Miroslav Skalický

* 1952

  • „Čuňas [František Stárek] had a friend who worked in a repair shop for printing presses and typewriters. And that guy took one such printing press apart and smuggled it bit by bit from the shop. At home in his cellar he assembled it again, he oiled and conserved it. Then he wrapped it in rags and plastic and he buried it somewhere in his garden. Now it sounds like fun but one would sure go to jail for having something like this at home. It was in the mountains above Teplice. Čuňas said: ‚It’s not posssible to get there by a car.’ So we bought a GAZ [a Soviet-made all-purpose vehicle which was renowned for its sturdiness and high fuel consumption]. We arrived in that one, all alone, when it was dark. Čuňas He had a map sketch and he said: ‘It should be here.’ I was digging, I was shovelling but I found nothing. We needed two more attempts but then we unearthed it and loaded in the car. On the way back, we took care not to be checked by the police.”

  • „That house was ambushed by the police every weekend. They checked us down there at Ušák, that’s such a pub by the bus stop and then you walk a kilometer or two uphill. All the weekends, there were roadblocks. And when the Plastics were to perform there, even the people who lived in the house did not know anything beforehand. I had planned that this way with Magor [Ivan Jirous, his nickname Magor means Wacko or Crazy guy] in Prague. There could be three variants, for example. I knew that it would be in our place but we did not want it to leak so people were told to go elsewhere. First, they went to a place where they were told where to continue. And since the house was full during the weekends and the police were all around, such events as the concert of the Plastics were held on Tuesdays or Thursdays. People came but the cops did not have a clue. They came to guard when everything was over. It was conceived and organised in such a way that the cops never managed to interrupt any event even though they were all around the place.”

  • „I was two stories undergrond in the so-called hole. That was a tough one. It was in December, the heating was turned off. So, it was ice cold there. Water was soaking through the walls. Cold. We begged to be allowed to wash the dishes because those were washed in hot water. To eat, we got a quarter of bread [of a loaf of 1,2 kilos, i. e. 300 grams] and that sort of crude oil in the cup. A bit of soup or sauce with two dumplings, the normal portion was four. There was a toilet bowl in the corner, made of cast iron and without the siphon, it stank. A water tap above so that one couldn’t even sit on that crapper. That was the only source of water which was there. We got the blankets only for the night. A wooden plank bed without a mattress. And there were regular brown rats or Norwegian rats jumping out of the shitter and they wandered all over me during the night. I would always shake them off the blanket. Then a guy with whom I would do the dishes told me to leave them a bit of food next to the crapper. I left them a bit of bread in the cup, the rat ate and jumped back to the toilet and we could sleep in peace. “

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Brno, 29.10.2017

    (audio)
    délka: 04:15:43
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 09.04.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 50:48
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

We were much freer than the others.

Miroslav Skalický in the 1970's
Miroslav Skalický in the 1970's
zdroj: Archiv M. Skalického

Miroslav Skalický was born on the 31th of August in 1952 in Prague. From the age of six, he lived in Plzeň. He apprenticed as a carpenter. After having finished his compulsory army service, he moved to Chomutov. During the 1970’s, he was one of the organisers of concerts of underground music. He started two bands, Hever [Jack, the lifting tool] and Vazelina [Petroleum Jelly] Band. In March 1976, he was one of more than twenty young people from the circle of The Plastic People of the Universe who were arrested. In December 1975, he was sentenced to nine months in jail for organising a lecture of Ivan M. Jirous and a concert in Přeštice. He stood at the beginnings of the underground community in Nová Víska by Kadaň. Along with František Stárek and Karel Havelka, he created several early issues of Vokno, a samizdat magazine. He was repeatedly held in custody and bullied by the State Security. In June 1980, he was forced to leave the country as a result of the Asanace Operation. He lived in Vienna. He would smuggle anti-communist materials to Czechoslovakia, among others the Svědectví [Testimony] and Listy [Letters] magazines. After the fall of Communism, he built a cultural centre in a former flour mill in Meziříčko in the Třebíč district.