Upon my honor, I solemnly promise to love my homeland, the Czechoslovak Republic,
and to serve it truthfully in all times; to carry out my duties
and to respect the laws of the scouts;
and to be ready in body and soul to help my neighbor. So help me God.
Scouts without a lily
- I have preserved a piece of charred wood from the campfire on the occasion of my oath.
It was a really important moment.
- As they say, one becomes a scout for all of their lives. That's exactly how I feel it.
My club brought me up, gave me strength, and gave me a direction.
- The atmosphere, the friendship...
There was no place for rough words there.
- Amazing childhood, friendship, and a spiritual
overreach. It had three dimensions:
service to oneself, service to one's neighbor, and service to God.
- My anti-communist sentiments - the knowledge that communism was wrong -
propelled me the right way.
- Czech scouting had been repeatedly outlawed throughout 20th century.
Nazis were the first to try and destroy it,
followed by the communists after the February 1948 putsch.
Back then, the movement split up. Some of Junák's [Czech scout organization] members
joined the Communist Party while many became the regime's opponents.
The only organization assembling boys and girls in Czechoslovakia was to be the Pionýr,
organized in Soviet style. While scouts were following Christian and patriotic ideals,
Pionýr was supposed to bring up future communists.
- Did you join the Pionýr?
- Yes, I joined the Pionýr.
- As a boy who used to be a scout, how did you process that? How did you perceive it?
- We used to go to the nature whereas Pionýr took place in the classroom.
It was a continuation of school education.
We pledged to help František Novák who was failing in History.
We pledged to collect scrap paper and metal.
This is the way it was. Already back then we felt it was but a lot of paper rustling.
- At the school I attended, it was a completely formal thing.
One would come and then leave again.
The school required us to attend wearing a Pionýr scarf.
In the morning we'd arrive to school and the teacher would say:
- "How come you're not wearing the scarf?" - "Fine, I'll wear it tomorrow."
- I joined the Pionýr in the seventh or eighth grade.
After a parents-teachers meeting my parents decided that I had to.
Up until then my name was on a blacklist of those who were not attending Pionýr.
My mum was summoned by the headmaster
who told her they couldn't give me recommendation for another school for that reason.
In front of my companions, I promise to work, study, and live according to laws of the Pionýr,
so as to become a good citizen of my beloved homeland, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic,
and through my actions to defend the honor of the Pionýr
organization of the Socialist Union of Youth.
- Ever since 1948 many scouts were engaged in anti-communist resistance.
They were being sentenced in show trials, many went to exile.
The clubs survived in secret; later under cover of sports and hiking associations.
- I entered the club being eleven years old. It was just some club;
not even under their breath would anybody admit it was a scout club.
It operated under the auspices of rowing club Slavoj Vyšehrad.
The main advantage was that it was an island of normality in an abnormal environment.
- The 1960s brought political thawing to Czechoslovakia, enabling the establishment
of camping clubs outside of the Pionýr.
- Through my friends I got to know Pepík Muzikál from Žižkov who led a hiking club.
Back then he was still a member of the Communist Party
and even collaborated with the police.
He felt he had to make up for his bad deeds from 1948 when he helped destroy Junák.
He underwent a catharsis and now - protected by the party membership,
he thought - intended to set up a good scout club. That is where we came in.
He gave it a green light and so in July 1965, we agreed on the establishment
of the camping club Psohlavci [Dog-heads]. In a way it operates until today.
- Jana Pfefirová graduallz followed up on the activities of the post-war scout club No. 13.
- My husband practically set up the scout club.
This year we are celebrating fifty years of existence, so it was in 1966.
For several years we operated as a hiking club of the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH).
We had plenty of friends from the original club No. 13
who had children the age of our children so we admitted them.
The kids could have come in from wherever.
- Was that a scout club, then?
- We made our own statute according to the scout one.
Some scouts were obsessed and wore scout belts at least, which then got them into trouble.
We didn't want to do such secretive things, to avoid harming the children.
- Psohlavci sent me to see the last living scout chief.
- Who was that?
- Dr. Rudolf Plajner. Again and again he had me tell him the genesis of the Psohlavci club.
He was interested in who was involved, what we did and so on.
Then, he stood up in his sixty-five years of age, made this gesture and said:
"Bear" - they called me that back then -
"now, or never."
Fourteen days later we published our press release. I think it was published in Svobodné slovo.
