Čestmír Klos

* 1943

  • "Protection of nature and countryside and mostly protecion of human health in ecological sense wasn't discussed in Czechoslovakia at all. It was this sort of attribute to the Ministry of culture. Then they even decided that protection of nature and countryside became attributes to the Ministry of Home affairs. Really mindless decission. And everywhere it was marginal. Whether it was Culture or Home Affairs, it was treated as make-weight. Nobody was concerned with protection of nature at all."

  • “I remember, and this is connected to my later ecological activism, how as school children we kept hoping that the Colorado potato beetle, the ‘American bug’ that tormented the whole of society, would finally appear on our fields. Because as children we dragged ourselves across the fields, and those private farmers of ours managed their fields in such a way that the potato beetle didn’t come there. They certainly didn’t use any chemicals, because there was no talk of it back then. I remember how our headmaster led us into the potato field, and when we finally found a potato beetle, how proud we were that we found it. Later on as an adult, I found myself on some co-op field - it was full of the beetles and no one care one bit. I guess that at some critical moment a plane flew overhead, sprayed it, and the pest was gone. But back then, children and even society as such was constantly pushed to believe that someone was harming us, that they were planting the potato beetle here on purpose.”

  • “The military academy was incredible. They drilled us in political subjects. During our studies we had to manage both the construction of aeroplanes and Marxist philosophy - and those were terrifying moments, the pressure on the mind was enormous. But they were split internally because beforehand there was a strong generation of folklorists there, and the teachers had an affinity for that. It was in Brno, close to Moravian Slovakia. They even established a group focused on military folklore. To avoid losing their paid folklorist positions, they even defended our satirical troupe after their folkoristic groups disbanded. Considering that our troupe originated from a military environment, it was rather critical. For example, we trained for the Spartakiad [sports parade] with coffee mills.”

  • “Few people will understand the sobering-up during Socialism. Young people will stare. Those who were in a similar situation at the time, will say - he speaks differently now, but back then he got in line. But already at the time I had gotten in line knowing I didn’t want to take the dogmatic route - but people don’t see that today. I’m critical of memberships taking up during the Seventies. But people who naïvely wanted to change society in the Sixties, and then woke up, that’s another matter. I guess I never spoke of it so openly. As I said: at the beginning I was started off by the potato beetle, and as social pressures increased, I started freeing myself of them, until I did. But I guess it’s incomprehensible to young people nowadays.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, Zbraslav, Eye Direct, 18.11.2014

    (audio)
    duration: 01:43:16
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 27.09.2016

    (audio)
    duration: 01:48:36
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We parodied the Spartakiad [sports parade] with coffee mills

ddd.jpg (historic)
Čestmír Klos
photo: archiv pamětníka, Eye Direct

Čestmír Klos was born in 1943 in Velichovky into the family of a bricklayer and a working mother, which was unusual at the time. While attending grammar school, he developed an interest in mathematics and physics, but also in theatre and music. He went on to graduate from the Aviation Faculty of the Military Academy in Brno. During his studies, he played in a satirical theatre troupe, he then started working as a programmer of an ICT 1905 mainframe computer at Aero Vodochody and ČKD. At the same time, he recorded radio programmes at the Brno broadcasting studio. After quitting this job, from 1968 to 1983, he worked as an editor of the magazine Melodie, he co-created the television programme series Písničky pod rentgenem (Songs Under X-Ray), and he helped organise the music Melodie Awards. In 1983, he and the whole editorial staff of Melodie were fired because the magazine continued to retain its remarkably critical and independent approach even during the period of normalisation. He started working for the magazine Krkonoše (Giant Mountains), hoping to improve public knowledge about the reasons why the mountain range’s forests were drying out. In the 1980’s, he was also influential in stopping the extensive project of constructing a ski lift to the top of Mount Sněžka (the highest mountain in the Czech Republic). From 1990, he wrote articles for the renewed daily Lidové noviny (People’s News), in 1994 he switched over to the newly established news magazine Týden (Week), whence he moved to the magazine Euro in 2002. Since 2010, he has published on the internet news site Česká pozice (Czech Position). In 1994, he began preparing the weekly radio programme Zeměžluč (Centaurium) for the Czech version of Radio Free Europe - this was later taken up by Czech Radio 6. From March 2013, the new channel Czech Radio Plus replaced Zeměžluč with a programme called Ekofórum.