Jan Pavlík

“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.”

“Čejkovice really got to me. Firstly I wanted to sort out with the town council (or the local national committee, as it was back then) that it’s undignified for the people in Čejkovice to have a room this size for their medical centre. And that was a knife to [the chairman’s] throat: ‘Either you build a medical centre, or I’m going my own way.’ I said: ‘I’ll get you an architect, I’ll organise it, but you have to get the funds.’ So the way it was, Franta [the chairman - ed.] got caught on the idea, and I got the architects, and we set to the construction of the medical centre, which nearly ruined me. Because the DINH [District Institute of National Health - trans.] director came up and started shouting: ‘How dare you, you build yourself a little medical centre here! We have other centres in bad condition...’ I said: ‘It’s the mayor’s initiative, I’m glad he did it for me.’ That’s how it was, I thought the thing up, and I reckoned it was well thought-up. I think that was sometime after sixty-eight. So things went very quickly because the Čejkovicers were willing to participate in those Z events. Then I started taking an interest in the castle. So I told Franta, who headed the farm there at the time: ‘It’s a pity to let such a castle go to ruin, and it’s in your ownership.’ Well, and when we discussed the matter, I said: ‘You know what, I’ll start one project. I’ll go to the heritage office in Brno, and I’ll take an architect with me, and we’ll go for a nice stroll through the castle and discuss what could be done about it.’ So we got the funds, some preservative action was made, and I said: ‘We’ll also have to get into the people’s awareness somehow.’ Because the Čejkovicers’ attitude was like: ‘So what, let it collapse, what do we care... it just gets in the way here.’ And the farm had this attitude especially, that it’s just an old shack and whatnot... And he was the biggest Communist as well, the manager of the farm, from the board of the district Communist committee, so there were some conflicts there, he even tried to give me a scare, saying I shouldn’t stick my nose into things like that, but I wouldn’t be discouraged. So I went to František Kožík [a popular Czech author of historical and biographical novels - trans.] and told him that I wanted to put on a play there, Governor Šarovec. So he gave it to me, we copied it out, prepared it, and started rehearsing the play.”