"Camping club Psohlavci renamed itself to scouting club Psohlavci Praha."
Thus began the restoration of scouting.
Once again, the scouts are entering a service to their homeland.
These historical flags were hidden to survive the times of the occupation
as well as the ensuing twenty years.
- In the spring of 1968 I met someone who told me:
"I know you, we were both cubs [young scouts]. We are renewing the club, join in."
I came, greeted them - it was a long time since I saw them - they recognized me
but I had trouble recalling who was who.
- Former officials had met at an ice arena and there they proclaimed
the re-establishments of Junák in Mladá Boleslav.
They had such signposts there with numbers of the clubs from one to nine.
And there I registered with the 8th club, assuming that the naval scout would be
something extra.
- For the chiefs it was hectic in the sense that they wanted
to have scouts presenting themselves in the march already.
So they dressed several tenths of children in green scout uniforms on the occasion
of the 1 May parade. They were met with a huge applause.
- We didn't have a clubhouse in Říčany.
Instead, we would meet in various rooms which people lent to us,
such as the gardeners' association and so on.
The boom was great - in Říčany which back then had eight thousand inhabitants,
there was a club of forty boys.
- My daddy, in order to enhance my upbringing, said: "we will enroll you with the scouts".
Since we were believers he sought a Christian club.
He found a club in the Vysočany quarter, established by altar boys from the local church.
Our chief was Petr Majchšajdr who came to our flat, introduced himself,
shook my hand immediately, and explained the scout greetings.
Then I came to the meeting and as all the boys there were older than me
which made me feel strange, I brought along half of my school class.
- To build an organization from scratch...
But we managed to establish the Junák information service.
Using newspaper and all we invited all those interested in the renewal of scouting.
We were receiving those registration papers and I was checking up on whether
it was filled in properly, made the counting, and could see the organization grow.
Within a few days, it counted seventy thousand members.
- Back then, Luděk Bartoš was the chief of the 5th scout club
which until then operated secretly under the Slavoj Praha sports club.
Throughout the fifties and early sixties we lived in great isolation.
The mood in the club was such that we didn't really feel like going back to scouting.
In fact, we had to vote on whether we would join in.
The motion had passed but I was struck by the fact
that someone at all doubted our return to the roots.
- I was a member of the girl leadership.
First of all, we had to renew the whole system of education for club chiefs.
So we set the rules on what they were supposed to learn, to know, and we prepared the exams.
- Suddenly, we were surrounded by lots of people who wanted to advise us on
how to carry out the renewal. They strived to follow up on the cut-out tree trunk
and completely ignored the fact that little viable branches sprouted on its sides.
We encountered continues problems with the headquarters.
They were always asking: "how come you're not wearing a scarf?," and this and that.
We pretty much always escaped to some forest and but soon as we were back
we once again had to answer some pointless questions.
- A serious conflict took place in the background of scouting's renewal.
It was between the scouts who after 1948 supported the Communist regime in various ways,
and those who were imprisoned or persecuted throughout the 1950s.
In August 1968 Czechoslovakia became occupied by the Warsaw Pact armies.
- A stream of iron was pouring in via Harrachov.
In August they arrived on truck decks with lilacs in their gun barrels
because they knew from history that when Russians come,
Czechs welcome them with lilacs.
- I and my grandma came to the shop to buy supplies
because my grandma lived through the war and where she learned her lesson.
To this day I can see these torn down, painted over signposts in front of my eyes.
[We demand the occupiers' immediate departure]
[Russians home / Go home! Hands off Czechoslovakia]
- When the Russians arrived, we continued with the scouting in spirit.
But my dad was telling me "well, it's game over," which I didn't want to accept.
On 24 and 25 November 1968 delegates from scout clubs in Bohemia and Moravia gathered
in Prague at their third congress which was in 1948 postponed until further notice.
At this event, the scouts were discussing the events of the past two decades
and pondered their role in the times to come. They elected a new leadership
which they entrusted with steering the scout in what weren't the calmest of times.
- Dr. Rudolf Plajner was the chief of Junák after the war as well as in the late 1960s.
- We lived in such bliss - in such a bubble - because we just carried on.
The club worked great. Back then, to me it seemed like a long time
even though it was only the years 1968, 1969 and first half of 1970.
Still, we organized three amazing summer camps and many expeditions.
- As much as the general society, scouts thought some things could still be held out.
However, when an army overrides your country like that,
you start to see the world in a slightly different way.
