Jiří Suchan

* 1961

  • "The way the Stalin statue was there at the park - it just annoyed me and my friend. I remember we figured out it was the last Stalin in the republic, a larger-than-life sandstone statue of Stalin. I guess it was because there was supposed to be an exhibition of Olbram Zoubek's sculptures in the Museum of National History in Šumperk sometime in autumn or summer. The exhibition... they had already transported the sculptures of Olbram Zoubek there, saying they would arrange it, but at the last minute, they cancelled the exhibition. As always, without any reason or the reason being some sort of formality. And my friend and I, when the statues were wrapped up in the courtyard of the National History Institute, would always unwrap them and take photos with them. So we were kind of annoyed by that, and so then we decided they should remove the Stalin statue. So we thought of the most radical thing. We got spray paint... And I can't remember the timing of it. I was just wondering now–because it was all so fast–if it was already October or November '89. Around that time. It was already cold and damp, the wind was blowing, and it was mostly rainy. So it could have been like October or November. Well, and I sprayed his hands with red paint. It was a bad spray, so I had red hands myself because the wind was blowing and we were hurrying. But the job was successful because the next day, they removed him. Because since it was sandstone, I suppose it couldn't be easily removed. So then I went to work in the morning, to the theatre, and I saw a crane there, and they were already taking him away. They'd taken him away, and all that was left standing was the plinth, and that was it.

  • "What stuck with me was the Sovinec Castle, we haven't talked about that yet. This Mr Štreit did some interesting things there. He worked on a farm, I think, and held exhibitions there. Knížák, Olbram Zoubek, then there were more and more events there. People would come there from Uničov, from Libina, from the whole region. It was a place where people gathered a lot, not just "máničky" [derogatery term for long-haired underground men - transl.] but also people interested in culture, art, you know. It was very inspiring."

  • "And then I got a typewriter, and then I got acquainted with people from the library, right?"- "From the Šumperk library?"- "From the Šumperk library, with the girls, and then with my friend who also liked to read, we started to get interested in what to read. There wasn't really anything good to buy, and there was nothing interesting in the library either, so we started looking for literature that was so-called banned or not being published in our country. The only thing the school taught me, the economics school, was that I learned to type with all ten fingers. Pretty quickly. So then I bought a typewriter from a friend and started copying whatever good stuff we could get our hands on. So, that's how the distribution of the printed matter started. From fiction to poetry, texts about music, and then political stuff, of course, about the Charter [Charter 77 - transl.] and so on."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Olomouc, 02.04.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 59:54
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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    Olomouc, 08.07.2023

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    délka: 01:20:54
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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We just wanted to live our lives

Jiří Suchan at Sovinec, the 1980s
Jiří Suchan at Sovinec, the 1980s
zdroj: Witness archive

Jiří Suchan was born on 12 May 1961 in Vyškov. He lived only with his mother Růžena, née Klíčová, who married Josef Suchan, a soldier by profession, in 1962. Then they lived in Šumperk. At the age of seven, Jiří Suchan experienced the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops near the military barracks. He studied at the secondary school of economics in Šumperk, from which he dropped out in the third year. He joined the underground community of the Uničov and Šumperk regions. In an attempt to avoid military service, he was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. In the end, he served in the military from 1980 to 1982. From 1984, he transcribed and distributed samizdat literature. He became a member of SPUSA, the Independent Peace Association, signed petitions to release political prisoners, and held chain hunger strikes. In 1988, he participated in demonstrations in Prague. In 1989, he was detained at the border on his way from Budapest while trying to smuggle banned literature. He lost his passport. The same year, he signed the Několik vět (Several Sentences - transl.) Declaration. In 1989, he was charged and tried for distributing Lidové noviny (People‘s News - transl.). The Velvet Revolution halted the trial. He worked in blue-collar professions and from 1988, as a stage technician at the Šumperk theatre, where he participated in the revolutionary movement. In 1993, he married, and with his wife Lucie, née Lomová, they raised two children. The marriage later broke up. After the revolution, he completed his secondary education and started his own business. He has been a tram driver since 2013. In 2023, at the time of filming, he lived in Prague.