These days we commemorate 30 years since the counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia. Let me start with the most difficult question: What do you consider to be the root cause of the fall of socialism?
Socialism as a thought of a better society did not fit. Even the events of 1989 associated people with “socialism with a human face”. They succumbed to the words of democracy, but thought of consumer goods. Not for quality, but for better packaging, more cultural sales, etc. This was a testament to the confusion in the heads of people.
Milada Sigmundová at a demonstration against Ukrainian fascism on Wenceslas Square in Prague, May 2, 2018
Socialism necessarily had to provoke, as any socio-economic formation, internal contradictions. I realized this when I watched my dad as a child doing the communist training in Karlovy Vary in Bohatice. Law of negation negation. At that time, I understood that no one could say, "We have won it for you, and now be grateful for it," but as a reminder that contradictions will increase. Once a stage has won, it will create contradictions that will lead to either a positive or a negative solution. And that happened.
The party necessarily lost a revolutionary character. I understand that at the time of construction there was an effort to give people after the war material goods, food, because the revolution is not eaten. But the first wrong step was the merger of the Communist Party with the Social Democracy. Minimally ill-considered. The next step - in 1956 Khrushchev: "Our generation will live in communism." It is, to put it mildly, stupid and the theory of Marxism far removed. And nonsense is also to talk about the end of class struggle. Of course, the class struggle is evolving, its forms in different states evolving. There will be no class struggle in communism, but there must be contradictions.
Every person needs perspective and needs to fight for it. Once he faces the task and does not take the lead of the revolutionary leading radical entity, it is wrong. However, I do not consider it appropriate that the party's leading role be included in the Constitution. Even in the common human collective, the leader must win his place. Well, finally, in 1960, we "built socialism." I was 16, but I was wondering where that socialism was when capitalism took several centuries to establish itself - not built up, and yet, to a certain extent, capitalism changes to some extent its external form.
The year 1968 came - “socialism with a human face”. It's an empty expression. Either there is socialism and it must have a human face, or it is not socialism. My dad, like me, has been skeptical since the beginning of the composition of the "January Men". First, there were first-class careers such as Shabbat, who in South Moravia, where my dad went to the trade union of miners and geologists, remembered as the "Margrave of Moravia". Suddenly he was the greatest Democrat. Others, apart from grinding about "humanity" and showing up in public as savior, did not have a program. And they could not even face attacks from the right, such as the Club of Involved Stakeholders (KAN). In terms of economic form, in the 1960s, Šik's theories about commodity market production prevailed. Interestingly, while the so-called Stalinists were far more tolerant, going to the state exam to Professor Shik's supporters was "shut up".
The next stage - Gorbachev and his "perestroika" are coming. It was a bummer running from Khrushchev, with his foolish criticism of the past. If I start apologizing for the past, it's a clove in the coffin.
External phenomena were involved, but the temporary defeat was mainly due to the fact that the soldiers of the revolution had turned into officials. The professionalisation of policy is to some extent necessary. Žižka had already done it in the Hussite movement when he needed trained fighters. However, people objectively begin to defend their chairs because they can do nothing else. I remember how my dad had already pointed out the inconsistency of the position of such a political professional. And it is a very big problem to deal with the status of an individual or a group of workers who have devoted a lot of effort to a political entity and are supposed to return to normal life with ordinary employment, but have lost their original qualifications partially or completely.
At the time of the 1989 coup, you were a member of the Communist Party for over a quarter of a century. What kind of profession did you do at that time and what were your memories of that time?
I was an economist and taught at the Political College. I had a bad position there. I was criticized for not developing Marxism and being too devoted to my son. It was solved by the party organization and I have hidden the testimonials so far. I answered that if the son were a vagabund, it would be worse. I wanted to go to my original profession at the State Bank. In the end I stayed because of my son Vítek because there was a holiday in school and I could devote more time to him. I study. At the Department of Political Economy and the Party there were people who said, "Feel free to leave, but we'll give you a testimonial that you won't get anywhere."
