Zdeněk Kuchta

“It was the spring of 1969 and those who had caused evil in the 1950s were starting to rear up their ugly heads again. One day, I think it was in March, I was teaching and the headmaster knocked on the door: ‘Comrade – we used to address each other ‘comrade’ – please grab your things and come with me.’ When I left the classroom, the headmaster told me that some other comrades had come to take me with them. I walked out of the building, and there was a car with a driver and two people I didn’t know. I got on and we started talking. They said they didn’t know where we were going. We went to Studénka and someone else got on too. We ended up in Bílovec at the town hall and there was a party trial panel. I had to wait for some time, and when it was my turn, a person took out a stash of my newspaper articles, all with dates on them. Somebody had been monitoring me all along. There were notes added too. Long story short, I was told that I was a disappointment and didn’t deserve to teach young people because I would corrupt them. Accordingly, the party decided to expel me. Of course, I defended myself, but it was pointless. So, my native party expelled me. I had no idea of what that meant at first; it meant that I lost all of my positions, one by one, within a short time.”

“During the harvest, they used threshers operated by like five or six people. They fed the machines with crops and put on bags for the grains. They took a lunch break at noon and went home to eat. I was startled to see people wearing tall rubber boots up to their knees on such hot days. It was totally illogical; that is, until they came home, took the boots off and poured out the grains they had sneaked in before leaving the thresher. When two or three family members did this, they could bring back home ten kilos at noon, the next ten kilos in the evening, and stock up on grains. Why did they do it? Because you needed coupons to get any food back then, and when you ran out of coupons you could not buy anything else. Those people raised hens, geese, and ducks at home and needed to feed them. That’s how they did it. I remember it well; it could have been in 1954 or 1955. That was during the farm cooperative era. After that, there were state farms where there were more controls. During the cooperative era, it was up to people. They didn’t join the cooperatives voluntarily. They were forced to join, so they weren’t overly concerned. They didn’t see it like they were stealing from anyone. They knew they had been robbed; the state forced them to something they disagreed with.”