I was easy prey
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The historian of theater and literature Václav Štěpán was born on January 21, 1935 in the village of Tišice in the Mělník region into an agricultural family which, despite small fields (5.5 hectares) was called “kulaks” at the time of collectivization. After high school, he was accepted to the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, where he studied history. Here he met the student Vladimír Straka, who at one party confided in him his participation in the anti-communist resistance group of Vladivoj Tomek. In 1952, the group committed an armed attack on four basic service soldiers, killing one of the soldiers. Tomek’s group was not discovered until several years later, and due to Straka’s statement, members of the StB also focused on Václav Štěpán, whom they contacted in the spring of 1960. Since he did not give Vladimír Straka, they threatened to judge him as a member of their “terrorist groups”. Václav Štěpán signed a cooperation with the StB under strong pressure. At that time he worked at the Military History Institute and since 1961 at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Academy of Sciences. Here he participated in the events of the Prague Spring. Around 1967, the State Security lost interest in him, stopped contacting him and terminated his cooperation with him. During the years of normalization, Václav Štěpán worked at the Institute of Scenography, at the Theater Institute and in the theater department of the National Museum. The StB contacted the witness again in the 1980s and interrogated him in connection with the anti-regime activities of his brother-in-law Rudolf Battek, but he did not agree to cooperate despite threats. Václav Štěpán is the author and co-author of many important publications on the history of Czech theater.
