Richard Stára

* 1955

  • "We were given the farmhouse in a completely desolate state, if someone came and saw it and didn't have any relation to it, they would say it was a ruin. So, either demolish it or sell it, let someone else put their money into it. So, my brother and I started from scratch, we didn't have much money. But we had a hand saw, a shovel and a pickaxe. We didn't have any cattle. There was another connection. Because our family was an enemy of the socialist state, they didn't allow us to continue. So, neither my brother nor I had any agricultural education. So, we considered going into farming at first, but then we rejected it. We sold all the cattle, or rather heifers that we got in restitution, to the slaughterhouse and slowly started to fix up the farm with the money."

  • "My parents didn't even get ration stamps, their property was confiscated, all the fields, the cattle, the equipment of the farm, they were gradually taken away from them between 1951 and 1952. They let them live there until 1953 and then they were evicted completely. My father told me that an administration of about five people came, some of whom he even knew, they were also from Počernice. And they told him that they were going to evict them. And there was a forced administrator who was in charge of everything, and he told them that they had a week to do it. That they would seal the house and that during that week they had to arrange a place to take all their things. Like furniture, china, glass, paintings, cabinets, everything. And my father went there the next day and the house was unsealed and people were coming in and taking things that were there. So, he went to complain to the forced administrator and he told him what can he do about these people, so he let them take it."

  • "It was a shock for me, for a little boy who was thirteen years old at the time, to see, for example, a convoy of sixty Russian tanks going by. I probably didn't realise it at all, it was a very strange thing. And it didn't occur to me that if somebody threw a stone at them, he might get shot. I basically didn't get the 1968 straight until 1992. I realised that it was just that the younger clique of communists, who were pushing up and the older clique stopped them, so it turned out the way it did. I still think that even if it had been the socialism with a human face, not much would have changed. We'd still be that communist state. And at that time, the Soviet Union would never have allowed us to build any kind of democracy here. That democracy was a little bit in the sixties. That was a really relaxed time. It wasn't like today, that everybody could do whatever they wanted to do, but small businesses were being created and things like that. But that all came to an abrupt end in August 1968, and it went back to the rigid normalisation that it was before."

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    Praha , 06.01.2022

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    duration: 01:53:46
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You really could not defend yourselves somehow?

Richard Stára, Kolín 1974
Richard Stára, Kolín 1974
photo: Archiv Richarda Stáry

Richard Stára was born on 28 August 1955 in Prague. For generations his family owned the Čertousy farm in Horní Počernice, where his father Jaroslav Stára was an accountant. In 1953, in the Kulak action, the family lost everything and the father was never able to work again in adequate job and ended up in the steelworks in Kladno. Richard Stára, as the younger brother, was born into poor circumstances. But his parents managed to create such conditions that he remembers his childhood only in a good way. His role model was his older brother Jaroslav, who went on to become national champion in the athletics decathlon. In his youth, he devoted himself mainly to sports. After primary school, Richard Stára entered the Secondary Hotel School in Poděbrady, where he graduated in 1974. After school he started working as a waiter in the newly opened Prague Intercontinental Hotel. In the same year, he had to do his compulsory two-year military service in Kolín. In 1976 he returned to the Intercontinental Hotel, where he stayed until 1993. He was always totally opposed to the communist regime and never joined the party. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, he and his brother immediately started thinking about how to get the family farm Čertousy back. This was achieved in restitution in 1993, although they did not get all the land until 2003. Gradually, they built the luxurious Čertousy Hotel from the devastated farmhouse. In 2008, Richard Stára entered municipal politics as a member of the Prague ODS with the aim of improving the lives of the citizens of Horní Počernice. In 2022, he runs the Chvalská tvrz hotel at the other end of Horní Počernice than the Čertousy Hotel. Čertousy Hotel is run by his brother Jaroslav.