I escaped from my home country, Bulgaria, to Czechoslovakia and then to the West.
The Pact of Munich is signed. Czechoslovakia as a power is out.
By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market.
If I hadn't left Czechoslovakia, I would have been dead.
You know what happened, you know, in 1938: France, England, you know, just sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Communism.
My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.
Because of my parents' love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia - first by Hitler and then by Stalin.
In Czechoslovakia in 1968, communist reformers appealed to democratic ideals that were deeply rooted in the country's pre-second world war past.
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the '30s, East Germany in the '50s, Czechoslovakia in the '60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the '70s, China in the '80s and '90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists.
Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words, the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership, Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.
Czech: Řekni mi, co čteš, a já ti řeknu, kdo jsi. English: Tell me what you read, and I'll tell you who you are. First president of Czechoslovakia.
But bread is different. I come from Czechoslovakia, where we eat lots of it, so it's hard to say no. I can't even have one piece, because when I start, I don't stop.
I was in Vienna in August 1968 for a meeting of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, of which I was co-founder, and we wanted a 20th country to join. They asked for a volunteer to go to Prague to get Czechoslovakia to do it, ...
My parents came to this country after World War II, Jews from Czechoslovakia who had survived Auschwitz and Dachau. They settled with my sister in rural Ohio in the 1950s, where my dad became the town doctor and I was born.
If you are in Brazil and you grew up in a right-wing dictatorship, you think Marxism is liberating. But if you grew up in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union is controlling everything and killing people, then you think capitalism is liberating. Neit...
The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw ou...
Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called “a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by hi...
