He met his wife in Kharkiv
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Vladimír Caska was born in 1955 in Brno. He graduated from elementary school in Královo Polje and started studying at the gymnasium. His parents were politically involved, so as an excellent student in the field of natural sciences, he was recommended by the grammar school for the so-called experimental year of study abroad, which at that time meant to the Soviet Union. In 1973, after finishing the third year of grammar school, he therefore transferred to a special school in Žďár nad Sázavou, where about 150 Czech students were preparing to go to the Soviet Union as boarders. He studied Russian intensively, attended political training and lectures, and in the summer of 1974 the final camp was held in České Budějovice. On August 31, 1974, Vladimir Caska flew with a group of about twenty classmates to Kharkov, where he began his studies at the physics faculty of the local university. At that time there were also students from Africa, South America and Asia. In Kharkiv, Caska met a student from Colombia, whom he married in the Soviet Union. Because his wife was pregnant, they asked for a one-year break from their studies and flew to Colombia. They eventually left their daughter with the wife’s grandparents and returned to study in Kharkiv. At that time, Caska was already under surveillance by State Security Service in cooperation with the Soviet KGB. Confederates among the Czechoslovak students accused him of anti-socialist behaviour, religious beliefs and of allegedly helping a Soviet citizen to emigrate. After graduating in 1980 and returning to Czechoslovakia, he therefore had difficulty obtaining professionally adequate employment. Eventually he found a job at the Dukovany nuclear power plant, then at the headquarters of the Czechoslovak Energy Plants. However, he was never able to find a job as an expert in nuclear reactor start-up. The interest of State Security followed him until the end of the 1980s. He divorced his wife, who did not want to live in Czechoslovakia after finishing her studies and returned to Colombia.
