Petr Kučera

"The very first demonstration - a chaotic affair. Of course, we had a program and we had no experience at all with how to do these things, how to just orchestrate the whole thing to the end. Because these people were just excited, if you had said: stay there until the morning, they would have stayed there until the morning. So the first balcony ended and it was successful, we said, let's meet again, but these people didn't want to disperse and somehow I went to see them off, or I just don't remember, I just sort of walked away from there for a while. Someone from the editorial office came running up to me and said, 'Peter, he's a terrible mess. Some Socialist Youth Union members grabbed the microphone there!' You would have to help me, I just can't remember the names again. He was a man who was the head of the Prague youth, and then he was successful as a businessman." - "Ulčák?" - "Very good, thank you very much, Ulčák. Ulčák got to the microphone and was there babbling something, so I ran up to the balcony. We'd met before, I knew who he was. But I had to actabsolutely uncompromisingly, so I took the microphone away from him and I said to these people, thank you for today, we're done for today, we'll meet here tomorrow, something to that effect, I don't remember, we'll just meet again. That's how it was."

"My sister who lived in Liberec contacted me through some friends on the second or third day, I don't remember exactly, that the situation was dramatic in Liberec. I said I'd better be in Liberec. I went to Liberec. A kind of strike committee or whatever you want to call it was forming downstairs at the town hall. That's where I first saw Vašek Havel. I had a place to stay, staying with my sister. I was there for two days, I think. But since my brother had left for Norway with his friends in early August, my mother contacted me through someone and said: 'You have to come home, you have to be with us.' So I went back to Turnov again."

"We as students, myself included, were not in that frame of mind [of not believing in reformist communism]. We were a little bit further ahead, I guess. I mean, the Union of University Students, and especially the radical part of it, was sceptical of the period leadership. Yes, this is okay, but then the true democracy will come. Something will come along, changing the regime overall. But the second wave was at peace with the idea that it would be just a modification, some form of what you might call 'socialism with a human face'. We were critical of those people, in a specific way."

"Suddenly, you came into an environment that was extremely interesting and inspiring to me. I went to these lectures across all these disciplines, including Indology and so on. That was what inspired me. I think that's kind of my student resume. I forget facts; I forget a lot of facts, I would have trouble with Swahili today. These are all things that will pass. What remains - and it is the greatest benefit from my studies at the department - is that I shed the Euro-centric vision quite radically."