Golden Sixties
The Seminar in Jircháře Jircháře II The Arrest About the Workshops The Workshops Charter 77"That was the end of the Fifties, and the Sixties, well that was comepletely arbitrary! If someone didn't actually provoke, then they didn't get beaten. No really. It's a distorted view of the Sixties, when people say that the criminal Communist regime ruled those forty years. That isn't true. First of all: a lot of people sit in jail, unjustly, not just as criminals, unjustly, in every country. There was a bit more of that here maybe, but definitely not more than is usual in Second or Third World countries. That's one thing. It's true that people who were let out after many years of prison, were let out during the Sixties, so even for those who sat it out, it was a time of hopeful expectations. All the more for people who were outside and who were following the situation. There were people, like in every society, who don't give a hoot about anything. So those people didn't care. But otherwise, should I look at my own life, then the most hopeful time I have ever lived in started just then, at the end of the Fifties, fifty-nine, fifty-se-, fifty-eight. When the philosophers started to rebel, there were the discussions in the Literary News, where Kosík wrote his article 'Hegel as a dead dog?' Then there was the conference, where everything was terribly criticised, none of the criticised people were invited, but nothing really happened anyway."