- Following the Soviet occupation, the clubs carried on for a while.
However, the normalization regime had no place for scouting.
Junák's leadership negotiated under pressure
with representatives of the party about its dissolution.
Junák was supposed to be embodied into the newly-established Socialist Union of Youth,
and thus in fact merged with Pionýr.
- They then co-opted people closely linked with the Communist Party
to Junák's Central Council who then managed it in a way
which resulted in the leadership of Junák gradually losing their game.
- There was a plan for the establishment of a united children's organization
- JDO - which would be internally differentiated.
There would have been JDO - Pionýr and JDO - Junák.
Of course, Junák would only operate on Marxist fundaments
and without any relation to global scouting.
Unfortunately, in the end, there was no JDO
but just a single Pionýr organization of the Socialist Union of Youth.
- On 1 February 1970 Junák's Central Council published a statement
in which it informed that scout organizations would be incorporated into Socialist Union of Youth.
In practice that meant a dissolution of the scout into the Pionýr
even though the statement was assuring that the scouts would retain a certain autonomy.
The merger was even signed by Dr. Rudolf Plajner.
- According to his words, he was faced with the choice of either agreeing
to the merger or having Junák proclaimed as a counter-state organization
whose adult members would be prosecuted accordingly.
- Were you critical towards the scout's leadership for deciding to merge with Pionýr?
- I suppose we didn't know it was sold out like that.
Once they were elected, they were supposed to persevere.
They should have said that scout would cease to operate
if the authorities didn't allow for its independence.
- Allegedly, the scout chief and member of Junák's leadership Rudolf Plajner attempted
to resign in 1970 but eventually didn't due to communist pressure.
He remained a member of the Czechoslovak Pionýr organization up until 1977.
- The then-chief Plajner spoke in front of the assembly of chiefs,
saying "I'm a scout, you're a scout", removing his scout shirt, and asking: "Am I a scout?"
We said: "You are." He replied: "It's not about the uniform."
- By chance I met him at Můstek in Prague.
He told me: "Ivan, this will take long, this is political crap."
And then he added: "All in all, it is all about our children."
In other words, he was being opportunistic, basically suggesting for us
to join the Pionýr and do what we could there.
In nature as well as in social affairs the ending of one is
always at the same time the beginning of another.
I am convinced that it will be possible to include a lot from what we considered good,
progressive, and beneficiary to our youth into the program of the new organization.
From all my heart I wish that you all stay in service of the new organization
because it is not about scout children or Pionýr children;
it is about all the children in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
As an old father and a grandfather I would like to conclude
by saying that we need to include as many of the children into this educational care.
- Why did he add his signature? Was he forced to do it?
Well, I'm sure he didn't have to do it.
He was a pensioner already; all of us were adults with our families secured.
There was nothing he could have been endangered with.
The ones who could have and should have feared persecution were the youth.
- Before the abolition of Junák, our chiefs attempted to ensure
as much continuity as possible.
So they sent the older and more agile boys for the "school of nature" training.
We weren't eighteen years old yet as we were supposed to be
but still they nominated us there and I am happy for that.
We enjoyed ourselves back then, not really knowing where we stood and
what this would mean for the future.
- We didn't know this was an endgame. But our chiefs had already known it
and for that reason worked hard so that we'd enjoye our last camp in 1970
as much as possible, so that we'd pass the scout exams.
As we were leaving the camp, none of us had any idea that we'd come to our clubhouse
in the fall only to find out that it was all over.
- In 1970 I was a referee at the first cub [young scout] contest in Czechoslovakia.
I arrived there by train at around midnight and there was nobody there.
And not only was nobody there, there was nothing there.
Suddenly at night, someone grabbed my shoulder and said: "You're Vezír, right?
You can sleep there and then leave in the morning, the race was called off."
Given that Junák was being dismantled, it would have had to take place
under the flag of the Socialist Union of Youth which was unacceptable for the organizers.
- The Christmas party of 1970 was also quite sad because despite having the tree,
all the presents, singing carols etc. we were also in a way saying goodbye to scouting
because we knew that this was the end.
We made a ceremonial line-up, all of us in uniforms.
Mum gradually removed scout badges from the girls' uniforms,
pinning them on a flag and saying that she'd keep the flag safe for better times.
We then concluded with the scout anthem, and the song And So Shall We Part.
♪ And So Shall We Part... ♪
- We made a declaration, wrote it on a parchment
which we put into a bottle and dug it in the ground out in the cliffs.
