Jaroslav SPURNÝ (1955)

Portrét

Fear is the worst human quality

Jaroslav Spurný was born in Kyjov on 14 July 1955. His father Jaroslav was a master bolt maker at a local factory and a committed Communist who joined the party in the early 1950s. Because he had not taken any part in the Prague Spring reform process the party regarded him as promising material following the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. They facilitated study at the Evening University of Marxism-Leninism and made him deputy director of the district meat processing plant. However, Jaroslav was shaped more by literature than the example of his father. At primary school he was already reading Camus, Beckett and Sartre, who later became an inspiration in his resistance to the processes of normalisation. 

Jaroslav Spurný entered secondary school equipped with the idea of Sartre-style existential freedom, as well as long hair that soon spelled his first confrontation with conformist Communist morality, though the first battles for independence had already taken place on the home front. Long hair was intolerable to both his father and later the director of his school, Milon Chudáček, a Communist bigot and erstwhile senior Military Academy functionary. Following a number of major conflicts with the director and his anti-long hair campaign Jaroslav decided in 1974 to quit school just before his final exams. He moved to Brno and spent the summer living after the example of US hobos. He hitchhiked across Czechoslovakia, hopped trains and slept anywhere, in parks or at stations. Under the then laws he could be charged any day with parasitism, but this was overridden by his desire for freedom. In Brno he met people on the same wavelength, attended concerts and went to performances at the theatre Divadlo Husa na provázku for free on fake conservatory student ID. He had his first run-ins with the State Security (StB). When the police arrested him at Brno station he had books in his backpack. The summoned StB men threatened him with arrest and custody. “What saved me was that I had borrowed them from the library, where they remained on the shelves intact and forgotten. It was Sartre, I think. I can’t remember the other writers.”

A year later Jaroslav returned to school. And he soon decided on another radical gesture. He handed director Chudáček a short letter which stated that he was ending his studies for good because human rights were violated at the school and for that matter in the whole country. Some days later he received call-up papers for military service, which he promptly avoided with a theatrical suicide attempt. Two months later he found himself in a psychiatric hospital in Kroměříž, which in the following two years became the perfect port in a storm – after arrest by the police he always used it as a refuge. “When the police arrested me I let on that I had depression and they took me to the hospital, instead of bringing the law down on me.” However, Jaroslav later failed to avoid arrest and imprisonment over article 203 (on parasitism).

Following his first release from the Kroměříž mental hospital Jaroslav and two friends rented a flat in Břeclav. Due to his outlook and past, which the StB were aware of, he struggled to find a job. What’s more in January 1976 he had his first serious clash with state authority. Written in large letters on the wall of his apartment were the words: “We survived Hitler, we will also survive Brezhnev.” The StB soon burst in to conduct a search. “I don’t even know what led them to us. That’s the way it went. Of course they immediately noticed the sign, arrested us and took us to the station. I dared to pipe up with something at the station about human rights, for which I received two very humiliating slaps. After this event my existential conception of freedom was joined by an institutional one.”

Following his arrest Jaroslav was charged with parasitism. In February 1976 he received a six-month prison term, suspended for two years. He defended himself in court but it was wasted breath; he later learned the verdict had been written in advance. He tried to lose himself in Slovakia, where he worked as a labourer for around a month, but there too he was twice arrested by the police. He took shelter again in his native Kyjov and gave notice at a local glass factory just before the end of his trial period. In July of that year he was again arrested, charged with the distribution of narcotics; the police had found the legal Triphenidyl, a medicine with psychotropic effects, on him. Instead of releasing him from custody they charged him again with parasitism, as he had not been in work for a week. He spent five and a half months in custody. 

In September 1977 Jaroslav became close to two key people: the future journalist Ivan Lamper, with whom he founded the Independent Press Centre and the weekly Respekt, and his future wife Kateřina. In 1978 the newly-weds moved to Gottwaldov (today’s Zlín), where Jaroslav instantly hooked up with the group of dissidents around Stanislav Devatý and Bedřich Koutný. Together they distributed the samizdat publication Infoch and Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted reports. At home Jaroslav and Kateřina transcribed, completed and circulated banned books, such as Orwell’s iconic novels 1984 and Animal Farm. Amid the world of the Zlín dissent Jaroslav converted to Catholicism. He began distributing ecumenical editions of the Bible and organised spiritual seminars where the Catholic priest, theologian and philosopher Josef Zvěřina delivered talks.                                                                                                                                                              

In 1984 the Spurný family moved to Prague, where Jaroslav made a living washing windows and polishing floors. However the dissent remained his chief activity and interest. Jaroslav signed Charter 77 and – on a duplicating machine at an apartment in Střížkov – printed Revolver Revue, which alongside Jachým Topol and Viktor Karlík had been cofounded by his friend Ivan Lamper. Kateřina continued to print off Infoch and banned literature. However, when an illegal but effective photocopier was sourced from abroad a major share of the samizdat Lidové noviny was also printed at the Spurnýs’ home.

“In November 1989 we attended the demonstration with the whole family. We walked in the procession from Vyšehrad and I was watching how more and more people were joining. There was a particular atmosphere, different from other times. I sensed something would happen, so I sent my wife and daughters home just before Národní. I was then one of the last who managed to escape just before the brutal police crackdown,” says Jaroslav Spurný, for whom the most intense experience came with a demonstration on 19 November 1989, when a remembrance for the alleged victim of the previous demonstration took place in pre-arranged silence. “The procession circled around Wenceslas Square, where a deep silence prevailed. It was powerful and it was absolutely clear that Communism would end. Thinking about it even now I have tears in my eyes.” 

During the Velvet Revolution Jaroslav Spurný was involved in the establishment of the Independent Press Centre. As early as 20 November 1989 he joined the editorial team at Information Service (later the weekly Respekt). His work in journalism was primarily focused on the establishment of new secret services, special anti-corruption units and uncovering public sector embezzlement, and he soon became a top investigative journalist. His work has earned him the Karel Havlíček Borovský and Ferdinand Peroutka prizes.