As for party life, it was a "trouble". There was almost a lot of draws for the party meeting. Nobody wanted. Not at all. It was beyond my power to elaborate resolutions of higher organs in the style of flowery phrases and Marx inflection in all cases. With the vast majority of people who "developed" Marxism at the time, I have not met after the coup.
Political change has been known since 1989 since January. The party was unable to oppose it. It was dragged by events. When the People's Militias were summoned to Prague in November, they were not provided with food. There was a complete disorganization. The culmination was when they commanded the "close gates" from the party secretariats and schools from above. Milos Cermak, whose wife was expelled from the party, said: "We will talk to people." But that was forbidden from above.
In 1990 I joined the Czechoslovak State Bank for a foreign department. After November 1989 the school passed immediately. They gave employees five months' pay and terminated their employment. Even the people who were to develop Marxism were not able to analyze and resolve the situation properly. They thought more about their position and waited for the resolution. And when there was no resolution of the Central Committee, they resigned completely.
I did not expect to "lay it down" like this. I was there when my dad went to Pilsen in 1953 after the currency reform. At that time, the activists went to the streets, talking to people. And I note that with very dissatisfied, even angry people. But neither in 1968 nor in 1989 no one went into the streets to explain the situation to people. The soldiers of the revolution were no longer soldiers but officials. Those who still remembered the struggle for victory were no longer called into action. This, too, is a major cause of defeat.
I was a member of the People's Militia at the College of Politics and I was determined to defend socialism. But if our leadership was spread out, it was not at the right. Apparently some groups had been organized that had raided the depots of the People's Militia shortly after the coup. It was sometime at the end of November or the beginning of December 1989, and everything went quickly because I couldn't even get my stuff. There were also weapons and uniforms in the warehouses. Certainly they had their "fighting" ready. But the party was no longer operational.
But the problem has been rushing since 1956 since politics became a job and that no party asset was ever worked.
Milada Sigmundová (left) in front of the Brazilian Embassy in Prague in support of Lula da Silva, 20 April 2018
You come from a communist family, both parents were members of the party. When did they enter it?
They entered immediately in 1945. They were of proletarian origin. The mother was half an orphan, and grew up in the monastery in Trebon at the grace of the Prince. There she began to be a great rebel, when poor girls had worse eating, unheated bedrooms, etc. Forever, she had two of her behavior. Dad was the son of a country tailor who had nothing to sew during the crisis, so they spared misery. In order to go to the business academy, the eldest sister had to go to work after grade eight, though she was very talented.
Dad became a clerk at the Reeskont and Lombard Institute, an institution founded in 1936 to balance the stock market. It was located in the building of Živnostenská banka in Příkopy. Thus he became a person under retirement, he had a business definitely, health insurance. Yet he went into the revolution in 1948.
Your father Jaroslav Svejkovský was a member of the anti-fascist resistance around your time of birth. Did he remember this period?
He remembered. He worked in the Defense of the Nation. He was not a member of the Communist resistance group, but the resistance was quite connected. Arnošt Šmíd, one of the brothers to whom Dad handed over the radio, was closely connected to the communist resistance. In Zbiroh, there is a commemorative plaque for the Hejduka station head who was hiding in a guerrilla bunker near Újezd, where there were also communists. Recently I read that everywhere in Europe the anti-fascist resistance was very politically divided, but in our country its cooperation was very close.
His father got to the resistance in Zbiroh through his friends, both Václav Vokáč, who was his trainer in Sokol and where his brother Karel Vokáč, poet and teacher was, and Jaroslav Šmíd, son of the Zbiroh miller, lieutenant of the Czechoslovak army. His brother Arnošt Šmíd also worked here. All the millers on the Zbiroh Creek were involved.
Action in the Resistance depended on who addressed whom. Dad would go to the communist resistance if he had a friend there. He came from Zbiroh, had parents and two sisters and came here. His eldest sister, who went to work in order to attend the business academy, was also in the resistance. She exhibited false work books at the employment office. For what resistance she had never spoken about, and maybe she didn't even know it. The resistance is not made to be talked about in the square.
