PhDr., PhD. Pavel Žáček

"The regime seemed stable to itself. Here in the week before November 17 was a KGB delegation, led by the KGB's second man, Lieutenant General Grušek. In fact, on November 17, in the afternoon, they signed an agreement on cooperation on the next... until the year ninety-five. In the counterintelligence area, it did not concern the internal... or secondarily internal affairs of Czechoslovakia, it concerned cooperation against the Americans, British, terrorists and I don't know who else. The agreement was signed at the level of Chief II. of the administration of Colonel Vykypěl, First Deputy Lieutenant General Lorenc was there, and it was signed by the Minister of the Interior, Kincl. It was signed, the Soviet delegation wanted to buy some last-minute gifts for home. They wanted to go to May, but they didn't get there because there were demonstrators already, so they didn't actually buy anything. They went back for dinner, where they got drunk like horses with some vodka. For this, representatives of the Music - I think - Ministry of the Interior or something played. And the next morning, when they flew away with the original of the agreement, - that is, according to the testimony of Colonel Vykypěl, the chief of II. administration, who, after all, was responsible for the situation to the KGB and to the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior and the Communist Party - and they told him: 'Well, the intervention... you overdid it, colleagues,' and so on. And he said: 'I don't know anything.' Because to him and finally to Lorenc, who were there to have a look after the suppression of that demonstration - it looked like they did it like they always did - the bosses of that intervention just assured them: 'Yeah, yeah, we made it. They got beaten, but it was standard.' But it wasn't. It's just that the hit was so atypical, the hit was carried out so brutally, it had such effects - there are over five hundred people who have permanent consequences, those punches went over the head, on the spine and so on. And that was simply reflected in who they beat... I think the key thing was that the social composition was a little different from the previous demonstrations. And at the same time politically - there were also people from communist families."

"There was such a strange situation. I think it was the fall of eighty-nine, if I'm not mistaken, when the faculty committee of the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union made a fundamental mistake - or I don't know, it was simply an attempt at perestroika, all the communists came to see it - that it would freely elect new members. In the two-hundred or so in the main hall, probably all the students gathered there, and in the first row or two sat teachers from the dean, the head of the party group and so on. And they watched how the faculty committee - in order to also know what awaits them in the future - how the faculty committee actually prepared a new election of the faculty committee. In other words, one of the members of the faculty committee spoke up and said this and that, maybe our term of office expired or something, we are simply making an attempt here as part of democratization. And I suggest to you - and he basically read the names of the existing faculty committee. And what do you think happened? They let the students or the members vote. None of them were elected!” – “From the former one?” – “All that were proposed, approved by that faculty committee, basically it was supposed to be continuity, flipping the old into the new – and none of them were elected! No one got the majority, half, or I don't know how they had it in those rules. And now they didn't know what to do. And simply a stifling atmosphere, they obviously couldn't handle it, they weren't ready, they thought that they had more trust or that the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union structure had more trust. I remember, I was standing outside right by the door, with one other teacher - he was across from me - and I was laughing, thinking: 'Haha, well, it's falling apart nicely.' And now what did they do? They did: So, the proposals from the plenum. And I don't know after how many names they said my name, but someone there called: 'Pažout!' They didn't even say 'Záček', they just said 'Pažout'. So Pažout was chosen for that magazine." - "You were chosen."

“November eighty-nine, I think like many people who lived through it – a complete turning point. A complete, fascinating twist. We managed to topple something that seemed so strong, so concrete. I couldn't imagine that I would simply - not live to see it, probably not - but you couldn't imagine how it could happen, thanks to the fact that the structure of our society and the functioning of the communist regime was, after all, different from Poland or Hungary, even from the German Democratic Republic. On the other hand, because I was twenty, it was actually possible in a situation where one was in the third year of university, so the best happened... the whole world opened up in a way, the best years of my life happened. So it was definitely a huge turning point. It seemed to you that everything was in front of you, that you could afford everything - which was not true."

"Thanks to the fact that there were a number of white places in that history - perhaps we could say rather black ones - so it was a thing where the history and the modern history were such a litmus test of both the interest and the relationship to reality, the relationship to the country. It was also about whether a person is able - and which of us, among those high school students - is able to accept a certain degree of that censorship, that propaganda. That shaped us! It showed in some of my university classmates and in mainly in the university students, that they are willing to do anything for their future career - and for me it was an acceptance of some of the lies, for example about the past. However, even those newspapers from the 1968s were taboo, things that related to the non-communist national patriotic resistance during the Second World War were taboo. The First Republic - a huge taboo! Including a number of personalities. Those taboos were also on the communist side, they had their own point of view and they erased events, happenings, they erased people like Dubček."

