ABSTRACT
It’s hard, now, to make sense of it all. What was it that set me on the path to political imprisonment? My clearest recollection is the persistent unease I felt, the disturbing sense of the wrongness of things as I listened and looked—a boy caught up in turbulent times. And then, in the aftermath of 1945, I witnessed the political manoeuvres in post-war Czechoslovakia and felt a fundamental opposition to it all. I didn’t trust Russia. I didn’t trust Moscow. Like the Nazis before them, the Russians were doing their best to get Czechoslovakia under their rule. I was afraid—and angry. If a Third World War broke out, I didn’t want to live under Russian occupation. I didn’t want to fight in the Bolshevik army.
