"The top boss called me and offered me to apply to the Communist Party and offered me the leader position. I rejected the application to the Communist Party. They sent it to me again after a fortnight. I turned it down again and said why. That I don't like their politics and that I never wanted to be a communist, that my grandfather was harmed by communists and that I won't continue that. What happened was again unbelievable. The top boss, his name was Josef Botek, a true communist, went to the Communist Party factory-wide committee with the idea that he would hire a non-communist for that position. They said they had to convince me to join and he said it was not possible to convince me and that he would need an exception. They didn't want to approve it, so he went to the District Committee of the Communist Party of the Czech Republic and finally got the exception. For this leader position for a non-communist. So, I was the first non-communist to take up the nomenclature post and I stayed there until 1989."
"And as soon as I came to Let [the company Let Kunovice], it was such an interesting event. Not long after I joined, the signing of the Anticharter was organized. There were twenty-two of us in the office. We all had to assemble and go to the signature sheets. At the time, I said: 'If I have to sign that I don't agree with something, let me read it first.' And they kicked me out. Not from work. From that signature point. They refused to let me read it. I was the only one in the department not to sign the anti-charter, and strangely enough, there were no consequences for me, I can tell."
“I decided not to wear combat boots. My doctor's note said 'unspecified leg disease' because I had an injury once. But I was fine. So, except for the oath, I always walked in Oxford shoes. Except for the oath, I did not wear the combat boots on my feet ever. Once a major came up to me and said: 'Soldier, where are your model 57 boots?' And I, as I knew the rules, saluted normally and shouted in a strong voice: 'Comrade major, private graduate Zelinka. I have model 57 shoes properly cleaned, polished, stored in the company locker.' And I waited. And he started talking to others. “
Antonín Zelinka was born on January 15, 1951 in Nový Jičín. After graduating from the Technical High School in Brno, he applied to the Mechanical Engineering Faculty of the BUT in Brno, where he also met his future wife Alena Svobodová, whom he married in 1974. Although he was not a member of the Socialist Youth Union and did not receive a recommendation from the school management, he won the last year of the selection procedure for the Research Institute of Electric Rotating Machines in Brno. After joining there, he met many experts and professors who were prevented from remaining in key positions due to their political unreliability. In 1976, he joined the basic military service in Mošnov. After the military service, he managed to get a job at Let Kunovice, a company focused on aircraft construction. Shortly after joining the company, he was the only one in the department to refuse to sign the Anticharter. He became a speaker at union meetings there. He refused to join the Communist Party in order to obtain the position of the head of the department. He nevertheless became the leader thanks to the exemption granted at the District National Committee. In this position, he significantly perceived the situation in the standardization society, which was reflected in work productivity, such as the absence of motivation, initiative, avoidance of responsibility for work done, etc. When, in 1989, he was one of the first to learn what was happening in Prague, he began spreading information in the company and became the spokesman for the strike committee. After the Velvet Revolution, he won an audition for the position of director of Let Kunovice. In the difficult period of the early 1990s, however, he opposed the decision to prioritize the purchase of an aircraft engine from an American company under political pressure and was fired. For Antonín Zelinka a new life stage of cooperation with other experts from the aviation industry on aircraft construction began. He became the director of the successful company 5M, s. r. o., and the head of the Moravian Aviation Cluster. In 2019, he ended his activities in all associations and businesses.
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