I realised that if I wanted to achieve anything, I had to do it myself
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Ivana Koutská was born on 4 August 1947 in Prague into a family of physicians Jan and Vilma Koutský. Her childhood and adolescence were affected by the consequences of the communist coup in 1948, but her parents were still able to continue their profession. From her youth she was connected with sport, which for her represented not only joy, but also a background - among her friends from the skiing environment she found support in difficult moments of her life. After studying history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, which she completed in 1969, she joined the Encyclopaedic Institute of the Academy of Sciences. It was there that she gradually came into contact with the dissident milieu. In 1978 she married the writer Jiří Gruša. She was actively involved in samizdat activities - she collaborated with the Petlice edition, participated in readings at Ivan Klíma’s home and maintained contacts with employees of the embassies of the USA, Germany and Sweden, through whom she sent documents for exile publications. The situation escalated dramatically in 1981, when Jiří Gruša was stripped of his Czechoslovak citizenship during their stay abroad. This move not only led to the break-up of their marriage, but also brought increased pressure from the StB on Ivana Koutská herself. In the November days of 1989, she worked as a guide for reporters from the German magazine Stern, who were covering the Velvet Revolution. After the fall of the regime, she focused on research work in the field of contemporary history - she worked at the Institute for Contemporary History, the Office for Documentation and Investigation of Crimes of Communism and finally at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, where she remained until 2013. In 2025 she lived alternately in Prague and in her beloved Šumava cottage.
