"The exhibition was beautiful and people were saying we're going to see the exhibition. The tour guide said, 'Please, it's been sold out for a month, that's impossible.' I was saying to the women there, 'Do you happen to have any women's panties or any of that lingerie?' - 'We do.' So I came into the office, put the panties on the table and said, 'I need twenty tickets. And I got them. The manager was crying out loud, wondering how we might have got there."
"I came to the faculty. I had to go to the personnel department. I was greeted by a lady, whose name I have forgotten, and she said to me: 'Comrade doctor, you know that you will never be an associate professor here?' I didn't ask for anything like that. The beautiful thing afterwards was that the lady and her husband, after the revolution, got a ranch somewhere in southern Bohemia and they have a nice living there for the rest of their lives. Before that, she was in the personnel department and threatened me. You can see how interesting it is in this Czech nation to look at people, how they think and what they think."
"Father dressed up to go to church, took his gold watch on a trip, but it was broken, it wouldn't work. He used to put it on for decoration, how nice it was. He went out, and about five metres from the house the Russians jumped on him and said: 'Give me the time!' and took the watch with a piece of the lapel. They do not work, and they gave them an alarm clock and it also did not work, but it was enough to wind it up. And they didn't know that. And that alarm clock was working for the next twenty years for us. Father lost his beautiful watch. It didn't work, but it was nice, so he lost it. There was an ugly incident in the village. They went into a house where there was an old man and the Russians wanted vodka and he didn't speak Russian and he brought them water and they shot him. Then two officers came and they shot the boys on the spot like dogs and dragged them away. They just wanted to prove that they had discipline."
Oldřich Richterek was born on 1 January 1940 in the village of Lubojaty near Bílovec in northern Moravia. His father worked in Vítkovice Ironworks. His mother died at a relatively young age. He graduated from a general secondary school. After completing his military service he studied Russian language and literature at the University of Olomouc. Here he also met his wife, who was studying the same subject. After graduation, he married and moved to Kostelec nad Orlicí in East Bohemia to join his wife. He taught at a secondary industrial school and later at a grammar school in Rychnov nad Kněžnou. While working, he graduated with a doctorate in Russian language and literature. In 1980 he started working at the Faculty of Education in Hradec Králové. He taught Russian literature, didactics of literature and theory of literature. After 1989, he habilitated as an associate professor at the newly established University of Hradec Králové and was appointed a university professor. Oldřich Richterek is a prominent Russian scholar, an expert on the works of A. P. Chekhov. He has also devoted himself to literary translation and the specific topic of the dialogue of cultures, especially Czech-Russian cultural relations. He has written numerous academic articles and scholarly publications and has lectured at many European conferences. He served in academic positions as dean and rector. In 2022 he was appointed Emeritus Professor of the University of Hradec Králové. He lived with his wife in Rychnov nad Kněžnou. They had one son and two granddaughters.
