Jiří Devát

* 1969

  • "Our primary goal, when we met with the management at that time, was for them to acknowledge the mistake that had taken place, for them to acknowledge the disproportionality of the intervention against the students and that it was an incorrect proceeding, an unjustified proceeding against the free and peace-loving students. And that was the biggest demand that we had at that moment. We didn't say anything at that point about who should resign or anything. But [there was] just a simple human need to admit a mistake and rebuild some trust. But the reaction from the faculty management - and at that time the dean was a certain Professor Klásek, at the same time the chairman of the Municipal Committee of the National Front, which perhaps also says something about him - they stood up very harshly to us, to the students. And their statements were very aggressive and belligerent, full of threats, full of all kinds of putting down, belittling, despising students. And during the three or four hours or so that the meeting was going on, minute by minute, I felt actually forced to radicalize my opinions as well and to become much more involved in that regime change."

  • "For me, the most powerful moment of the visit of Tomáš Bat'a and his wife Sonja to Zlín was his appearance at the town hall, the appearance at the balcony of the Zlín town hall. It was the same square where all the previous demonstrations had been taking place, only the scene had actually been turned around. While our podium, from which we spoke to the citizens during the strike days, was on the other side of the square and was in opposition to the town hall, suddenly the scene turned around and members of the Civic Forum, together with Tomáš Baťa and his wife Sonja, were standing on the balcony of the town hall. And the same people who until then had turned their backs on the town hall suddenly turned round to face it. So it was just the scene. The square was just as full as during the general strike, people [were] really excited to see the descendant of the Baťa family. Mr. Baťa was speaking in typical Baťa spirit: 'We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are looking forward to it. We are greeting you and we want to come back here to the country we grew up in.' But more than what Mr. Baťa said, what was important to me was the atmosphere of the crowd, of the public below us in the square. Because, in my opinion, this was the moment when Zlín, in a way, emancipated itself or, in a way got rid of the yoke of the past forty years, when it had been humiliated, had been called Gottwald, had been blamed for its previous success. It seemed to me as if the citizens of Zlín and its surroundings suddenly tore out all those pages from the Zlín chronicles between the years 1948 and 1989 and took up where the Baťas left off. It was as if those forty years simply had not existed."

  • "I remember more how we were disrupting that ideology at the grammar school. It was little things that we didn't even realise - that we were being naughty - but we were just making it harder for the regime to impose it on us. For example, we had a cultural performance at school, and it occurred to us - and I, as a theatre person, proudly took over the direction - that we would stage Little Red Riding Hood, but in English. And in such a strange way that the wolf was moving around the forest on roller skates, Little Red Riding Hood was Siamese twins, the grandmother was about two and a half meters tall due to the fact that it was two boys on top of each other. So it was a kind of provocation and they didn't know how to deal with it properly. The teachers who were in charge of civics and the chairwoman of the basic organization of the Communist Party, teacher Novotná, they didn't know how to understand it. Why the Red Riding Hood, who is red, is Siamese twins, what is the hidden meaning in it and so on."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 16.11.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 02:04:11
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 25.01.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:27:34
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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The communists did not break the Baťa´s soul of Zlín

Jiří Devát in 2021
Jiří Devát in 2021
photo: Post Bellum recording

Jiří Devát was born on 2 November 1969 in Ústí nad Labem, but grew up in Zlín, then called Gottwaldov. He was keen on theatre and film activities. While he was still a grammar school student, filming a music video clip next to the podium of the May Day parade earned him his first interrogation by State Security (StB). The next interrogations followed in 1988 for organizing a student film festival - at that time he was already studying at the Faculty of Technology of the Technical University of Zlín. He was one of the student leaders of the Velvet Revolution. As a member of the strike committee of the Faculty of Technology, he participated in negotiations with the faculty management and also represented the students in the Civic Forum (OF). He became one of two spokespersons of the Zlín OF, spoke at demonstrations. He was a member of the OF delegation that welcomed Tomáš Baťa Jr., the son of the founder of the Zlín shoe company, to Zlín on 16 December 1989. In March 1990, he left for a trip around Europe and never returned to political work. He completed a study internship in Japan, graduated from the Technical University, and later he studied in Melbourne. After returning from Australia, he worked his way up to the position of CEO of Microsoft for the Czech Republic and Slovakia within three years, and at the age of thirty-one he made it to the top of economic management.