„Allegedly, we tried to disrupt the socialist economy during the ´noodle affair´. I guess by the fact that we had not eaten the mess-tin of noodles.“
Radovan Procházka was born on May 11th in 1927 in the family of the chief of the castle guard of the President T.G.Masaryk, the Russian legionary lieutenant colonel Vladimír Procházka. Since his childhood he has been in love with classical music and dreamed of becoming an opera singer. During the war he joined the resistance movement, after the liberation and the tragic death of his father he enrolled at the military academy, to honor his memory. In 1950 Radovan Procházka served as an operation officer in the Hodonín garrison. He was cooperating with the military group which was passing information to the West. In 1951 he was detained and brutally interrogated in the infamous ´House´ near Hradčany; later, he was convicted to 15 years of imprisonment. Radovan Procházka went through the prison camps of Jáchymov and Příbram where he had patricipated in the so-called ´noodle affair´ in 1954 which had broken out on the grounds of dissatisfaction with the poor diet - the hard-working prisoners had rioted when all they had been served one day were dry noodles. As an alleged organizer of the riot he was subsequently convicted to further 12 years of imprisonment. After the trial Procházka was escorted to Leopoldov; he came out only in 1964. He found employment as a scene-shifter in the National Theatre in Prague. After the fall of communism he had been active on different posts within the Czech secret services - from 1990 he had worked in civil secret service and from 1993 he had served as the chief of secret military service. For his performance from January 1993 till March 1994 he has been honored with Legion of Merit. In 1997 he has been awarded the Order of the White Lion of the Fourth Class. He had been the holder of the degree of lieutenant-general in retirement.
