Bohuslav Vlasák

“You cannot even describe the atmosphere in the village at that time. Because the people who had farmed here for years were thus obliged to pass the farms on to the next generation. But when the children wanted to stay at home, they had to go away. The authorities would not let them stay at home. Therefore the farmers did not even have anyone to whom they would hand over their farms. These people could see for themselves that they would not be able to manage the farmwork, because they were getting older. It was all artificially created, this anti-agricultural policy to carry out the collectivization process in the village at all costs. When I recall February 1948, I remember it well, when Gottwald shouted in Prague that when somebody comes here with a kolkhoz they would chase him away. That there would be no kolkhozes in our country, only for farmers with more than 50 hectares; that they would nationalize their land. But apart from that, there would be no kolkhozes. But the reality was different. And the characters of young people were thus formed as well, because politicians were promising something and then not fulfilling it. Because they were unable to fulfill it, because they had been ordered from the Soviet Union that everything would be demolished. My father used to say it as well, and he has read a lot, and he was saying to the neighbours here: ‘None of us will have anything, only the clothes we wear.’ And it was really so.”

“However, there was a certain turning point, the year 1948. Some teachers continued to educate us just as they had been doing before, some turned coats and they realized that they would not be able to continue that way for too long. And so they changed their stance as well. But this necessarily had to impact the character of those children, too. When the collectivization process then started, we were required to participate in the May Day parade. And all of us were thinking about how they were treating the people, the people who had been born on that land and who had been working there and now they were now creating obstacles for them and even punishing them for having failed to deliver the required amount of crops because they have not been given the means to do so. And each of us was thus forming some view of the situation in that time. I would say that it was the most difficult time in history, not in the entire history, because our ancestors… there was servitude, and so on. But in the modern times this marked a great turning point when they took everything away from us and they were prescribing who would work in agriculture and who would not be allowed to work there. Since I informed them that I wanted to stay on the farm and continue farming just like my father had been doing, I was criticized that I was not reading daily newspapers sufficiently. That the Soviet Union would supply us bountifully with wheat and all livelihood and that in the future our agriculture would not be needed at all.”