Jana Richterová

* 1965

  • “We [ed. note: members of the Moravian Cherub Choir, which was part of the Community of St Gorazd and Companions] took part in a spiritual music festival in Salzburg in 1988. We struggled to even get there. I don’t remember exactly how we made it, but by that time, we had been rehearsing at the St Jacob Parsonage in Brno, and there were church choirs there, so we were taken for a church choir. We had to work under the auspices of a church secretary, who know about our activities, and it had to be presented like we were exporting our culture and skills. We were afraid they wouldn’t let us go; it looked like they wouldn’t, so I was sent to the church secretary to ask why they wouldn’t let us go; I don’t remember exactly. I just remember the experience of meeting the church secretary at the town hall in Brno. He was like the big boss in those beautiful premises. He told me he knew about our activities, and added a friendly suggestion to the effect that I was young and I’d better run away. He knew about Richter [Miroslav Richter, the leader of the Community] and said his activities were not commendable or suitable for anyone who fancied a future. Also, I was a BUT student at the time, and we had to attend these Marxism-Leninism classes. I think it was in the third year. One day, the teacher called me up but said a completely different name of someone who was a member of our choir, so I took that as a pointer that they knew about us.”

  • “The purpose was really to incite people to get up. To make them show their faith; to realise that faith is natural to us here in Moravia; to see what the national awareness means. To Mirek, it was always one – being Moravian and being a Christian: Moravia equals Christianity. So, this is what it was about – a protest against the Bolshevik oppressing everything and everyone. It was totally obvious. At the end, out show basically said: ‘Moravians, it’s time for you to be reborn – basically the Proglas prologue message – a time to wake up from oppression and paganism, and walk towards God. I am unable to even paraphrase it anywhere close to the original message now, but the entire show was like a parallel to the story of Saints Cyril and Methodius coming here to evangelise. So, basically, the times are similar – the need to evangelise, with the same emphasis. Which, of course, was contrary to the ruling ideology of the socialist regime, so obviously that was a problem.”

  • “I had a similar experience in fifth class. The teacher asked us all to stand up and tell the class why we went to church and took religion lessons. He said his grandma made him do the same and so on. It was a small experience for me, but it made me really happy: I asked him to explain why we use the words ‘duševní’ (mental) and ‘duchovní’ (spiritual) if God or soul does not exist. The teacher was caught off-guard and started drawing the heart on the blackboard – the ventricles and so on, and just struggled to make it to the end of the class. My schoolmates then recognised I had really caught him unprepared. I saw that as a big victory, and my grandma put the icing on the cake by saying that I was inspired to do that by the Holy Spirit. That was my first personal experience of faith.”

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    Brno, 04.08.2021

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The community incited people to trust in God; that alone made the Bolsheviks hate it

Jana Richterová at the time of recording, 2021
Jana Richterová at the time of recording, 2021
zdroj: Post Bellum

Jana Richterová was born in a small village in the east of Bohemia on 16 February 1965. The family values were strongly informed by faith. During childhood, Jana was ashamed of her faith because she did not meet many young people in church. Later on, while a student of the Brno University of Technology (“BUT”), she took interest in the Community of St Gorazd and Companions in which many of her peers were involved. The Community focused on singing, the Cyril-Methodius roots of Christianity, and the depth of the eastern rite and spirituality. It tried to awaken faith in people and promoted values that the communist regime hated. With respect to its activities before 1989, the Community is also referred to as Christian dissent. Its members travelled a lot with their spiritual performance, including outside former Czechoslovak borders. Their reach and success grew in time. Later on, Jana became the second wife of the Community’s leader Miroslav Richter in 1994. To him, being a Christian equalled being a Moravian. Following the Velvet Revolution, he tried to pursue his visions in politics, but without success. According to the information available, the characteristics and activities of the Community of St Gorazd and Companions have not been mapped systematically to this day. According to some witness accounts, the leader was a visionary but often used a severely authoritative leadership style in promoting his thoughts.