I was working at Masaryk University and I know that — at that time, right now I know — that a revolution happened on Friday, and I didn't know about it even on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, until I got to work on Monday morning. And our secretary told me if I knew what had happened, and I said no, I don't. So she told me about all that, and then on the same day at about 9 o'clock there was sort of like a students' meeting at 9 o'clock outside.
It was only students that were there?
Yeah, well, there were only students who were talking about it, plus there were some people who were working at the university, plus some teachers also — but they were just listening.
On that day there was another meeting in the main square downtown in Brno — which was sort of funny because nobody knew what to expect, nobody knew what to do, because it was somewhere in between. People didn't know whether it was going to go back. Those people who went so far in telling people what had happened, they were kind of very pushy — they were saying "all people in government should really step down, they are old, they don't lead it very well." So we were not sure what was going to happen. People were kind of withdrawing a bit. They didn't force themselves too much.
And what did you think?
I also didn't know. I was glad that it happened — because most people, definitely, were fed up with communism, and so was I. I was glad something really finally happened, although I was still not sure how it was going to end up.
Then Tuesday, Wednesday, it started to change for the better. I remember the police — they sort of started to hesitate. Are we supposed to join the people or keep to the government, keep to the communism? So they were kind of in between, and it started to get better. By Thursday, Friday, it was all free.
Did you talk with the police officers at all?
Just a few words. "Why can't we get in here?" I remember there was also a guy there who wanted to get in because he lived there — and they didn't allow him to. He said, "Look, here is my ID, you can see this is my permanent residence, and I live here." And they said no. So he was really angry. People agreed with him, of course. They were really awful.
So demonstrations went from the Monday until —
Friday, as far as I know. It was every day. And then the next weeks it happened maybe once or twice a week. There were sort of also like small groups of people in the square — people of all sorts were getting together and talking about politics freely. It was quite nice. You could just walk from group to group and listen to what people were saying. It was quite good. Very unusual.
Everybody says that.
Yeah, it's really true.
For you the revolution was just that particular week and everything changed, or was it a gradual thing?
I guess both. It was gradual, of course — but people at first thought how quick everything would be, all the changes, and how perfect everything would be afterwards. I particularly thought that maybe in one year the economic gap might start getting better. And then in one or two years we found out that it wasn't that easy. But on the whole, I'm absolutely happy that it happened — that social order had changed.
Tell me a little bit about your public school and high school, and what kind of influence did the communist powers have on those school years?
Students and people at work as well were more or less discouraged in some sort of ways which were not good for communists. So we were brought up a different way. As for the education at school, it was just opposite to what you can see in the West. Students were not encouraged to talk very much, and everybody was kind of backing up rather than pushing themselves to try hard at school. There were some subjects like Russian, which we had to learn. If everybody wanted to learn some other languages — German, English — it was not encouraged. Teachers would say, "What do you need it for? You don't need it."
Would you talk to your parents about what you thought was right and what you thought was wrong? Would you be worried about talking to people?
To some people maybe yes — to some people I knew were of the same opinion, I would talk freely. Even in the public, it was forbidden to talk about communism out loud in a negative way — but it started to become quite normal that you could hear on the streets people saying, "Well, it is not good what we are having right now." You could hear it more and more. But still people were afraid. It really depends. As for the family, we were talking about it quite openly, no problems.
You're saying on the streets people would put up posters or —
Just amongst themselves, usually on the bus or on a tram, stuff like that. Maybe somewhere in a line.
I see. So there wasn't actual open defiance — it was very passive?
Very passive, yeah.
Would you say most people thought the same way you did?
I think so, yeah. As far as I could judge it, like 80 or 90% had more or less the same feeling. I knew how it was working here — that people always thought something and had to say something else in the public. But still, more and more people started to speak more and more openly, even in the public.
What kind of information did you receive about dissidents or Charter 77?
Not much under communism. The only thing I knew was that Charter 77 was an organisation of people who were against communism and who did something against it — even though I didn't know exactly what they were doing against this regime. And that some of them had to flee the country, some were imprisoned.
How would you get that information?
