From humanitarian work to journalism: Pazderka’s journey | iRADIO

What leads a student of the Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Brookes University, who is engaged in humanitarian work after graduation, to journalism?
It’s a strange metamorphosis that happened sometime around 2004, 2005, when the then editor-in-chief of Respekt, Tomáš Němeček, contacted me asking if I wanted to start writing. I then replied that I greatly appreciated the offer, but that I was a humanitarian in body and soul and would be for the rest of my life. I really enjoyed it, I lived it.

But over time it moved more towards journalism, which I had as a hobby. When the offer was repeated after a year, this time from Czech Television, I decided to give it a try. But I still felt betrayed by humanitarian work.

You were a humanitarian worker in Russia, in Chechnya…
Yes, after my studies I joined People in Need, I was in charge of the media. I was on an internship at the epicenter in Moscow with Petra Procházková. Then the Chechen-Russian war started and Šimon Pánek called me whether I would stay in Russia, that we were starting a humanitarian mission for Chechnya.

What did you see there?
It was a crucial experience for me – on the one hand, I found myself in Moscow, and suddenly the mission pushed me to the Caucasus, which has a very specific culture and is affected by war. It was interesting, intense, I was learning to work with a humanitarian convoy along the way, brushing up on the Russian I knew from primary school. Seeing war from the inside is a surreal experience.

I remember one situation when we were driving a humanitarian convoy to Grozny. The driver and I were talking and I told him that his engine was humming and he laughed and said it was a hum shootingsin Grozny. It was coming to terms with the danger of conflict.

A journalist in Russia

Is it hard to maintain objectivity?
Objectivity is a bar to which we are constantly approaching and we will never be 100 percent. You need to have a good team around you to alert you when you’re flying. Fortunately, I’ve always had such a team around me, and I actively ask people around me to give me feedback.

I am a bit atypical among journalists who report on Russia, I had no family ties in Russia. Before Petra Procházková opened the Russian world to me, I didn’t know it, and I didn’t suffer from Russophobia, but at the same time I realized more and more what kind of space I was in and how it was defined in relation to the West, to which we belong. This morning, for example, I remembered the great man Oleg Orlov, who is in prison for an article about the fact that Russian aggression in Ukraine is really aggression.

Did you feel that you understood the Russians?
I didn’t feel like I could understand this huge, biggest country in the world in detail. I probably know more about her than many of my friends, but in February 2022 that feeling disappeared. All visions of how the mode works are gone. It terrifies me because the unpredictability presents scenarios none of us want.

Do you divide your life into work and leisure? When a person has children, has seen what you have seen and knows a lot of connections, it is difficult to maintain mental hygiene.
I have four boys, they are very active, as is my wife. At work, I always print out articles that I would like to read, but the whirlwind at home takes me outside to nature, and I am grateful to them for that, and to my wife, who endures lighter and harder times with me. You yourself know that it is important to clear your head. I am trying the same thing, the principle is similar to yours.

In your podcast Na Východ! are you penetrating the post-Soviet space, how do you choose the topics?
The podcast was originally the idea of ​​Ondra Soukup, who came up with the idea that there was a hole in the market. That it happened in human chemistry and interest in eastern space is a great coincidence. When the podcast was being created, we did a couple of pilot episodes and we weren’t sure how it would turn out because there are so many podcasts out there these days.

It turned out that Czech Radio can do podcasts well and creatively. These are thematically areas of our interest, we try to map that huge area so that we don’t get stuck on one topic. We are looking at Central Asia, Armenia, the Caucasus and we are going to a number of other places. We are driven by the pursuit of the most varied mix, behind the scenes. The post-Soviet world has a facade, and behind it is a world that is almost invisible, where much more important things take place.

What do you think is the awareness of the Ukrainian conflict in the Czech Republic?
I reassure people that it’s not as bad as it might seem. I consider the Ukrainian chapter from February 2022 to be the Czech star hour. Our society has mined a solidarity within itself that is especially evident when compared to the embarrassment with the reluctance to accept Syrian refugees. As a former humanitarian worker, I am watching the record sums that have gone to Ukraine. As for the media, the topic of Ukraine dominated the journalism awards. We are not bad, it could be better, but the response of the company, which logically declines after two years, is not bad.

What conversation stayed with you?
It is difficult to choose a specific one, but the interview with Nataša Estěmirová, who was a close collaborator of Anna Politkovská, comes back to me a lot. Natasha was Politkovskaya’s right-hand woman, an extremely brave woman who reported on what was happening in Chechnya under the rule of Moscow-appointed President Kadyrov.

In 2009, I went to Chechnya, I was watched very closely, and I preferred to interview her in Moscow, where it was safer for everyone. Natasha was honest about what is happening in Chechnya, how Kadyrov is an extension of Putin, that there are prisons where people are tortured. She spoke openly about everything, and I could see that she had the aura of someone who is considered a fool in Russia, who has already crossed the line of what the regime is willing to tolerate. A few months later, I learned that her body was found on the Chechen-Russian border, that she had been tortured and murdered. These are the stories that get under your skin.

Are you thinking about the fact that you too don’t have to come home one day?
As foreign journalists, we are more visible and protected, there is a risk, but I say quite frankly that the biggest risk is for domestic journalists with whom we have worked closely. Those are the heroes.

Lucie Výborná, Zuzana Pavloňová

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