Jana
If, like Jana Machatová, you come from the Husák’s children generation, the trappings of the Normalization youth shock brigades, called the Pioneers’ Organization of the Socialist Union of Youth, such as the badge, red scarf and blue uniform are probably indelibly etched in your memory. You had to parade in them every time one of the numerous regime holidays rolled around, with vigorous slogans on your lips and frenetic parade objects in hand. The childhood of a pioneer was a necessary privilege of the generation growing up in the 1970s and 1980s; you were part of a tribe with extreme customs and picturesque rules—its chiefs showed demonstrative affection towards each other and an absolute lack of trust towards everybody else. Although in their opinion you lived in the best possible world, with perfidious thoroughness they prepared for even such an arch improbability as the defection of a socialist citizen. Six meter high electrified barbed wire surrounded by a plowed strip of land, so that every footprint of a fugitive could be recorded, only two meter high fences around the entry and exit from the borderline, guard towers, dogs, permanently patrolling guards and sometimes even mine fields were supposed to protect, in their opinion, against the penetration of enemies to the communist paradise.
—Viera Kleinová