Ivan Lamper

* 1957

  • "From the perspective of a seventeen-year-old today, it is of course rubbish to try and publish samizdat. But back then, these were times when just transcribing a text such as a book, in ten copies - which today seems a laughable number - made sense, as long as such texts were officially unavailable."

  • "The samizdat magazine Sport was an attempt at normal journalism. We wanted to step over the framework of the already very successful cultural-social magazine Revolver Revue which was published once every three months and which was more about cultural topics than topical issues. Therefore, Sport strived to capture and cover events which had by the late 1980s finally begun taking place, in the frequency of one month."

  • "Where was the border between working for an official publishing house and media, and the rejection of such activities? That is fairly complicated. Personally, I was very happy at that time that Jan Zábrana did book translations which got published. Such people had been doing important, real things. So, it can't be condemned all at once."

  • "Personal humiliation is a thing which is hard to get rid of. That's why communism is so problematic and why we still debate on how to describe the times of normalization - because it had no victims; these were not the 1950s. From a normal standpoint, victims were those who went against the regime. To that, I can easily reply: 'Excuse me, I am no victim but a lucky person who managed to live a great life.' For me, victims are the humiliated people. But those would object: 'Humiliated - and by what?' The problem is that they feel the need to assure themselves that they hadn't been humiliated. But how do the signatories of the anti-Charter or those who ratted to the secret police manage that? Unless one is able to come to terms with it, they need to adapt,, modify their understanding of the world."

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    Hroznová ul., Praha , 09.05.2016

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An attempt at normal journalism

Ivan Lamper, 2016
Ivan Lamper, 2016
photo: Eye Direct

Ivan Lamper was born in 1957 in Pardubice and he grew up in Zlín. Both his parents were members of the Communist Party, though his father was later expelled. His mother worked as a teacher and his father as commercial manager in chemical and rubber-making industry. After graduating from grammar school in Uherské Hradiště he spent a semester studying at the University of Economics in Prague. He then left the school and up until 1989 worked in blue-collar jobs. First as a stoker and then as gas pipeline inspector on the route Prague - Chotýšany - Sázava. In 1983 he signed the Charter 77 and two years later founded a samizdar cultural magazine Jednou nohou, later renamed to Revolver Revue. Similarly, he took part in the creation of the samizdat magazine Sport 1989 and of Informační centrum just after the Velvet Revolution. In 1990 he co-founded the weekly Respekt and up until 1994 served as its editor-in-chief. He works there as an editor to this day.