Brian Bennett

* 1948

  • „I was in Austria in 1968, in August, putting the final touches to my Russian degree because to get a degree in Russian or in a foreign language in a British university, it is usually neccesary to go off to the country concerned. But I didn’t manage to go to the Soviet Union, to Russia and so I went to Austria where there was a special course and spoke Russian for three or four weeks. And it happened to be in August in 1968. So I saw Austrian troops moving up to the border because they wanted to make sure that there was no danger of any troops crossing the border into Austria, I suppose.“

  • „I was aware that we were being watched, followed, but it was fairly discrete. Unless the security forces wanted us to know. So, telephone calls would be tapped, I am sure. Once or twice the person responsible for listening in would get drunk and would chip in the conversation. That happened one Christmass time.“

  • „They [the Czechs] cared about politics but they obviously couldn’t do anything about the situation they were in. And so they were resigned to it, even though they felt trapped in it and didn’t like it. I think you Czechs and Slovaks, because it was Czechoslovakia at that time of course, had a yearning to be back in the family of Western nations. That’s where I felt you belong and where I felt you felt you belong. It was an unnatural situation but resignation was probably the only response people could make, because they knew that the whole setup was a lie, that they were ‚living a lie‘. That children were learning history at school that was not strictly true. Parents would not be able to say something to their children in case they went back to school and raised it with their teachers because it would be awkward. And anyway, the teachers themselves knew they were ‚living a lie‘ and distorting history in the way they were teaching it. So everyone was mixed up in this very complicated and very deflating kind of set-up.“

  • „I was always interested in politics, I wanted to use my languages and I wanted to travel. So the foreign office seemed an obvious choice. I was quite political when I was young, I lobbied for the Labour Party here in the elections they had here in 1964 and 1966. We start young, you know.“

  • „The flow of information into and out of the country is controlled. It is possible to go on holiday to Belarus but there are not many tourists. Of course, it is quite difficult. Tourists are encouraged to go in groups along the in-tourist lines so it’s very much like the Soviet days: organized and controlled flow of people and information. It’s known as the last dictatorship in Europe, it is an extraordinary set-up.“

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Living in a communist country meant living in a lie

  Brian M. Bennet was born in England in 1948. He studied Russian at grammar school and continued with Russian at University as well. He chose Czech as the second language and he could soon speak it. He was finishing his studies in Vienna in the exact time when occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of Warschau Pact took place. After graduating he joined the Foreign Office an in 1973 he was placed to Prague. „When I went to Prague, I was somewhat naive because I thought that communism was an acceptable form of politics. It was very interesting for me to see communism at first hand and realize the reality of the system.“ His task was mostly to monitor the situation in the country, to follow the media and meet newspaper people. He wasn‘t in contact with people from the dissent but at the same time he calls most of the society as „quietly dissident.“ As a diplomat he didn‘t have greater problems with security forces, his calls, for instance, were naturally tapped, though. Also thanks to his ability to communicate with people he gained certain image of the society. As he states, he felt that Czechs and Slovaks perceive communism as something foreign, imported by  the USSR. He felt that the society was aware about that they belonged to the family of Western nations. Brian M. Bennet left Prague in 1976 and then served in Helsinki and Barbados. In the eighties he took part in the talks between NATO and the Warschau Pact on disarmament in Vienna. They were unsuccesful: „I left Vienna and left the talks with the Warsaw Pact, believing that Europe would be divided forever. And only a year later it started to come apart,“ he says. After the revolution he carried out analysis of economic transformation of the Eastern-European countries and lately he served as an ambassador in Belarus.