Paweł Kowal is a political scientist, historian, columnist, expert on Eastern policy, co-founder of the Museum of the Warsaw Rising, Professor in the Institute of Political Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences, postdoctoral research fellow at the College of Europe Natolin, lecturer at the University of Warsaw and Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Research Station of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.
As a writer, Pavel Kosatík deals with modern history. He is the author of dozens of biographical books on personalities such as T. G. Masaryk, Jan Masaryk, Ferdinand Peroutka, Pavel Tigrid, Emil Zatopek, Vera Caslavska and others, as well as essay books. He is also a screenwriter of TV documentaries.
Petr Placák was a member of the youngest generation of the anti-communist opposition. In the late 1980s, he was one of the organizers of public events against the regime. From 1982 to 1986, he played the clarinet in the band, The Plastic People of the Universe. Under incessant bullying from State Security he worked in various manual professions, he published in Samizdat. Petr Placák says that in 1988 he lived from one anticommunist demonstration to another and that it was clear to him that the regime could collapse only under persistent pressure from the public.
Today he believes that the demonstrations in Wenceslas Square during Palach Week marked a turning point in the Czech society‘s road to freedom. Among other things by influencing or even changing the mentality of those who until that time had been active in the so-called gray zone. After 1989, Petr Placák completed his studies of history at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. He published several books, the most recent one being the prose work Fízl (Cop), for which he was awarded the Magnesia Litera Prize in 2008. He writes for various Czech dailies and is in charge of the cultural-social student newspaper Babylon.