For forty years, we lived under a hypocritical regime. Those who had created and sustained it claimed it would last forever. I could never come to terms with such a prospect, and my cup of patience began to fill almost from the very beginning. Shortly before my fifth birthday, my father was turned into a political prisoner. That was the first drop. We had to leave Bratislava, and I spent several years in the countryside in the south of central Slovakia.
Because of financial circumstances, we often had to move, and during my eight years of primary education I attended schools in four different towns. I came to know my country through real life under difficult conditions, not merely from the window of a living room in Bratislava. While studying at a secondary technical school specialising in construction, and immediately afterwards, I worked in several manual professions – from stagehand and miner to lumberjack.
Life in France
After graduating from the Academy of Performing Arts in 1968, I experienced the most humiliating and revolting moment of my life – the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet army, disguised as the “assistance from allied armies”. I regard that as the second drop. About a month after the occupation, I left for France. The French government awarded scholarships to all Czechoslovak students who happened to be in France during the occupation. I passed the entrance examinations to the International Theatre Academy in Nancy and spent two years in France. After returning home, I worked in theatres for almost twenty years and appeared in numerous films and television productions.
A few sentences
In June 1989, I was given Václav Havel’s petition “A Few Sentences”. I signed it because various communist institutions were condemning my colleagues for something that the text itself did not contain at all. That concentrated hypocrisy added yet more drops to my cup of patience. Shortly afterwards, I also signed a petition calling for the release of political prisoners. It concerned several individuals who had laid flowers at the places where the Russian occupiers had murdered children aged fifteen to seventeen. The atmosphere around me immediately began to change. I was removed from the official delegation to Spain. It was a festival of Czechoslovak films in Madrid and Barcelona. Six films had been selected, and I played the leading role in two of them – Papilio, directed by Jiří Svoboda, and Good Pigeons Return, directed by Dušan Klein. At the Czech Filmexport, they told me that although these were Czech films, I was a Slovak actor and should therefore contact the Slovak Filmexport. At the Slovak Filmexport, however, they told me exactly the opposite – that although I was a Slovak actor, these were Czech films and I should ask for an explanation in Prague. From unofficial sources, however, I already knew that the decision had been made by the Communist Party. It was not in the state’s interest for someone with my views to travel abroad.
Returning the title and a letter to the government
I therefore contacted the office of Minister of Culture Miroslav Koyš, where I wanted to ask for an explanation. Despite repeated requests, nobody responded to my attempts to arrange a meeting. Sometime during the first half of October, I took the certificate awarding me the title of Merited Artist, together with all the items associated with it, and went to the Ministry of Culture. The security staff allowed me through because I was a sufficiently well-known actor, so I reached the the minister’s secretariat without any difficulty. The minister was not there, and his secretary objected that she could not accept the items and that I should wait for an authorised representative. I carefully placed everything on her desk, wished her a pleasant rest of the day, and left the ministry. At the same time, I wrote an open letter to the minister of culture. I sent copies to the Office of the Slovak Government and to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In the letter, I described all the circumstances. I emphasised that accepting this title also meant silently endorsing the way culture and the state were being governed, which I considered incompatible with my conscience. Both the letter itself and the reaction to it were broadcast the following day by Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. I most certainly did not send it to either of them, and I will probably never find out which of those institutions was responsible for making my letter public. It should also be said that before deciding to return the title, I had to come to terms with leaving acting behind, because some of my colleagues had been banned from working for much lesser offences.
Mixed reactions
The reactions of those around me were mixed. In Wenceslas Square, complete strangers embraced me, saying that I was their Jánošík, while some acquaintances in Bratislava pretended not to know me. There were also those who told me they supported me but that it had to remain between us. I realised only two outcomes seemed possible. In the better case, emigration, if I were allowed to leave. In the worse case, prison. Later, in a private conversation, Marián Čalfa, Chairman of the Federal Government, told me something along these lines: “I kept telling them we needed to pay attention to this, because in forty years no one had ever returned such a title. We had no experts for that, no department that knew how to deal with it. We monitored Charter 77, we even had our own people there, but this was something entirely new. We had never expected it.” At the time, I was filming The Last Butterfly with Karel Kachyňa. When we met on set, he embraced me and said: “What have you done to me, my son?” He knew that a film in which one of the leading actors had returned a state title would be locked away in the archives. I replied honestly that I was glad my final film was being made with him.
November 1989
I had become a dissident, but neither of those unpleasant possibilities ever came to pass, because about a month later the events of November 1989 began. I had already crossed the Rubicon, with no way back, so it was only natural that I appeared on the public stage, and Václav Havel strongly insisted that I become one of his advisers. In conclusion, I would only add that in those first days there was certainly no shortage of opportunities to speak from the platform. Anyone who wanted to speak and had something to say had the chance to do so. That is why I sometimes find it rather amusing to hear claims that I was merely one of the spokespeople for the “brain trusts”. Amusing because I was already speaking publicly before those "brain trusts" even came into existence.
About the author
Milan Kňažko (born on August 28, 1945, in Horné Plachtince) is a Slovak actor and politician.
He studied acting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. For two years, he was a member of the drama ensemble of the Theatre Studio, from 1971 to 1985 a member of the New Stage, and for another four years he joined the drama ensemble of the Slovak National Theatre.
He briefly served as Dean of the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, in 2002 became President of the Bratislava International Film Festival, and from 2003 to 2007 was the General Director of TV JOJ. In 2016, he was named Actor of the Year, receiving the Thalia Award for his role as Shylock at Prague’s Na Jezerce Theatre. In October 2024, he received the Thalia Award for best foreign artist.
He was a member of the Federal Assembly and from 1992 to 2002, a member of the Slovak National Council, now the National Council of the Slovak Republic. In the 1990s, he was, among other things, Minister of Foreign Affairs and later Minister of Culture of Slovakia. In 2013, he ran in the presidential election.
He lives in Bratislava, has been married three times, and has three children.
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