"Back then, that was beautiful too, we really fought against that ban on youth clubs. I had to negotiate with a comrade from the National Committee of the Capital, who came up with the idea that youth clubs should be abolished and that they should be turned into cafés or milk bars, that the young should be educated. I came across it in my dissertation when I argued that children could be educated up to the age of fifteen at most. After that, they can only be manipulated. Comrades didn't like to hear that back then. Anyway, I took my comrade to the government, talked to her and tried to convince her that milk bars and prohibition were not the best idea. Because back then, clubs started serving alcohol, there was normally restaurant traffic. And that it wouldn't do any good, that young people should learn... Going back to grenadines at afternoon tea is nonsense. We didn't agree, but we parted on good terms. I went on a business trip and on my return I was called to see the boss. A comrade complained about me to the Central Committee of the Communist Party that I was promoting alcoholism among the youth. So I was reprimanded, punished. Everyone was afraid to talk to the comrade. Fortunately, I didn't have to. I said - for God's sake, no more. I don't want to say we fought. Bullshit."
"It was quite a cowboy fight at the time, because we were warned that 'black beaches' would be organised, that there would be a black wedge on the flag instead of a blue one, that there would be demonstrations. They warned us, the embassy was even there, that if anything happened on the train they would disconnect the carriage. And that there would be surveillance. And in this situation I was in charge of a special train to Prague, where there were three hundred people. There was some strong talk, the guys from Ostrava. Relaxed and of course in high spirits. It was still possible to go through Romania, the Romanians were cheering us politically. In Hungary it started to get hot and in Komárom, Hungary, our militiamen came in. I arranged with the canteen people where meals were served, breakfast, lunch and dinner were included in the tour price. I told them that we needed me to bring the train home in peace, that I didn't want any forced stops. That we had to take care of our comrades. So I welcomed them in a comradely way. Not 'Honour the work', but 'Good day, how are you, we are glad to hear the Czech language again'. I led them to the dining car, they got ham, vodka, Pilsner beer. And we arrived in Komárno, Slovakia. There a new set got on. Then to Hradec and Prague. I arrived quite drunk, but calm — we got the train there safely. I got on a tram, there was no metro, made it home, collapsed, and slept for two days."
"Well, I was in Prague, I perceived him because... Like my experience of a lifetime was when I found out that something was going on, and I heard from the radio that they were coming. We were looking out of the windows at the store, and I woke up and there was a line because people were going to buy groceries and canned goods and stuff. Then I heard that somehow the Russians and so on. So I sort of got in my new Trabant car and drove downtown where we were working. We had, I had an office across from the parliament at the time. So it was walled in - that's Jindřišská street, Jindřišská tower, right. It was sort of surrounded by tanks, and now these MPs were coming down, so we were looking at them from the window like this..."
"I remember when there were - I remember and my mother would remind me of it - air raids on Prague in '45, we lived then near the station in Nusle, where American pilots flew in and shot up the locomotives so they couldn't pull the trains. So I had a little case ready, a tiny little case, a child's case, which you may know. And in there I had an apple, bread, a piece of cheese and a bottle of water. And when there was an air raid, we'd run down to the basement and wait to see if by any chance it would fall, and we had posters on the house - I threw it away, unfortunately, I had it in the cottage for a long time - where it said how long it takes when these bomber air forces fly in, when they fly in either from the south, because they flew in from Italy a lot, or from the west, I mean, over Germany. And they flew bombing in different ways, among other things they bombed Prague."
"About half a year or so before, I had somehow been invited and gladly accepted, I say this out loud, into the Communist Party. As a candidate. I was kicked out of the Communist Party after that year, so it wasn't that again. Because they abolished the whole ministry as almost an anti-state center. I'm not ashamed of that. It was just that, life went on like that."
Václav Soldát was born on May 14, 1941 in Prague. His mother was a housewife, his father, originally a bricklayer, worked in the Slavia insurance company. From his childhood he remembers the air raids on the nearby Vršovice railway station. He spent the very end of the war with his mother in a cottage outside Prague. Shortly after the liberation, the family left to settle in the borderlands, his father founded a branch of the insurance company in Planá near Mariánské Lázně, where he grew up. He graduated from a hotel school, majoring in economics. Thanks to his knowledge of English, he completed basic military service with a unit of radio reconnaissance officers who intercepted NATO air communications. After the war, he joined the CSM in Pilsen as a cultural officer. He studied long-distance at the Institute of Education and Journalism in Prague (renamed the Faculty of Education and Journalism in 1965 and the Faculty of Social Sciences and Journalism in 1968). In 1963 he moved to Prague to join his wife, where he continued to work at the Central Committee of the CSM. Thanks to his cultural agenda, he was in contact with many young writers, artists and filmmakers. He lived through the occupation of Prague in August 1968. In 1967 he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. As he states, his membership ended with the dissolution of the basic organisation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia at the abolished Ministry of Youth and Sports, where he worked in 1969. Until 1990 he worked at the Office of the Government of the Czechoslovak Republic, where he was responsible first for youth work and then for the agenda of the national committees. In his spare time he was self-fulfilled by organizing balls and shows. In the 1990s he worked as a teacher of social behaviour for employees of Komerční banka. He is the author of two books, Tvůrci zábavy (interviews with entertainment industry personalities, published in 2021) and Nebuď buran (a guide to social behaviour, published in 2023).
