“I worked and lived in Koloděje by Prague, at the government château, I was there weeks on end. You know, it seems almost unbelievable, but those were absolutely clean people. If the politicians of today could find anything on them, they’d do so oh so happily, they’d do it for the discrimination of that political group. But unfortunately, or fortunately, there’s nothing to be found on those people. They were educated people. If anyone wants to bash on Husák, Štrougal or on anyone who I worked with, Chňoupek, they’re out of luck. Those were people who were respected by the world. We sat at Koloděje by Prague at the government château, and those politicians, although I was their driver, they took me with them everywhere, I sat at the meetings, I wasn’t a servant who would have to sit outside in the car and wait for the politicians to finish, I sat with them at their meetings, I ate with them, I slept next to them. Maybe it was my talent, of which I had much, which made them happy to have me around them. I was quite a good singer, so I sang various songs that they liked. Whether it was Chňoupek, whoever, they welcomed my company. Up to the last moment, Chňoupek helped me understand so many global conflicts that a normal person can’t make head or tail of, why they developed like this and not like that, why this or that country didn’t intervene more strongly, where there were agreements. Things that can’t be understood from the newspapers and television. I can say that I was one of those exceptionally fortunate persons who came to know these people close up.”
“For me, as for all children with a similar fate, it was an unbelievable fortune to be in that children’s home. You know, when I say children’s home, you probably imagine it, I would say, horrifically even. But our children’s homes, those were something completely different- I even reckon that without those children’s homes many of us would not have known our language and would have maybe even forgotten our customs.”
“Amazing atmosphere. When you see that in front of you at the concert there are tens of thousands of young people who feel the same as you do. There were Phantoms whizzing over our heads, the idiot could fire at any moment. Various thoughts seep through - what will I do, I’m on a bridge, high above the water, if I jump down or if it crumbles and we fall, what will happen - and despite this the one supports the other and you say to yourself: ‘If there are ten thousand of them, fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand here, why should I dodge?’ So you’re there. It’s terrible when you hear the siren, when you hear ten sirens, hundreds of sirens. A terrible feeling.”
“I started building the château in 1990. Hundreds of people, tens of firms, I didn’t have anyone who would coordinate the work, I did that all myself. I worked hard sixteen, eighteen hours a day, not a minute to spare. Time was running short, I was pressed by time. I’d bought the château and they stuck me up with the order to remove a dangerous building. A stupidity, you’ll say, ridiculous, but those are today’s politicians, today’s local governments. The château wasn’t sold to me to save it, but with the speculative idea that I’d have to remove the ruins at my own expense, that’s why they sold it to me. They didn’t believe I could save the château. At the time, thirteen large companies all declared that it is simply impossible to save the château, that it is in such a state that it simply is not possible. I used technology, I used work strategy, I influenced my co-workers, my employees, I influenced the holiday workers, I influenced absolutely everything in such a way that the château was saved with a very high quality.”
“I believed in socialism and to defend it I was willing to do everything that the intelligence services entrusted me with, whatever mission I was to complete throughout the world. I know they weren’t any acts of heroism, it was the piecing together of a puzzle, but I realised the importance of it wherever I was in Europe, where I was fulfilling some mission.” (Q: “Can be specific?”) “One of the important ones was the uncovering of the economic damages that the West-German businessmen caused to the Czechoslovak Republic. For instance, we worked for two years on uncovering a network, which... I’ll be simplifying a lot: German trucks were coming into Czechoslovakia on Holačeks (a tyre brand) and leaving on Michelins. Now that was simplifying it extremely, but it wouldn’t be possible to understand otherwise. If you have ten trucks do that, if you have a hundred trucks, there’s something going on. Even if it was happening through other countries, but someone always has to pay for everything, and it was Czechoslovakia that always got the short end of the stick.”
“That was at the beggining of the Seventies, when after years spent in diplomatic circles, where I was chauffeuring high political functionaries around, I felt inside me simply that I want to do music - so I founded a group mostly from people who didn’t have a clue about music, but I put my trust in the human longing to succeed, and it worked out for me. In a few years it was really on the top, if not of the Czech scene, then definitely it was a European-level band that dazzled its audiences. We had concerts in the plenty, the tally is currently at six thousand eight hundred concerts all over the world. That’s including my independent concerts after we were banned from performing by the Concert and Theatre Agency Ostrava in ’89.”
I was lucky enough to get close to the people who were building a new world. They managed to reach the threshold itself...
Prusalis Epanastatis
photo: Dobová: Statis Prusalis, současná: Vladimír Kadlec
photo: Dobová: Statis Prusalis, současná: Vladimír Kadlec
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Epanastatis Prusalis, stage name Statis, was born on the 16th of November 1948 in Northern Greece. Soon after his birth, his mother took him to Buljkes in Yugoslavia, and then to Czechoslovakia. His father died in combat during the Greek civil war, just one day before his son’s birth. Statis Prusalis grew up first with his grandparents in the village of Křížová in northern Moravia, after reaching school age, he was moved to a children’s home in Šilheřovice, where he remained until the beginning of 7th grade. He was then transferred to Poruba. After completing primary school he went on to graduate from an automobile technical school. He worked as a driver for the Czechoslovak Red Cross, but he chauffeured political functionaries, e.g. the general secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, or Czechoslovak government functionaries. He often stayed at the state château in Koloděje. He went on to study conservatory and to found the folk-rock group Atény (Athens). He played concerts in Czechoslovakia and abroad. He spent a total of 22 years working for the Czechoslovak intelligence services. In 1984 he and his wife and children moved back to Greece, but they returned to the Czech Republic eight years later. In 1990 Mr Prusalis bought the ruins of the Poruba château and renovated it. He also concerns himself with filming, he has filmed several documentaries, for instance he produced the film “Ukradené Kosovo” (Stolen Kosovo), “Svědomí ‘hrdinů’” (The Consciences of ‘Heroes’). He took part in concerts on the Belgrade bridges during the bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, he met with Milošević and Karadžić. He is a member of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, he was previously a member of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). His wife is Greek, they have four daughters.