It stated that as soon as they would take something from our scout uniform
we would be through with it. Well, and we kept our word.
There were a couple of us who hadn't joined the new organization. Our club ceased to function.
Those people who were supposed to carry on scouting with kids became divided
into three groups. Some of them said: "We're through with this,
let them work with the kids in any way they want but we won't be a part of it."
The second group said: "You know what? Let's join the Pionýr and take it over from within;
they will let us do that because they are incompetent.
We will carry on scouting in the Pionýr."
Those were the opportunists.
Then again there was a third course - us who had already done it illegally before.
And so we simply re-entered the underground.
- It was up to the club chiefs whether they were willing to accept such humiliation
and compromising and stay, or have it closed down.
The big cities had it easy but it was impossible to go into hiding in Říčany.
Those Bolsheviks had seen into everything there.
- It was a dilemma about what to do next.
Scouting was dissolved and there was only Pionýr left. And so I said: "My God, now what?"
I gathered all the parents and we discussed it.
They said: "You can't do it to the kids to have it dissolved.
It's very good for them and we wish for it to continue."
Then again, they could have been persecuted for being scouts.
- What were they afraid of?
- They feared their children wouldn't be admitted to schools, for instance.
It was terrible that such situation happened again.
There was some resignation there and I myself was obviously no fighter
who would opt for going underground or something.
So in the end I and my husband somewhat decided to join the Pionýr organization at Prague 2.
- We were told that either we join the Pionýr or we cease to exist.
All of them decided to quit but told me: "Vezír, you should carry on with the boys".
I replied: "Well, that's nice of you to say".
I took a few minutes to think it through and given that all of it would
get somehow deformed, I decided not to continue either.
For two years we were meeting literally as "beer scouts" which means in pubs
so that we didn't look like some conspiracy grouping.
All the time we were contemplating how to carry on scouting.
- Thanks to the chief called Penk - his real name was Josef Voldemut -
who in a way sacrificed himself and, being a scout chief, became a leader of a Pionýr group
we were able to retain our clubhouse.
- For us it wasn't easy either.
We hadn't had a clubhouse and we had practically no equipment, so we didn't lose anything.
But many clubs which owned clubhouses or tents or something knew
that if they hadn't joined the Pionýr they would have had all of it confiscated.
So, many of the clubs decided to give it a shot and stayed in Pionýr.
- Throughout the year it all came apart.
The initial chiefs had left, and only one former head of the center had stayed.
The program faded out and so it practically broke up.
They organized one summer camp in 1971 and that was pretty much it for us.
- Kim told them: "Either we quit or we go underground."
And so we all decided to carry on in secret.
- We were brought up in a way which enabled us to respond a completely unexpected situation.
As a result we were not caught by surprise all that much.
Throughout late-1968 and 1969 we once again returned under the patronage
of a sports club which we legally never left.
- We carried on, meeting at Kim's place back then before he got married.
And we continued organizing trips. It's just that we couldn't wear uniforms anymore
and also we couldn't have had our next summer camp in Černé hory
because the people there knew we were scouts. Kim didn't know what to do.
He was travelling around and one day he got to Southern Bohemia where he found
a beautiful pond called Záblatský. He went to see the water bailiff and told him that we were scouts.
He said: "That's alright." So we set up a camp there in 1971 – the first illegal one.
- We operated under Pionýr up until 1972.
We pretty much retained our educational program,
only losing the word scout and saying boy, girl instead, rather than pionýr.
But when we had to we'd call ourselves pionýrs. I as a chief had to become a member of Pionýr.
- First of all, I had to take the Pionýr exam.
It was such bullshit, such ideology.
I told them what they wanted to hear and that was that.
If I had failed what would I do with the kids?
I promised their parents to carry on. So I passed.
- In 1972 harder times had come.
The pressure was mounting and I had to agree with handing the club over,
thus practically destroying it.
If I resisted this solution they would have sent a notice
to my school that I was politically unreliable. So the club was done for.
A summer camp took place and the kids were then divided into Pionýr groups at various schools.
All of the former scout clubs were liquidated.
- Other scout clubs were destroyed in a similar way.
Even those which operated under cover of sports or hiking clubs.
- One of our partner clubs called Tuskarola was dispersed this way in 1974 already.
But that is when the parents of those boys stepped in,
many of whom were important party officials.
The chief wasn't allowed to continue leading the club but at least he wasn't imprisoned.
