We cordially invite you to another historical walk, which this time will be devoted to interesting places not only in the Břevnov district of Prague 6, connected with concerts and other activities of the Czechoslovak underground community and especially the group The Plastic People of the Universe. František "Čuňas" Stárek, a researcher and documenter of these events, will be our guide.
The meeting is on Tuesday 6 June 2023 at 17:00 near the Hvězda game preserve, in front of the restaurant U Holečků, Libocká 6, Prague 6. The walk will take about an hour and a half.
The walk is free of charge, the project is financially supported by the City of Prague and the Municipal District of Prague 6.
František Stárek (*1December 1952)
Representative of the pre-revolutionary underground, publisher of the Vokno magazine. Participated in the organisation of musical productions and lectures and in the dissemination of samizdat literature. In the well-known Plastic People case, he was tried in Pilsen together with Karel Havelka and Miroslav Skalický for the crime of rioting in an organised group, which they should have committed by jointly organising and holding a lecture by Ivan Jirous and a concert by Svatopluk Karásek and Karel Soukup in Přeštice. At the beginning of 1977, he devoted himself to organizing and distributing activities connected with Charter 77, which he also signed the same year. In 1979, he began publishing the samizdat magazine Vokno, for which he was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment and two years of protective supervision. About 1979 he devoted himself to activities in Charter 77 and cooperation with the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted.
In February 1989, as editor-in-chief of Vokno magazine, he was arrested again and, together with his wife Iva Vojtková, sentenced in one of the last political trials in Czechoslovakia to two and a half years imprisonment and two years of protective supervision for sedition. He served his sentence in Horní Slavkov. On 26 November 1989, he was released under an amnesty granted by the President of the Republic. Since April 1990 he has worked for the BIS, since 2008 he has worked at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and also cooperates with the Museum of Memory of the XXth Century.