Rudolf Kvíz

“I was mostly attracted by their greater defiance of the Soviet diktat. For instance I had never seen a red star there which in here hung on every lamp pole. There was no way for them. Once I was buying something at the market and the Polish man asked me whether I had Czech money. I said yes and he asked me: ‘Why do you have that star on the two-crown coin?!’ He blamed me for it. I always admired them for being brave, and for being such a romantic nation ever since the 19th century uprisings. They were even a bit better off than us travel-wise. They honored their nobility and their great exiles, such as their great poet Milosz. Once there I bought his books in Polish. I admired all of this on them. That they were less crooked and braver than we were."

“I got house searched in Prague as well as in Štolmíř where my mother was still living back then. The secret tasks were called ANALÝZA and DIAGRAM – in the dossier, they always wrote it all in caps. From a snitch at my workplace during the summer holidays they got to know when my wife would leave with the kids to her parents’ and that each Friday I was travelling from Prague to Štolmíř to spend the weekend with my mother. They used the opportunity it and undertook a house search. They didn’t really succeed because – as written in the report from the search – they found out there were no window curtains. They were being washed or something, but simply were not there. But since they needed to do it under cover of darkness, they couldn’t pull the curtains and anyone could see what was going on there. They had to sneak around the bookshelves and drawers with a lamp and whatever they found there, they had to bring in the middle of the apartment where there was the bathroom, the only place where they could turn on the light. This caused them trouble and they considered the operation unsuccessful.”

“Viola theater was an oasis during the normalization. And so was the radio and its literary and drama production. So even during the worst of times there were decent people working in the radio. Of course, during the anniversaries they had to present some author who was favored by the communist regime but still, there were decent people. At the same time, there was a great director of Restaurants and Canteens enterprise which was running Viola. His name was Majer and he was very approachable. Obviously, as chief of the enterprise he had to be a member of the party. But he was supporting what Justl was doing in Viola. And naturally even if Viola’s production had to make compromise with the regime, it was still a very decent place. It was even a place where people would meet, who were fired from various cultural agencies, editing boards etc., to drink their morning coffee and chat. I also took part in it.”