The club had been transformed into another one and the brotherhood continued.
- We changed with whom we were registered several times.
In the end we became members of the Pionýr but this only meant that the boys could go
to Pionýr at our club and didn't have to do it at school just in order to tick a box.
We tried to limit such obligations as much as possible.
We used to say we protected the boys with our own bodies.
- As they were applying to a grammar school they always came to see me,
being a Pionýr chief, and asked me to write them an assessment.
There were many of those assessments.
And the girls were being admitted to the grammar school.
- Once in my lifetime I wore the official unionist shirt.
I didn't even have it at home, I had to borrow it.
It was some meeting which required us to be dressed like that.
- When I was quitting the scout I had five rubberstamps
which contained the words Flotila Liberec.
One of them was from Pionýr, the other one from the youth union,
the third one was from the Union for Cooperation with the Army,
and one of them was from the house of children and youth.
The last one I don't know. I simply had five rubberstamps
and we used them on a case by case basis in various situations.
Pionýr and the union were there in order for the boys not to have to be registered elsewhere.
In practice we just paid membership fees, nothing else.
- And then, after some five years, we made an agreement with Sokol Malá Strana.
Via one of the boy's parents we received an assurance that they'd admit all
the seventy children, and so they spent the rest of their years there.
We hadn't been involved anymore so as not to stain them with our names.
We were scouts, then we were pionýrs, then we quit.
We were very old and we had successors.
- Each of us found some cover-up organization.
Someone was in Viktoria Žižkov, someone else in a sports club XY,
another one really gave it a shot in a Pionýr club before running away again
because this was no way to go. Everyone sought their own way.
We had to scatter because if we operated as one we would have been targetable.
- They thought they would carry on scouting the way they did
under the hiking association but that wasn't really true.
Ideology stepped in.
Eventually even the hiking associations had to operate under Pionýr patronage which we rejected.
- In the late-1970s the generation of children
who used to be scouts before the Soviet occupation became of age.
They themselves were taking over clubs.
- We waited till we were eighteen and then went to see
the Pionýr official - it was some young woman teacher - telling her we'd establish a Pionýr club.
She was completely perplexed because she never encountered such a thing
- every class used to be a club. In fact, she ran into trouble because of us.
People knew we were former scouts.
We launched a recruitment campaign and the parents who knew we were former scouts
nominated their small children and so we had up to twenty kids
and started using our old clubhouse.
- Was there no option other than Pionýr?
- In a small town like Říčany there wasn't.
We held on to our clubhouse, having the experience that without a base it's terrible.
I wouldn't have done it differently now.
- Then in 1975 most of the elders left and only four or five of us remained.
Along with Jirka Navrátil - Cyran, we started recruiting the small kids.
For two or three years we were meeting in our basement flat which we used as a clubhouse.
The neighbors knew very well that lots of kids were coming in on Friday afternoons
but never did anything against it.
- Did you guys know about each other that you were scouts?
- Yes, even the newcomers knew they were entering a scout club
because we talked it through with their parents.
- So it was a sort of conspiracy?
- Yes, it was a conspiracy.
In the 1970s there was harsh normalization.
We even had to bring the school headmaster our chronicle for inspection.
We were for instance supposed to go see a Soviet movie.
Nobody wanted to go, so I did, bought the ticket,
glued it into the chronicle and wrote that we attended a movie.
We became quite active and the boys had fun doing it - in a game called
Partisan Assault Rifle.
We even won some regional round and the school gained visibility.
It was about presenting the Pionýr club and the school as functional.
- So the boys who attended your club considered themselves pionýrs?
- I don't think they really considered themselves as pionýrs
because especially in the 1980s it was really hard to convince them.
"Guys, wear those scarves, we need to make at least one picture."
They weren't scouts but didn't want to become pionýrs either.
- The normalization communist bureaucracy didn't require the people o believe communist ideology
but merely to pretend devotedly.
For a child membership in Pionýr meant that it fulfilled the requirements;
that it didn't stand out of the line.
This was precisely according to the regime's liking.
- Were you not a member of the Communist Party?
- I was a member of the party.
I couldn't have served as school headmaster otherwise.
- When did you join?
- At the beginning of the 1960s.
- And up until when were you a member?
- I was in the party until 1989.
- So you had to pass through the post-1968 vetting?
- I did although I have no idea how.
I had never been hiding my scouting past and in the scout I wasn't hiding my party membership.
