Jiří Suchý

"And Jiří Šlitr played the Devil from Vinohrady in the evening. It was a performance where only he played, where I did not play with him. It was his recital. I then had a beneficial theatre performance, and at time he wasn't there. On that day a newspaper was published and there was a list of people who were abroad. Karel Gott was in Munich, I think. And my name was written there, that I was in London. So, it was generally known that I was abroad. And when the show ended, there was a curtain call, so I came on stage there - and I have never experienced such applause as that day. They were just so happy that someone was also coming back, it was an incredibly long applause. I performed there then, we were singing songs, we did such a thing… and it was extremely emotionally tense, the situation. Well, and so I stayed here."

"They probably put a more elite unit here, because they apparently had something here - they probably had some training, because, for example, they handed out cigarettes, box by box to men. They said: ‚Do you smoke? Do you smoke?‘ It was very friendly and cheerful. I was very enthusiastic about the Red Army, because unlike those Germans who were so reserved, these were… I was impressed, for example… I was walking around Spořilov and suddenly, there was a Russian with an accordion sitting on the sidewalk and singing a Chastushka. He played the accordion, and as I walked around, he laughed looking guilty. It was all very nice.”

"I also thank to the Communist Party for its popularity - not of that party, but of Reduta - because we sang songs there that were completely different from the official ones. At that time… because jazz was banned, rock'n'roll - it was not allowed to be here at all. And we played both. Down in the basement. And not only that. The songs that were played upstairs - I always say upstairs - I mean in Prague and in the whole republic - were not bad. They were beautiful songs, but they were very docile. Vladimír Dvořák, for example, he was one of our best lyricists, the songs were like, ‚Good night, the breeze whispers softly to you‘. Those simply very beautiful songs. Or About Kristýna, it was a huge hit. And instead of these docile songs, we sang songs that I mostly made lyrics to and I also sang them. One was called 'I broke my aunt's hand' - blues, or 'A calf shot a cow' it was called, 'Dumb dog,' but that's just the way it was. And those people were wild and free. It got around, and in two months it was packed with people there.”

"Always, when I went there… and I didn't even meet this person in the 'tile room' anymore, but he always invited me to the hotel Intercontinental, for example. We sat there and talked. And I always said to my wife, 'I'm going to play chess.' Because I knew – it will take some time - what I can say, what I can't say, how to slip out of something, how to get around this, how to divert attention elsewhere. And imagine, I enjoyed it. I don't know, on the one hand, I was always a little scared of it, but when I was there, I prevaricated… I even deliberately named two people who reported on me. About whom I was sure of, but who treated me very much - like they were on my side. I knew exactly... because it was even a matter of having a connection to Biľak and so on. That's how I always said, 'But you know, look out, look out, this man treated me like that,' and so on. And they were surprised. They couldn't say anything, could they. So, I named two people twice who reported on me. Also, they asked me about the sculptor Preclík. I said, 'He is a great man. What do you have against him?' He said, 'Well, we have certain reservations about him regarding the socialism.' I said, 'I would never say that about him! Because whenever we met, he was always normal and his relationship with the present was never hostile in any way. Or at least I never felt it.'

“The students were on strike, and this was already in December, I remember precisely that it was on December 24th, and we set out to visit various faculties. And the students were there and we supported them in various ways, talking with them, singing for them, and so on. And it was very nice, they always had freshly baked cakes and such, because people kept bringing it there for them. When we stopped at the sixth faculty in row, we even had to refuse, we could not eat anymore. And this was something very memorable: by midnight we have visited all the faculties and after we left the last one, I was driving Jitka Molavcová home, and when I was then coming back to my home, it was midnight, and on our radio – still a socialist radio – they were broadcasting the midnight mass. And this was something very emotional. At that moment I realized that the regime had come to an end.”

“The situation in the radio was somewhat special, because I was forbidden to work in the radio, the director Riško issued a prohibition, but since there were many departments and the staff were continually changing, and they were not passing these instructions to the others... After some two years they suddenly began calling me, asking if I could make some program for them, and so I did. And they were then broadcasting it for a long time, until somebody noticed, then they would ban it again, but meanwhile another department asked me for cooperation, and I was not telling them that I was not allowed to, and nobody even informed me of that officially, and thus I have broadcast a great number of programs on the radio, and till they realized that they actually had me in their territory, I had always managed to prepare some programs.”

“Basically, I had to face the consequences of some of my signatures, like my signing the Two Thousand Words manifesto, or the Several Sentences, or there was a petition for Václav Havel’s release from prison. And I have signed all of them, and naturally it had its consequences. It was the worst in the early 1970s, and it dragged on till about 1985, then certain thawing set in. After that, they even let me travel to Finland as a director, and I was even allowed to make two films after 1985. Because the regime did not feel so confident anymore. But till that time, I was almost not allowed to do anything. I was allowed to be active in theatre, they did not dare to ban me from that, because Semafor was still immensely popular. To that extent that comrade Balážová made that memorable statement on TV, saying that they would not allow me to work in television, but that they would let me rot in that parish house of mine. By parish house she meant the theatre. And I still haven’t become rotten, as you can see.”