After the war there was a section on increasing retirement participants. Dad didn't want to assert him. It was only when he was expelled from the party that his resistance collaborators persuaded him to use it and said, "While we are still in the world, who we knew and worked with you ... In a year or so we won't be able to sign it ..." lasted the longest in the world.
What exactly was his resistance activity?
He expanded the magazine "In Fight", designed a radio or sought parts for it. He took her to Zbiroh in a suitcase by train and after the war he wondered why he was not afraid ... He said that when he was chasing Karl Hermann Frank in 1945, he was more afraid. He gave the radio to the Smid brothers, Arnošt took it and took it somewhere. My dad continued with Jaroslav to the mill and further to Zbiroh. He talked about it marginally and made himself fun. (The Smid brothers, station leader Vaclav Hejduk, poet and teacher Karel Vokac, and many other anti-fascists in the Zbiroh region paid torture and life for their resistance.)
What are your first political memories? How did you perceive the first years of building socialism? How did parents engage at the time?
Dad prepared February. He attended meetings of right-wing parties, National Socialist and People's, and recorded their actions. The revolution was ready, and it had to be. People took her. There was a generation that remembered two wars and a terrible economic crisis, so they wanted a better company and no one had to drive her in the square.
We were friends with left-wing members of different parties. People naturally went to the Communists who fought the war and wanted a better society. The sister of the “Uncle Procházka” of the National Socialist Party was at the Christian Democrats and the Red Cross and also belonged to the “left”. Many sisters were executed during the Heydrichiads. I also received a red or pink donkey, which I then sent to Greek children. My parents had already explained to me what proletarian internationalism is.
Dad was transferred to the Jáchymov mines in 1949 as chief accountant for the civilian part. One of the employees of the UV, Bedrich Hajek, wanted him to go to the HR department at the UV, but he could not secure his apartment. This was different from the time after 1969, when one who went to Prague was automatically given a flat and a higher salary, while the first had no benefits. We lived in Vinohrady in a miniature studio, which did not even have a kitchenette and mom cooked in the bathroom. We got an apartment in Karlovy Vary.
Bedřich Hájek was a Jew before Karpeles. He was in emigration in London and his wife and daughter died in Auschwitz. He was very blamed. He was locked up with Slánský for life, so he went through Leopoldov, a high security prison ', etc. In 1960 he was rehabilitated and immediately returned to the party. Faithful Communist. Although a Jew, and had relatives and acquaintances in Israel and England, he remained in Czechoslovakia and the Communist Party. After the troops entered, he was fired again. But he remained a Communist. He did not live to see the coup in 1989.
Dad never liked being blown into something. It was squeamish for that. Supervision from the State Security over bookkeeping was firming, and moreover, Gottwald's call came to the mines, so my dad went back to coal in 1951. Already at the time of the motto “Republic more work, this is our agitation” he used to go to the Kladno mines. He rubbed well because he learned from old, especially German miners.
He was pulled from the mines in 1955 to the Miners' Union in Prague. There it was already visible how the human relations between the Communists changed. In Podolí we lived in a house for the workers of the unions, and there was already a layer of “comrades of mercies” waiting to be greeted by the older concierge and did nothing specifically useful. Mothers at the District Committee of Prague XV. they reproached themselves for being surrounded by “motherships” in their parenting association. Podolí was mostly a bourgeois quarter. Mommy said she was glad that the "mistresses" wanted to do, while the "comrades of the Mistress" were useless.
Here I already felt that while the communist community in Karlovy Vary lived with each other as a collective, as friends, it was no longer in Prague. The period of the early post-war building also supported new interpersonal relationships. But in Prague they were people who did not do something voluntarily, but they were officials.
After XX. Congress of Dad spoke at the meeting, saying that the concept of "cult of personality" is empty and wanted to know what were the conditions for someone to take such power into their own hands. They called him "Stalinist". The same ones who fired him in 1970 as an enemy of socialism. These were the clerks who always kept themselves and under any conditions. These included, for example, a URO employee who signed a condolence letter in 1942 on the death of R. Heydrich and received the St. Wenceslas Eagle.
Milada Sigmundová (Svejkovská) on a tea field tour in the USSR (third from left), 1962
When and why did you join the Communist Party?