- It's quite interesting that you're...
- That I'm an amphibian, so to say.
- They then invited me to join the party.
I told them that I wouldn't. "Why don't you want to join? You could work as a chief."
- "I don't want to work as a chief and I don't want to be a party member."
- "You have to give some reasoning."
I said: "I can reason it easily - I used to be a scout."
- "That wouldn't matter." - "Yes it would." And that was it.
- In 1977 Petr Majchšajdr signed the Charter. Had it impacted the club's functioning?
- I wonder how come they hadn't uncovered us. I really don't know how it is possible.
Because Kim really was against communism and he said several times
that his contribution to the fight against communism was the upbringing of a new generation of people
who would resist it.
- In the 1980s Jaroslav Šebek became club chief.
- In 1983 I and a bunch of friends decided to re-launch the club.
We didn't want to be members of Pionýr - there was no way - and so we came up
with the idea of establishing Young Environmentalists.
Our club badge consisted of two hands protecting a linden leaf
which was a remade scout symbol. It was a statehood symbol, too.
We followed scout rules, changing the symbolic only. Our motto was: "Learn and protect."
We counted swans, prepared wintering places for them, planted trees at the Bukovec hill.
- So even without speaking about it, scouting remained as an educational method?
- An educational method, a system of club games of course, romanticism, camping.
Obviously, none of the scout ideals had worked but neither the Pionýr ones were being proclaimed.
- We had sworn upon the Czechoslovak flag saved by Kim in 1968.
During the Soviet invasion several people were killed
near the Czechoslovak Radio building, trying to protect it.
Kim took one of the flags and dipped it in a dead person's blood.
It then served as a reminisce of sacrificing life for homeland.
- Were you open about being scouts?
- You know what? We were.
For instance we went to an old campsite in Lipnice na Moravě
which was the first place where Svojsík [founder of Czech scounting] had camped.
We arrived at night, then we ignited the fire which was a mystical experience.
Then some of the elders spoke about where we were,
about the history of the place, and then we parted.
It was adventurous, romantic, and included the scout ideals.
- In the morning we lined up in plain clothes without any marking.
At night when it got dark we lined up again, wearing our uniforms.
We then sang the scout anthem, making sure that there weren't some blueberry pickers nearby.
But usually in the evenings there was nobody around.
- As soon as we presented ourselves favorably we had an opportunity to travel abroad.
Abroad we scouted all the way.
We went to Hungary and Romania for instance where we followed all of our traditions.
A single gesture was enough to make out that we followed a slightly different ideology.
- We had our scout shirts from which we unpicked all of the badges.
Then we had a piece of felt on which we had snap fasteners.
Sewn on that were scout symbols: place, name of the club, the scout lily,
eventually a ranking, plus linden leaves representing our active years.
This was worn on the left side of our shirts and in case of urgency it could have been quickly torn off.
- We hadn't clung to symbols.
Before going underground we didn't have a wow or scout laws and such but we followed it anyway,
and that's fundamental. Later we realized that we lacked a Decalogue and so we drafted it.
It wasn't called scout but it was analogical. They key was to behave in some way.
It was about education, not the organization.
♪ Czech scout anthem ♪
- After November 1989 the communist regime in Czechoslovakia crumbled and very soon,
scouting was renewed. The interest in it was great.
- Scout wasn't being rebuilt from scratch.
Either hiking clubs or clubs such as ours - but there were just a few - or even Pionýr clubs
which may have been scout originally, joined in.
- One of the troubles was the communist history of certain individuals.
In my opinion that is a doubly painful issue.
Initially, the goal was to infiltrate the official structure and to harm it from within but then again,
some of those people got to places and gained social prominence
which they wouldn't have had otherwise.
- At some point we had a pretty nasty argument with those people
who were among those who initiated it in the past but hadn't done it for twenty years.
They were telling us: "You are a bit deformed by the developments and twenty years of work."
And we said: "That may be so but we also brought up a number of chiefs
who now know to work with kids."
During those two decades, maybe a thousand kids went through that club of mine.
- It was somewhat pejorative, these "those are the former Pionýrs" claims.
They didn't dare to go against me because they knew that I was a real scout in the years 1968,
1970 but those people who had gone through my club in the meantime were being targeted.
I fought against it, saying that if it hadn't been for that,
we may not have had anything to re-establish.
Translated by: Tomáš Jungwirth Subtitles: ARTnative
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