollert

* 1970

  • "What was I doing around 1989 - I wasn't too old, I wasn't working yet, I was a student. In 1989 I was in the second year of university, studying medicine. I was in this strike committee, but that was already after the die had been cast, I think. The die was being cast already a few years before 1989. I also took part in Palach Week and in some demonstrations for the release of Václav Havel and others - there were other political prisoners such as Ivan Martin Jirous etcetera, the list would be pretty long I think. So I was actively participating, but considering my age I was really pretty passive. I only took part with my own person, that wasn't anything special in my opinion."

  • "Well, I mostly just see the advantages. The freedom we have is amazing in that one can do whatever he wants to, he can not work, he can work - whatever. I mean I can study what I want, I can even not work at all. And that wasn't possible beforehand, especially the not-working."

  • "In 1988 (the witness means 1989 - ed.), everyone was passing on the Several Sentences, and I also distributed it of course - at the faculty and among my acquaintances - and, well, somehow they caught wind of it at the faculty. It was this one doctor in fact, who figured in this, he did treat people, he was a paediatrician, and I know his name appeared on the Voice of America because he purposefully held up a family with children during an examination, so that State Security could search their house in the meanwhile. And this doctor, I even know his name, but because I know he has a brother who is normal then I'm not sure I should say his name, but it's pointless anyway. But I know that at the time he was shouting at me in the corridor, that during my second year I think, shouting that I definitely wouldn't graduate, that he wouldn't allow me to graduate. And I was already in the team at the time, and so he said he wouldn't tolerate that. And that he would personally see to it that I wouldn't finish my studies."

  • "So what did you do on November 17th?" - "On November 17th, me and one friend made ourselves a banner - we thought a long time what to put on it - in the end we wrote: 'We don't want violence'. I think on a lot of pictures from that demonstration, if you look at them, our banner became quite well-known through the media. We didn't want to be too provocative, so we chose that slogan, because it was basically the sort of flower-power thing, we're not propagating drugs or unrestrained entertainment, and we don't want violence, so that should be alright. So we made it and we went to Albertov. And it was pretty boring there, some speakers taking turns, but I was surprised - by the large amount of people, already there in Albertov. And I knew one hundred percent, from my experience from other demonstrations, that this would an interesting demonstration. So I really didn't want to go marching of to Vyšehrad, and so straight off we took our banner and went to Albertov and with my friends we tried to lead the procession sort of towards National Avenue or to Wenceslas Square. Because for me it was a pointless waste of time, going through Vyšehrad. And then by coincidence the next day or whenever it was, they wrote there were some instigators there who tried to lead the procession a different way than was agreed upon - so that was me. I didn't want to really, I wanted to go straight off and stand up against the regime, because there were so many people there that it would have been a pity to have lost them along the way, because tiredness would play its part there. But in the end we had to go the long way."

  • "It was a jolly nice time, there was this peculiar atmosphere that had probably been similar in 1968 as well, according to what one reads. And those twenty days or maybe until the end of the year, it was interesting that people simply liked each other. It sounds weird and overly emotional, I know that it was artificial, but it was as if everyone understood each other and you could see how everyone was smiling and content. It was a different mood."

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    Praha - UVN, 05.10.2009

    (audio)
    délka: 36:34
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Portraits of Prague citizens
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Today I only see advantages that the Velvet Revolution gave us. I can work how I want, I can even not work at all. That wasn‘t possible beforehand.

Lukáš Pollert
Lukáš Pollert
zdroj: foto: Petr Neubert

Lukáš Pollert, a doctor and a sportsman, was born on the 24th of March 1970 in Prague. According his own words, he grew up in surroundings marked by listening to the illegal broadcasts of Voice of America or Free Europe and by reading books prohibited by the communist regime. His father was a research worker, his mother a lab assistant. Pollert himself studied medicine and now works at the Central Military Hospital in Střešovice and at the Motol Faculty Hospital. He is more generally known as a successful sportsman. In 1992 he won a gold medal in slalom canoeing at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, and earned a silver medal four years later in Atlanta. When the breakpoint year of 1989 arrived, nineteen-year-old Pollert was studying his second year at the Faculty of Medicine. He took part in the anti-regime demonstrations that had been taking place in Prague since 1988, and signed the Several Sentences (Několik vět) petition. He was at risk of being thrown out of university for the distribution of that same petition, but then came November 17th and the fall of the communist dictatorship. Lukáš  took an active part in the students‘ manifestation in Albertov. After the demonstration was brutally repressed and the student strike was announced, he became a member of the strike committee. He now remembers those events as „a nice time with a peculiar atmosphere“. Nowadays, MUDr. Lukáš Pollert applies himself not only to his medical profession, but also to communal politics in his native Prague 6.