Vlasta Kubalová

* 1945

  • "We were all looking forward and rejoicing that everything would be different, although we were also afraid of the beginning of the demonstration, how it started on 17 November, when the police went there against the students. And we didn't know how it was going to be. We all believed that things would be better and that the new generation would perhaps live differently. Of course, it was different in the cities than here in the countryside, but it is true that we had enough information, that students from the universities came here and informed people a lot, and there were various meetings."

  • "I was still a child at that time and actually the onset of the communist regime, it's like... I guess it didn't touch me. We were children, we looked at that time as the way it was. Collectivisation started here in 1949, I was four years old, so I guess I didn't have any sense of it. But after that I could see it, because in the fifties they started to set up cooperatives here and people didn't want to leave their animals and they didn't want to join a cooperative. There was sometimes outright violence, where they would literally pull cows and horses out of the barns, out of the stables, and take them away."

  • "I originally wanted to do something completely different, I wanted to study law, but I didn't get in. I guess because of my background, because my dad was a businessman and I had trouble getting into high school. And because there were so few teachers at that time, they set up colleges in regional towns. So I tried there and I studied Czech and Russian. And then I waited to see what would be the next fate, because at that time there were placements."

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    Čechtice, 05.04.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 51:50
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Fate changed her parents’ origins and her placement after school

Vlasta Kubalová, 2023
Vlasta Kubalová, 2023
photo: Post Bellum

Vlasta Kubalová, née Maršíková, was born on 15 July 1945. She spent her kindergarten and primary school years in Čechtice in the Benešov region, then graduated from the grammar school in Vlašim and subsequently entered the Pedagogical Institute in Jihlava. Originally she wanted to study law, but due to her family background this was not possible. After school, she was placed in Dolní Kralovice. She and her husband, also a teacher, got married in June 1968 and started building a house. They had to leave Kralovice in 1970 because the village was flooded due to the construction of the Želivka reservoir. They started to live and work in Čechtice, where they built a house and continued to teach at the school there. Their first son was born in 1969, the second in 1972. Vlasta retired in 2002. In 2023 she lived in Čechtice.