Jan Pavlík

“I had been under surveillance by the cops for a long time, and they checked on me wherever they could. I first noticed it in sixty-eight because they came to check on me when I was still in Čejkovice. [Q: Did you ever try to find out if they had you on file?] Well, I’m sure they did. I’m sure they did because I found one, and I reckoned I’d request it. But I found it in some list, my name, as a person on file and under surveillance. They kept coming and... when I was working in the general ward in Hodonín, we were friends with one colleague, Vičánková, and they fled to Germany. So there was some kind of contact here, so when my colleagues emigrated, they started asking questions, of course. ‘Are you in touch with them, do you send each other letters?’ I said: ‘And why shouldn’t I send them letter? They’re friends, so why not.’ They were such a nuisance... And then, when I came to Veselí [and Moravou], one time, I don’t know why, this one suspicious looking boy came to me and started asking me things, and I told him: ‘You know what, take your things and get lost. I have no business talking with you. I’m not going to talk about those kind of things because I don’t do things like that.’ - ‘Then you better watch out so we don’t call you in to State Security.’ I said: ‘Don’t you start making threats because...’ But that was still that regime that watched us. I took it with humour but also with a pinch of fear because of the kids.”

“I finished grammar school in 1955. Because - I don’t know why - the Strážnice grammar school was chosen as a place where students from several districts were sent, presumably due to bad cadre reports. And that was my case as well, although... well, the cadre report said kulak, entrepreneur, and so on, which were insults in those days, right, that’s how we were labelled, our families. So at the time when I attended the town school [upper primary school - trans.], when I was already doing folklore with Uncle Franta [Okénka]. So at that time, when my mother said: ‘You know, Franta, Jan would like to go to grammar school, but it’s difficult. The Communists here don’t want to give him the recommendation, and all kinds of nonsense,’ so he made the acquaintance of one František, who was the headmaster at the town school in Veselí [nad Moravou] and had founded a group called Prespolan there. And when it came to it, during the negotiations, he said: ‘But you’ll join Prespolan.’ So I was active in the Veselí folk group Prespolan for some time, well, and then when I enrolled at the grammar school, we started leaning more towards, well, that we’d start a folk group with the youngsters. We had a boarding school there. That was another Communist effort, re-education. Back then... the regime favoured folklore activities here because they were misused as entertainment for various variety shows and meetings, so there was a lot of demand for it, and we had to go around co-ops as propaganda to persuade people to join the co-ops. We drove around in a lorry, dressed in our costumes, it was terrible. Well, we had to. In the fifties folklore was simply supported as something that actually helped them, the Communists, implement their cultural agricultural policies.”