When Vaclav Klaus was born in Prague on June 19, 1941, Czechoslovakia was under Nazi occupation, with the Germans imposing a protectorate on Bohemia-Moravia, the land of the Czechs, and creating a puppet state in the Slovak part. Half a century later, and after decades of communist rule, the Czech Republic (or Czech Republic) and Slovakia, today two member states of the European Union, came into being on January 1, 1993. In this interview, the former Prime Minister and former Czech President asked him not to ask more about Ukraine, “as I am not an expert and I am tired of saying that it is a war between the West and Russia.” And so the conversation focused on the reasons for the division of Czechoslovakia after the collapse of communism in Europe, despite everything peacefully, unlike what happened in Yugoslavia and also in the former Soviet Union, where Russians and Ukrainians today today still face each other, just like Armenians and Azeris, to name just two examples.
He married in 1968, the same year that Soviet troops entered Prague and the famously tragic Prague Spring took place. What are your memories of this year?
I worked at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in the Economics Department and the famous Czechoslovak economic reform, which somehow introduced markets into centralized planning, was completed. This reform went too far, meaning that the Russians eventually decided to intervene and block and suppress it at the central level. I was part of this story. I was 27 years old and I spoke, wrote and gave interviews and after that I was considered an anti-socialist, anti-communist and anti-Soviet Union person, so I was dismissed from the Academy of Sciences and for twenty years. I had no scientific work for years. I didn’t return until before the fall of communism, so these events were part of my life.
Source: DN
