Interiew with Dodo
Faculty of Massmedia communication
True Velvet Revolution Story
Interview
Juraj Šťastný
Group: 01
2009/2010
Question 1: Tell me something about your whereabouts during the fall of communism. What did you do back then; describe the atmosphere of those days to me. What comes first to your mind from that era?
Mr. Krištofík: On November 17th I was working as a drudge associate in a sports facility in Trnava. It was right after my unfinished medical studies at the
Question 2 : How much the revolution changed your way of life ? For better or worse?
Mr. Krištofík: The new establishment which came out of the revolutionary days changed our lifes essentially. It gave us a lot of things and took some. When we’re talking about the things we lost you could probably say that we lost certain life’s tenures and guarantees. It’s a topic that’s vital especially for the older generation. The revolution caught a lot of them on the verge of their careers and they didn’t have the capacity to enforce their positions based on their work records and maybe they didn’t even have the energy nor the courage to accomplish such goals. We are a generation which got the chance to participate in the new era and so we can actually talk about what the change has given us. It gave us the chance to learn a greater deal about things, gave us the chance to discover the world, gave us a bit wider space to navigate our lives. I’ve got a feeling that if 17th November didn’t happen exactly on that day, than it would happen very soon afterwards because the way the world is overruled by internet and the way that information’s are spread across the world now as well as how scientific-technical improvement pushes the dynamic of our lives, not even mentioning the widespread worldwide knowledge, all this would surely provide for the unsustainability of the communist regime. The past establishment was build upon certain axioms and general truths which you were not supposed to question.
Question 3 : Do you have some particularly unpleasant experiences from the socialist era ?
Mr. Krištofík: I do. I have some troubling experiences which relate particularly to the travelling choices and with certain obstructions which the former regime reposed on slackening of travelling to the foreign countries. Even when we as a family wanted to go to Jugoslavia, we had to ask for foreign allowance, very rarely could someone travel to Western Europe and when so it was mostly an official journey which I have to say was allowed to my dad a few times. We were always quite anxious about whether he would bring us something out of the “glamorous west“, whether it was some branded goods or musical medias, or even some electronics. It was all quite prescious. I would say it was quite exciting at that time. All these material things. On the other hand the shortage of such things is quite motivating till some degree and retrospectively i have to say that I have fond memories of those times, even now from the perspective of relative sufficiency, but really the weapon of choice was very limited then. I have a bit worse experiences from the meetings with the people from the State Security (VB). During my university studies they used to contact regular students at various levels of importance to further discuss certain topics. In 1988, a year before the revolution or maybe in early ’89, I’m not so sure…I ended my studies in august or september that year so only a few months before the revolt, we were randomly contacted by various people with the offer to participate in the celebrations of the 1st of May and with alleged student uprising which didn’t happen in the end and frankly wasn’t even possible at that time. So this sort of thing could be described as “not so pleasant”. It didn’t have any consequences for me but the sole meeting, the discussion it was very dangerous and it got me in a quite non-comforting place because I didn’t know what would happen the next day, or the day after, I didn’t know whether I was looked upon as a collaborator just because someone had talked to me whether there will be more meetings. At the end of those “discussions” there was always said that “next time we’ll need some contacts we’ll let you know”. The way that they “let you know” usually consisted of calling straight to the boardinghouse. In my experience the person who called, presented himself as cpt. Lebeda and I will never forget this. He contacted me about three times. I never told him anything of any importance; it’s possible that he just needed to formally write down that he just had another contact with a student which might support the general idea that he has everything under control. I didn’t feel like he was pushing me to tell him some great secrets (which i actually didn’t have a clue about).
Question 4: Could you possibly state that the first years of the newly found democracy were the times of unlimited possibilities?
Mr. Krištofík: It certainly was the time of “
Question 5 : After 20 years of democracy do you still see the old structures present in today’s political parties and feel that the reflecting of the majority still holds some burden of the past ? Or is it a completely different world we’re living in now?
Mr. Krištofík : The world is completely different. Question is what it would look like if the regime had survived. We talked about the impossibility of its survival mainly because of the information boom. On the other hand if communism would survive it would definitely take a good advantage of the information’s. But people are still the same. There’s share of good in them and the bad. Question is how one wants to present himself to the world and what’s the meaning of his existence on this earth.