Luboš Starý

* 1955

  • “Thanks to Mirek, I met Father Kocáb and went to their place. That’s where I found you could argue with him – I don’t mean yelling and being rude, but using arguments. That’s where I started learning to argue and express my views, because I couldn’t do that at home; we never discussed anything at home. At best, I was told: ‘Don’t see the Kocábs, or you’ll get us in trouble and won’t be allowed to study.’ You can’t discuss that – that’s just not a discussion. ‘But why? I want to go there.’ – ‘Well, just don’t go there.’ – ‘But my friends go there.’ – ‘Well, then don’t be friends with them. And that’s that!’ It’s tough to keep a young person at home when you lack the arguments to support your stance.” – “Did you get a false key to go and see the Kocábs, or what did you do? I mean, that’s a dilemma; it’s not simple, is it?” – “Of course, I got a false key. I told my parents that matters were different and that I would still go there.” – “Were those private visits, or meetings of young people? I’m sorry if I interrupted you.” – “As for young people, I was sometimes allowed to be at the parsonage in Husova, or in the garden during conversations. There were a lot of young fiery debaters who were older than me. It was inspiring – being in contact with the parson as well as with those other people.”

  • “I think it was the summer holidays. We were at our grandma’s. Then they locked us up, and then we fled. This was a huge experience for a boy: we jumped at the moving ZiLs and ripped the Russians’ rearview mirrors off, and it was fun to just throw them in a heap round the corner. Whoever got the most of them was the biggest hero.” – “Did you do it with your brother, or with others too?” – “My brother got lost; it was so chaotic…” – “Were there more boys like you in Slovanka? And for the ZiL – is that the big truck?” – “ZiL was the big truck that Russians drove… I was running home, and there was a crowd on the corner – people were curious to see what was going on; who was coming. It was near our house in the main street towards the army barracks.” – “Is that the [former] Lenin Square, then Jičínská Street, and T. G. M. Street up the hill? Did you live on the corner of S. K. Neumann and Lenin?” – “Exactly.” – “So, is that where you ripped those rearview mirrors off?” – “That’s where we did it, like madmen. I’m glad to have survived and lived this long.” – “What did the soldiers do?” – “Luckily, they had their orders – drive on and avoid contact if you can. I don’t know; had anyone jumped off the truck bed and started shooting, well, you never know… You see, we were thirteen years old boys and we needed some action, we had to do crazy things… something like that.”

  • “As the society was transforming slowly and the official ideology was turning into a farce, really, I once got into a strait during a written test in a Marxism class. It felt awkward. We were asked to write about Marxist categories.” – “Was that at the CTU?” – “At the CTU. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So, I wrote the first two sentences the way we were supposed to, and then I added something like: ‘This is what the answer should be, though in reality, it is just a tool kit for harassment and distortion.’ It was quite daring; it was in the fourth or maybe even the fifth year, which means 1980. I could have followed in Mirek’s footsteps, which I only realised later. But since the atmosphere in society was already completely different, the assistant professor who rated our papers said: ‘This one gets an A, this one gets a C, this one gets an E, and Mr Starý – well, a very interesting paper in a sense.’ Actually, he may have even said ‘essay’, a word CTU students didn’t know and everybody just stared. ‘An interesting paper in a sense. I will not grade it, but we can talk about it later.’ He got over it elegantly like this, so luckily, I didn’t get kicked out. I never told my parents about this.”

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    Mladá Boleslav, 01.02.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:29:08
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Grandma was waiting in a queue for flour while he broke rearview mirrors off Russian trucks

Luboš Starý in 2023
Luboš Starý in 2023
zdroj: Post Bellum

Luboš Starý was born in Mladá Boleslav on 26 August 1955. His maternal grandfather Adolf Melichar fought and was killed during the Prague Uprising. His paternal relatives suffered during the communist era as the regime nationalised his granduncle’s funeral house. That played a role later on when Luboš Starý applied for high school and university studies. During the Warsaw Pact armies’ invasion in August 1968, the witness and friends broke rearview mirrors off Soviet military trucks. His father was an amateur journalist and filmmaker in Mladá Boleslav, and he took interest in these fields too. He studied at the Secondary Technical School of Film in Čimelice but did not graduate, eventually graduating from a technical high school in Jičín, then from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University. His jobs included research at a seismic-acoustic laboratory at the Institute of Geotechnics. From an early age, he attended seminars held by Evangelical priest and dissident Alfréd Kocáb, and was friends with other Charter 77 signatories. He was living in Vinařice near Mladá Boleslav in 2023.