One should not be fooled into going along with the crowd
Download image
Jiří Choun was born on December 19, 1953 in Kroměříž to parents Josef and Vojena, née Smékalová. His uncle Odolen Smékal became a well-known Indologist and in the 1990s ambassador to India. His father worked as a surveyor in the mines of Jáchymov from 1947, was dismissed after the communist coup and found employment in Zlín, then Gottwaldov. Jiří Choun spent his childhood there and experienced the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops. In 1973 he graduated from high school and studied for a year at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, then transferred to the University of Economics (VŠE), from which he graduated in 1978. After completing one year of military service, he joined the planning department of KOVOFINIŠ in Ledeč nad Sázavou. Under the banner of the Socialist Youth Union (SSM), he began to organise concerts and, from 1984, a folk festival in Lipnice nad Sázavou called Songs for Peace. In the mid-1980s he left for Prague and joined the Federal Statistical Office, where he remained until the dissolution of the federation. He took part in demonstrations and protests from 1988 and was on Národní třída on November 17,1989. In the 1990s he fulfilled his dream, resigned and travelled around the world. In 2001 he returned to the Czech Statistical Institute. In 2023 he was living in Prague and retired.