From people around me, from what I could hear on the streets, on a bus, maybe even in the family.
And never in the newspaper?
I don't think so. Maybe a few negative information in the paper — that Charter 77 did something against communism and that they had to be imprisoned.
What did you think when in 1984 Mikhail Gorbachev became the premier of the Soviet Union?
It was a very good thing, I guess. I thought it would also influence the whole Eastern European part of Europe for the better. Hopefully.
And did you see that happening here?
Maybe, but very slightly, I think. Hardly at all.
How has your university changed?
Well, it was quite dramatic as for our department. Our department had about 15 people, most of them teachers, and two of them were teaching communism. And, unfortunately, about two weeks after the revolution, one of them committed a suicide, and the other one about three weeks afterwards. It was really awful, and it was really bad — and we were kind of looking at each other like "who was going to be the third one." It was really very, very bad.
Any other thoughts? We have to wrap this up.
On the whole thing, I'm glad it all had happened. Hopefully we can see that soon it should start getting better. Maybe in some branches of the whole development — both political and economy — is starting to get better. Sometimes it is worse, of course. Any kind of change like this one — like the freedom — brought about also some kind of bad things. People are not used to freedom.
What are the bad aspects?
People didn't know what to do in a free society. There was a lot of crime. People stole and raped, stuff like that. It's like the West. Hopefully it's getting better. I'm not sure if it's going well. Maybe some things are getting better, some not. But hopefully it will get better.
- Masarykova Univerzita — Masaryk University, the largest Brno university and second-largest in the Czech Republic; founded 1919, named after T. G. Masaryk; renamed Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in the Communist period and reverted to Masaryk University in 1990 (so the interviewee using "Masaryk University" places the conversation post-1990)
- Charter 77 — Czechoslovak dissident initiative founded January 1977
- BBC and Voice of America — Western shortwave services consumed widely under Communist censorship
- Mikhail Gorbachev — Soviet leader from 1985 (interviewee's date of "1984" is approximate)
- The two communism teachers who committed suicide (Section 10). "About two weeks after the revolution, one of them committed a suicide, and the other one about three weeks afterwards. It was really awful, and we were kind of looking at each other like 'who was going to be the third one.'" One of the most chilling passages in the entire Czech archive. The collapse of an entire ideological apparatus at the human scale — two named-by-discipline academics ending their lives within five weeks of November 17 1989. Strong candidate for a stand-alone short-form Anabasis piece. Worth verifying with Masaryk University records from 1989–90 whether suicide records for two communism faculty members exist publicly — this would also be one path to identifying the interviewee, who would be a colleague of theirs.
- The good-specialist head of department fired anyway (Section 10). "The head of our department was a very good guy, smart guy, but he was in a Communist Party because otherwise he couldn't have done this job. So he was also released — but he was a good specialist. But nobody cared at that time, which wasn't good." The pragmatic-Communist-fired-anyway pattern — already documented in Mr. Salát's interview (Czech Interview 06) and Mr. Honza in Vita Chrápová's interview (Interview 01) — recurs here, from yet another angle.
- "BBC and Voice of America" (Section 8). The Western shortwave services as the primary trustworthy news source under Communist censorship. Pairs editorially with similar references in Czech Interviews 02, 03, and 04, and with Sonwabo's account in SA Interview 03 of how information moved. A cross-archive pattern about the structural role of trustworthy external broadcasting in authoritarian information environments — directly relevant to the studio's 2026 work on disinformation and counter-narrative.
- "People are not used to freedom" (Section 11). The 1990 voice of cautious post-revolution optimism — the same tonal register as Vita Chrápová's "we have to work now for what we've been fighting for" and Sonwabo's "after 20 years it is going to be like a battlefield." The early-1990s realism about post-revolution disenchantment, captured across multiple voices and two continents.
- Masaryk University records of departments with two suicide losses among communism faculty in November–December 1989 (would narrow the institutional location considerably)
- The Masaryk University departmental list from 1989–90 of academics with fluent English
- Likely a Mark contact — perhaps a friend of the Schola Sirotkova circle, or someone Mark met through his teaching network in Brno