I entered under the influence of my parents. I have accepted Marxism as a child. When I asked my dad what it was, he said, “It's a method of thinking. The method of accessing and analyzing phenomena and the corresponding measures to deal with them. ”It has been with me all my life.
I was admitted in 1962 when I studied at the University of Economics. They did not want to accept me too much, although I had testimonials from the old members of the party - the guarantee of the chairman of a party organization from Podoli, an old warrior in a foreign army, the interbrigadist wife I worked with. Suddenly my application was lost. Later on there were the great reformists of 1968, which I probably did not like. Like my dad. Despite all the difficulties I did not cease, neither did my dad.
After my studies I worked at the Czechoslovak Commercial Bank. At that time, I was so disgruntled by the party's attitudes that I no longer wanted to get involved in it and was looking for a “new left”.
How did you get to the "Left Opinion Opinion Association" created in March 1968? What kind of organization was she, how numerous and what was she doing? The available information speaks of the influence of Trotskyism, Maoism, but also of anarchism.
I don't remember anarchism. only Maoism and Trotskyism . It was a strange mixture of people. My dad and I were looking for something that wasn't with the "Men of January". Something that would really be radical. I was friends with radical Latin American students and I went to the Chinese embassy, so I had no understanding of “socialism with a human face”. Dad didn't either. Just because he knew even those officials who suddenly became “men of January” when they were previously the greatest dogmatists and so-called ax axes. The establishment of the Association of the Opinion Left was published in Rudé právo, which was signed by Tomáš Sigmund, my future husband. He got to it through some avant-garde theater and through Egon Bondy.
There I met Tomas at one of the first meetings. Petr Uhl introduced us. It was “Bohemian” in “Ďolíček” and then we went to the “Radiopalác” for a beer and had fun as ordinary youth. Only there was more politics.
At that time, Egon Bondy was no longer as inclined to Maoism as to Buddhism. There was a discussion about professional politicians. I remember Egon Bondy's lecture on Buddhism. Much was discussed "Open Letter to the Party" by Kuroń and Modzelewski. This was a Trotskyist struggle, but above all they criticized the bureaucratization of politics, which was interesting and stimulating.
Then came August. No one knew what was going to happen and the Left Opinion Association was dissolved. Tomas said he would never let it dissolve. And I think back that he was right. We should not dissolve the association. There were also people who tended to enter the troops. At least until the April 1969 plenary we could work.
There were a couple of us. My dad was chairman of the civic committee in Podoli and we met there in an agitation center.
When the Revolutionary Youth Movement came into being, Tomáš was a member there, very agitated, but I was “ticked” by my parents because it was in the apartment of Petruška Šustrová, whose personal life was very unconventional.
Milada Sigmundová (Svejkovská) (right) with a comrade from Colombia at Loreta in Prague, 1963-1964
How were you in contact with the Chinese embassy? Did you know the attitude of Albania, whose Radio Tirana also broadcast in Czech?
I attended Chinese embassies with radical students during my studies. Not anymore. Of course we knew Radio Tirana, but it had no impact. The cultural traditions of the country must be taken into account. The fact that the Communist parties of South America, for example, took over the influence of Moscow, was not appropriate to the conditions of their countries in terms of political and social terms and, after all, to the temperament of their inhabitants.
Dad always had a sense of humor. And so, when a Chinese attaché, a very nice man, came to see us, a neighbor from the union "Kovo" saw it and warned him, "Yaroslav, the car with the Chinese flag. "You know that, Otik, it is now, but you don't know how it will change in a couple of years and it's good to be ready." And this is usually not forgiving.
At the Chinese Embassy, discussions were held about once or twice a month, where they presented nice films from the Chinese Revolution, translated into Czech. Students from South America, Indonesia, etc. went there. These films better fit the mentality and needs of underdeveloped countries. Moreover, they were radical and I always had a radical solution.
I was friends with South Americans, my best friend was from Colombia, connected to the FARC movement. I even had their badge. They were classmates. They had a one-year Czech language course in Zahrádky near Česká Lípa. Some have learned great. Some of them stayed here, for example the Indonesians, because they could not return after Suharto's coup. One of them studied finance and accounting and even worked as deputy business director.
