Agreeing with Tolstoy's and Gandhi's views on non-violence, he refused to do military service, for which he served a prison sentence.
[2] Interested in philosophy, Tomin wrote to Milan Machovec of Charles University, Prague, who arranged for him to register for a doctorate.
Barbara Day writes that he was refused an academic position when he returned to Czechoslovakia, after associating himself with the reform Communists.
Several of the philosophers who attended these home seminars, including Jacques Derrida, were detained by the police and asked to leave the country.
[4][5][6] Tomin travelled with his family to the UK in August 1980, with the help of Kathy Wilkes, an Oxford philosopher, after receiving permission to study abroad.