Pavel Šmíd

* 1964

  • "I was the only one in the whole department store, in the whole building, who was willing to participate in the activities of the Civic Forum. I went around the shop assistants, there were a few guys in maintenance, but I didn't persuade anyone to go on a general strike. As an agitator, I was a total failure. And I was so nervous about it that I started smoking. I could strike, but I had to work for it, so I struck in a stupid way. The only ones who put up the banner were the pub staff in the restaurant. That was also part of the department store. No one else joined in. So I didn't succeed in stirring up the revolution in Havířov."

  • "I remember the slogan of that time: 'Young blood to Prague'.So a lot of people came from the outskirts of Moravia, but not only from Moravia, not only high school students, but also apprentices. And they all came at the same time. When one left Krnov at half past two, one arrived, of course, standing up, at the main station in Prague at half past ten, with a change in Olomouc. And there were situations where people were standing even in the compartment. God forbid that something should happen. One Easter, it was Friday the 13th, and it was not a free day then, I was returning from Prague to Krnov. It stopped at Kolín. We all had to get off the train and wait for the next one. The whole number of people had to fit into the already full train and we kept going. I think we had to go through Brno, because there was another complication near Česká Třebová. I got home at four or two in the morning, while I was leaving Prague at two in the afternoon. The transfer from Olomouc to Krnov took two minutes. Not to mention all that was going on there, how the apprentices were fooling around, drinking and having sex. You were glad to get out of there and live."

  • "There were a lot of collaborators, collaborators in the sense that they did business with the Russians, with oil and various advantages that the Soviet troops had. But because I lived at the complete opposite end of Krnov, I didn't come into contact with them much, except that officers sometimes walked around the square. They were absolutely unmistakable in those huge coats and huge brigade jackets with gramophone records. And they were wearing hats. There were always one or two soldiers following them, carrying shopping. They were at the other end of Krnov, near the barracks, where they had their compounds and shops. And if you can call it collaboration, my future mother-in-law used to go shopping there too."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 22.07.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:40:35
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 01.09.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:25:03
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I was afraid the communists would be here forever.

Pavel Šmíd / 1996
Pavel Šmíd / 1996
zdroj: Archive of a witness

Pavel Šmíd was born on 18 March 1964 in Krnov. His father worked as a dyer in a textile factory, after 1968 he was expelled from the Communist party. His mother was a primary school teacher. He graduated from the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Prague. He then applied to art college several times in vain. After the war he worked as an artist in the Budoucnost department store in Havířov. In the second half of the 1980s he lived in Ostrava and became part of the unofficial art scene there. With his wife Helena, he organized flat exhibitions and intensively devoted himself to graphic art. In 1989 he co-founded the art group Prirození in Ostrava. Its members included Jiří Surůvka, Petr Pastrňák and Daniel and Jan Balabán. After the fall of the communist regime, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He studied painting in the studio of Jiří Sopek. He earned a living as a set designer, later patinating film sets. In 2023 he lived in Prague, devoted himself to free art and had about thirty solo exhibitions.