Forced to join the cooperative, our family was uprooted
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Pavla Mikešová, née Sedláčková, was born on 3 December 1956 in an evangelical family in Růžďka in the Vsetín region. Her father, Jan Sedláček, was a farmer on the family farm. Since the 1950s, the family faced pressure from the communists to join a unified agricultural cooperative. It was not until 1976 that the father signed the application form for the cooperative. As the daughter of a so-called kulak, she was not allowed to study at grammar school. Thanks to the help of her class teacher, she got into an agricultural high school. With her father and grandfather, she copied and distributed Charter 77 and various samizdat publications. She helped distribute religious literature published in Western Europe. The Sedláček family hid hundreds of books from abroad in their granary. Upon discovering the Christian literature translation site, her father was arrested and held in detention for six months. Eventually, he was sentenced to probation for economic crimes. Her grandfather was also prosecuted. Pavla Mikešová worked in the JZD in Bystřička. After the cooperative was dissolved, she worked at the Czech Insurance Company until her retirement. She is a mother of four children and lives in Bystřička.