Later on, foreign students ran around the world, so visits to the Chinese embassy faded away with the fact that we were no longer together. I agreed with the Chinese criticism of the USSR.
I even considered leaving for guerrilla warfare in Latin America. It was organized that I would marry one of those guys and go legally to South America. But I had a lot of quarrel with them, because everything was beginning to slip into the academic disputes of Maoists and Communists of a different kind. What they criticized for the Latin American Communist Parties that they might trigger huge action and then back away from it began to do so too. It began to be a parlor narrative. That was it. I think no one left Czechoslovakia.
Maybe I would fall in Venezuela or Bolivia.
Milada Sigmundová (Svejkovská) with a comrade from Colombia in Prague, 1963-1964
The Revolutionary Youth Movement ended with the arrest of some 20 of its activists in the early 1970s, including Tomáš Sigmund. Did you have any problems with that?
Tomas was not my husband at that time. When he was released from prison in 1971, he asked me to marry him. He brought tuberculosis from Ruzyně because he was initially placed in a cell with a stranger who had it. When he was released, he got a disability pension and was in a sanatorium in Dobříš for two months.
At Ruzyně they were certainly glad they had it from their throats. He complained eternally - that they didn't deliver an orange package, that he didn't deliver a book ... He always had to be an advocate.
On March 19, 1971, a verdict was passed on 16 activists of the Revolutionary Youth Movement, two of whom received suspended sentences, the others unconditionally for 1-2.5 years, with the exception of Petr Uhl, who sentenced to 4 years What punishment did Tomáš Sigmund serve?
14 months for subversion of the Republic. I could not subvert the republic, because I was led morally and my parents stopped meeting me at Petruška Šustrová for moral reasons. The left-wing association had little response, so I had no problems with it. And HRM not at all.
Do you consider it possible that HRM or activists working with it might have committed armed violence against Soviet soldiers or intervention supporters, which they were accused of in a later trial, or were they just "strong-talking"?
No. Someone said it as a "strong opinion" that was immediately rejected. Someone said they should attack the radio. There was someone who reported it to the right places. But as we all know, my classmate from the University of Economics, the daughter of the Prosecutor Dr. Prokop, who was signed on the judgment of Tomas Sigmund, went to our wedding.
How did you bear the fact that you were a party leader in a state that imprisoned Thomas and others close to you? And how did he perceive it?
It was a very contradictory position. However, I never started to have anti-communist views, which ultimately happened to most HRM participants. But what I have to appreciate, Tomáš does not. He always said that he was not closed by the Communists but by the bureaucrats.
At the trial, he repented that he had been seduced by intellectuals. But in fact, he was never seduced.
Milada Sigmundová (Svejkovská) at the Club of Friends of Cuba, later the Club of Friends of Latin America, Prague 1963-1964
How did you go through party screening in such a situation? Did you advocate the Warsaw Pact intervention at that time?
I booked it. Much depended on the composition of the commissions.
My mother was examined by two mistresses from wealthy families who spent childhood and youth in boarding houses and married StB members well. So my mother wrote to Husak that he could not be checked from them. She had been doing something for the party for years, being of proletarian origin and rather than being screened by such mistresses that she preferred to hold the card with great sadness. So Husák checked her and she remained a member.
Dad was thrown out of the party as an anti-socialist element, the same ones who called him "Stalinist" in 1956. He ended up on geological wells. He was 57 years old and the cold in the caravan did not help him. He suffered a severe heart attack, but he was saved by the collective farm in Zbiroh, very well run and prosperous, which offered him the job of a security officer.
The main reason for his exclusion was that he did not agree with the arrival of troops. He argued that it would harm the international workers' and communist movements that it was to proceed in a different way. Instead of mobilizing a party asset, the crisis has been dealt with in a rather unclear way.
I refused military intervention too, but somehow I “played it”. I felt like a dad. They have established a huge problem for the future. The revolutionary rebellion is solved in power, true, but there was no revolutionary rebellion, people were stupid with "socialism with a human face" and the Soviets "jumped" with tanks ... Even if it was necessary from a military point of view, like in 1953.
