"Back in spring, I don't know exactly when Michael Kocáb came up with it for the first time. Of course, he didn't come up with it as a shot out of the blue. He had arranged it as a co-advisor to President Havel. So he certainly had it prearranged. So he put forward in the Federal Assembly the idea of the withdrawal of Russian troops. It started to move gradually. There was, I think, some declaration of the Federal Assembly - some resolution, a demand that the troops be withdrawn. But then there was an election, and then in the new term of office, they started working on it. I was already in the Czech National Council, and a committee for the withdrawal of Soviet troops was established in the Federal Assembly. Michal and I had already gotten together quite a bit before in the federal assembly, and we were in contact, so he wanted me to be the vice-chairman of the committee as a representative of the ČNR [Czech National Council]. I can't remember now who was there from the Slovak National Council. Then this committee was put together, and it was very interesting. We went to the meetings very often, and although the negotiations on the removal were, of course, driven by the whole geopolitical situation, basically by the fact that even before the coup, Gorbachev and Reagan had agreed in Malta to lay down their arms and in a way to vacate the area. But the specifics were not obvious. It wasn't clear how that was going to take place. So the process of the Russian military leaving had to be chased like a whipping top all the time. Otherwise, it would have stalled, and it would have lingered. It would have disintegrated into some kind of dodges."
"We declared the strike or implemented the decision 'we are going on strike', 'we are forming a strike committee' in my hostel on Sunday evening. And the consequence was that by Monday morning, we were ready. A school trip came for a performance, but the doors of the theatre remained locked. We went to the front door of the theatre, and we explained to the teachers that there was a strike and there was no play. Of course, this sparked debates within the theatre as well - 'How is this possible? How can we do this to the children? They came to see a fairytale.' Of course, we had to make clear that the dynamics of the cause and the levels were completely different and that there was no other way. Then on Monday evening, there was a meeting outside the theatre. The tech guys carried the crates out in front of the theatre. That was a kind of paradox that I described somewhere, that we were quite cautious at that point. Because the property - the house, the theatre - of course, belonged to some municipal or regional national committee. To some kind of communist power - property rights. And we thought that we would open the place up, and the police, Public Security, would come in and, purely because we were misusing other people's property, would start making the usual obstructions, that we were misusing other people's property. And it was absolutely not certain at that point that the coup would succeed. Nobody knew that at all. That was the decision to go ahead. For that reason, we also organized the meeting, that is, the meeting of people over the political situation, on the steps of the theater, in front of the house, so that we would not be accused - in retrospect, it seems very comical - of misusing someone else's property. I remember how there were the theater steps, and we had loud-speakers and microphones, and the speakers took turns, and the little yard in front of the theatre was full of people. Of course, it was partly those who had come to the evening performance and had unused tickets in their hands, and partly those - it's already spread among the people, Hradec is not that big - who found out that there was a 'demo' in front of the theatre."
"We walked from Mariánská to Jáchymov because there were no buses. Public transport was stopped for those couple of days, so we walked. And I remember the tanks standing there, the armored vehicles, and I was basically a little tot, a young boy of twelve. Because, as tourists, we walked with walking sticks - I would have had them in my hand anyway, regardless of the Russians - so I remember threatening them there. That was such a strange internal experience, where I was like dared. Of course, it had no further development. Maybe my parents told me not to do it out of fear. But I remember that there were Russian troops in Jáchymov."
Oldřich Kužílek, former theatre director, radio presenter, politician, and Member of Parliament, was born on 4 January 1956 in Prague. He grew up in Dejvice, Prague. His father was an officer in the Czechoslovak People’s Army, and his mother taught History of the Soviet Union at university. His mother was expelled from the Communist Party after 1968, but his father remained in the party. Oldřich Kužílek unsuccessfully applied for architecture after graduating from high school but was eventually accepted to the Faculty of Construction at the Czech Technical University and then also graduated from the DAMU (Theatre faculty of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague), majoring in theatre directing. During his studies at the Faculty of Construction, he already intensively involved himself in amateur theatre. He also worked with Jaroslav Dušek and the Vizita Theatre. After graduating from DAMU, he worked briefly as a drama teacher at LŠU, and in 1986 he joined the theatre in Hradec Králové as a director. From November 1989, he was one of the major representatives of the revolutionary events in Hradec Králové. He took part in founding the local Civic Forum (OF) and became its leader. In January 1990, he sat in the House of People as part of the process of co-optation to the Federal Assembly. He served on the committee to oversee the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia. In 1991 he joined the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) and served in Parliament until 1998. Together with Michael Žantovský, he is the author of Act No. 106/1999 Coll. on free access to information. Since 1997, he has been an advisor and trainer on access to information and transparency in public administration. Since 2000, he has been coordinating the Otevřete.cz project, a website for transparency in public administration under the organization Otevřená společnost o. p. s. He is a representative of the Prague 6 municipality, responsible for transparency, media, and participation.