“Já si myslím, že my jsme udělali maximum jako novináři. Když se podíváte, teď si připomínáme ke třicátému výročí knížkou, přes čtyři sta stránek – jak vzpomínkami, tak třeba některými články – ty Studentské listy. My jsme v tom radikálním nadšení těch dvacetiletých lidí v průměru, myslím si, dotáhli tu káru demokratické novinařiny, co to šlo. My jsme vyšli ještě nepovoleni před koncem roku osmdesát devět, my jsme určitým způsobem byli schopni nastavovat zrcadlo a byli jsme schopni být kritičtí i vůči té vládě. Já jsem čekal, že ten vývoj bude, dejme tomu, jako v Polsku nebo v Maďarsku spíš, že bude nějaká :postkomunistická vláda, kterou budeme tepat – a ona vlastně už ta první vláda byla naše. A přesto jsme byli schopni tam najít některé kritické pole a na druhou stranu podporovat ty transformační procesy, samozřejmě v té roli novinářské, v té zodpovědnosti novinářské. Snažili jsme se řešit problémy bezpečnosti, řešit ty pozůstatky po Státní bezpečnosti, lustrace – když se podíváte, my jsme byli už tehdy, devadesát jedna, největším podporovatelem té komise, která vlastně tlačila ten lustrační zákon, byť nedokonalý. Čili v tomto smyslu já si myslím, že v té době není, za co se stydět. Ta realita společenská byla velmi složitá. Já si pamatuju, že už v nultém čísle nebo v prvním čísle jsme měli velký útok na SSM třeba. Měli jsme tam takový ten sovětský plakát ‚Jseš ještě v SSM?’ A ta reakce na to od těch čtenářů, kteří teda chtěli slyšet ten studentský hlas, byla vysoce procentně negativní. Že teda ta instituce by měla mít šanci se transformovat a změnit se, možná jako v jiných postkomunistických státech, nevím.”

“We had a meeting around noon with Vašek Bartuška, Fefík – Milan Podobský, Jakub Puchalský, Richard Kalup and maybe with some others and we discussed what to do, whether to declare strike at the faculty. It was independent, such was the overall atmosphere, it was not coordinated in any way. At two o’clock I was to meet with Martin Mejstřík in Slavia. Meanwhile we were in the U Zpěváčků, a well-known pub, where we used to meet often. We already had some pamphlet or sticker about the death of Martin Šmíd and we asked the innkeeper whether they would allow us to post it there. We agreed that we had to do something, and we were assessing our capabilities in case we declared the strike on Monday morning, and then we lowered our requirements slightly. At two o’clock I ran to Slavia, but nobody was there, and so I headed for Wenceslas Square, and near the horse statue I ran into Martin Mejstřík, CNN and several other foreign televisions. Martin declared the strike on behalf of AMU, they had already met and voted for it. Obviously, I had no better idea than to say that faculty of journalism was joining them as well. Without having a mandate, of course. Perhaps it was my impertinence, but we had already done some work there and we were in the core group of people, we were the organisers and we were better prepared for it than the colleagues who had been to some events with us, but who were not in the intra-faculty structure. I simply could not do otherwise, it was a mater of honour. I was proud of being a student of journalism, and although the faculty was not quite ready for action, there were many students who were not from Prague, and we were not able to meet all together, I declared it nevertheless and it was announced publicly that the faculty of journalism was going on strike, too.”

“As the Sunday ended, we went to the student dormitory in Hvězda and we told the others to come there and it was there that we definitely agreed across various faculties that we would go on a strike. The security guards in their uniforms which looked like zhe People’s Militia tried to make us get out of the dorms, because I had no permission to enter since I lived in Prague, but I managed to get in, and we were inviting other classmates, such us Roman Pistorius, and his wife-to-be, and other people, who were arriving there from their homes and we were preparing the strike committee. I proposed to become its first chairman, it seemed quite logical. Tomáš Klvaňa headed the parallel strike committee which was established in case the first one would be arrested. We agreed that we would go to the faculty in the morning and declare the strike. Many people gathered in the common room and then we waited for Martin Mejstřík and Monika Pajerová. A strange situation occurred there; some photographer came in there and it looked suspicious, he was taking pictures of us and he claimed that he was from some reform magazine from the Baltic states. By coincidence I knew something about it, but nobody trusted him and they kicked him out. Martin then arrived and we said: ‘Sure, let’s go for it!’ Then somebody said that police cars were on the way there to arrest us, and so we dismissed the meeting, but basically we have decided. Some foreign, probably Spanish television was shooting there, and so there are some photos and videos from those decisive moments. Each of us then hurried to their respective faculties. In the morning at 8:50 we were to have a psychology class. We got a flag somewhere and we displayed it and I stood up on a box and I declared the strike.”

“There was a discussion about what the limits would be, whether to keep it limited at that location where the demonstration started and terminate there, or whether to walk and continue somewhere where it was not permitted. Naturally, there were many discussions among the students, and there were many talks and I remember that we were riding the metro A line to the final stop, we were meeting somewhere behind Želivská in the student dormitory and there was a really heated discussion somewhere in Jižní Město, in Hvězda, and there was a number of talks. I, true to my nature, supported the idea of going to Wenceslas Square; I said that we should go there. We felt proud that it would be a demonstration which had nothing in common with the regime, not like what was here on May Day, for example, when half of the people on Wenceslas Square were officially there and the other half came from the opposition. We did not want to let them take it from our hands. We did not think about the content of the speeches too much, we rather discussed where it should happen. We were influenced by the demonstration in East Germany, Martin Mejstřík and Monika Pajerová had just returned from Dresden and they brought photos and this made us radical. From 1987 we have gone through great, maximal politicization which eventually culminated in November, but there were also people among us who mostly joined because of the magazines and they did not want to get into trouble and they were not interested in it. I was in the group which was saying: ‘We need to go for it, there is nothing more to wait for, they are banning our magazines, and they exert pressure on the faculties, they are setting up disciplinary committees, and expelling us from the military university departments.’ There was the case from Brno, and various reports were coming in about the StB which tried to exert pressure upon us… At that time I unknowingly supported the idea – I did not know that this was also the idea of Růžička alias Zifčák and probably of the entire 2nd department of the StB from Prague as well – that they wanted us to head for the Wenceslas Square, to Opletal Street, and to lay the flowers there.”