Even after the coup, Mum was a "ten" in an organization at Prosek. Dad's already had major health problems. He did not imagine that development would go to capitalism. He died in 1993, his mother's 1994. When the Communist Party, after the coup, urged the expelled and removed members to return to the party, Dad did not consider it. He gave no great perspective to the side. He did not anticipate that the party that had been mopping up in 1956, which was mopping up the entry of troops, could still be radical.
Tomáš Sigmund became a member of the Communist Party after his release from prison. He himself admits that he was a collaborator of the StB, as confirmed by the “Cibulka lists”. How do you remember this time? I assume that at that time you did not engage in larger polemics with the official line…
I don't know the details, but my husband worked in construction and when we moved to Bohnice and Tomáš was building the library, there was a poor StB man who got tools in his hand to help him. He hasn't come there since.
I don't know exactly when he joined the party. In 1974 our son was born. Tomas liked to organize meetings and liked to talk. He really wanted something, never jumped. We both believed that the party would be revivable in terms of opinion, but that did not work even after 1989.
I went to the University of Politics in 1968 to study as an international financial institution in the development of Latin America.
I was just an ordinary member in the party, my parents too. These were the pawns of the revolution, without any function or property rise. Tomas also. But he was able to organize brigades and summer camps. Later he was a master of vocational education, but he was fired because he started picking some boys from the boys at Vrbova Street in Branik to show that they were poorly paid. Then he went with a truck, a mobile workshop, etc.
Trotskyists and reformists, in particular, regard the 1989-1990 as a "betrayed" or "stolen" revolution, and associated great hopes with it. How did you perceive it?
The massiveness of the Communist Party in this range was nonsense. Over a million people, many of them were just "communist". Tomas was a member of the party for some time and attended meetings of the Social Sciences Club. He leaned toward Dolejš and Heller. He did not seek any significant position in the Communist Party.
In 1989 the Left Alternative was established, which is little known. There was, for example, Vratta Votava, who stayed "left". Tomas ran to Peter Uhl, where Hanka Sabatova was, and she said it was a stillborn baby, that it was useless. They were completely different. But no wonder - Jaroslav Šabata, "Margrave of Moravia". This was what dad's conscious miners said.
The left alternative was very weak. The Club of Autonomous Folk Entrepreneurship was established, one of the representatives was Vlasta Hábová. They assumed that collective ownership of the working class would be created. I was more than skeptical about it. Unlike predatory capitalism, ownership of small producers could not be asserted. In addition, there were people who could not run a business that succeeded in capitalism. It was a futile attempt.
I consider the exclusion from the Communist Party, for example Jakeš, to be terrible nonsense and outrage. For what? That they "screwed up"? The others "screwed up" too! Apologizing for the past brings me to a terrible rage, throwing dirt against me. Will we apologize to the Swedes for stealing and taking away the Rudolphine collections?
The KSCM took over the membership base and property from the KSCM. But the membership held only by inertia. Yet many people sympathized with socialism. That's why I'm sorry they gave up so easily. But it was ridiculous to rule out Jakeš for that.
I never officially terminated my membership in the Communist Party, but I stopped attending meetings, and Tomáš also. No one has contacted us again. Part of clutter, part of indifference.
I never stopped being a communist. But I do not believe that the KSCM will become a revolutionary party. Just because she renounced her traditions.
Wedding photos of Tomáš and Milada Sigmund, Prague, Nusle Town Hall, 11 August 1972
How do you evaluate the attempts to create a new revolutionary party after 1989 - did you engage in the New Anti-Capitalist Left, which then formed the Left Perspective - and why were they not successful? How do you assess the role of the KSČM in this context?
There were people of very different opinions. I was in the preparatory committee of the New Anti-Capitalist Left. But the composition of the committee was such that establishing such a party was impossible. There were people from the masarykovci to us…
I suppose a new revolutionary subject, whatever its name will be. I may be wronging the KSCM, but I do not associate the revolutionary future with it.
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