A Conversation with Jan Urban

Nov 11

Listen to the full episode:

Time Codes:
4:34 The ‘perfect commie’ childhood
6:38 Swinging ‘60s in London: Beatles & Joan Baez
9:11 Waking up to Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia
11:34 School fights over ‘the big lie’ of communism
13:37 What it’s like to be blacklisted
17:28 Charter 77 and saying no to kompromat
20:24 Anti-intellectual work and horses
22:39 JFK and importance of Helsinki Accords
26:28 ‘We had no plan to follow Velvet Revolution’
28:29 Reading Trump’s secret police file
31:03 Dismantling of U.S. institutions
32:20 Teaching students about dissent
34:22 Building the perfect engaged citizen
35:29 How to talk to the enemy
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Sometimes you have to talk to the devils

For a man who has been pounded by history, Jan Urban is surprisingly cheerful. His stories are wry, punctuated by laughter and pause-for-effect drama. Born into a family of stalwart communists in post-war Czechoslovakia, Jan grew up as “the perfect commie kid” ready to rescue wage slaves in the imperialist West. But a classroom fistfight, and a surprising confession by his father, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, began to change all that. A trip to London in the swinging ‘60s – and a chance encounter with Paul McCartney – didn’t hurt either. After listening to the music of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and the Beatles, he said, “no propaganda could win us over anymore.”

By chance, Jan flew home from London on August 20, 1968 – and awoke to the sight of Soviet tanks outside his family’s apartment building. The Kremlin’s invasion spelled the end of the Prague Spring experiment with liberal reforms, and forced a brutal conclusion to his father’s political career. Shunned by the state and mainstream society, the family took on menial jobs to survive. Neighbors crossed the street to avoid conversation. His father eked out a living as a forester, a night watchman, and a postal clerk before dying at 66 after his fifth and final heart attack.

Jan eventually found work as a small-town teacher. But there too, politics played a role. He was called to a meeting where staff were ordered to sign a petition condemning prominent dissidents and reformers as traitors to the state. He refused, knowing it would mean the end to his teaching position. He spent two years training racehorses and became an active member of Charter 77, the citizens’ initiative that pressured the communist regime to uphold the Helsinki Accords and other human rights obligations under international law. He worked as an underground journalist, reporting for Radio Free Europe and co-founded the East European Information Agency, which helped tally arrests and repressions under the regime. Jan’s actions led to numerous interrogations by the secret police and jail time. It was a period he credits with teaching him how to talk to the enemy. The brute force he encountered was “the end line of humanity,” he said. “But it is still humanity.”

In November 1989, Jan was a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution, the peaceful street protests that led to the end of communist rule, the rise of Václav Havel as president, and the country’s first free elections in 43 years. Jan himself quibbles with the use of the word “revolution,” saying the pro-democracy victors had no particular plan in place for what to build next. Disenchanted with politics, Jan returned to journalism, reporting from wartime Bosnia, training journalists in Iraq, and occasionally reading up on Donald Trump’s secret police file. He continues to work as a political commentator and teaches a popular university course on modern-day dissent. He also worries what the dismantling of U.S. institutions may mean for Russia’s near neighbors. “From our perspective,” he says, “it's high treason.”