Marie Vyskočilová

“My (husband) tells me: ‘Go and put some clothes on, it’s come.’ We thus came there (to the national committee office) and there were about fifty of us. The larger (farmers). His name was Hostýnek and he was some sort of a communist official at the district committee, and his job was to persuade people to join the unified cooperative. He did give us a hard time. ‘So sit down here.’ He was rushing from one side of the room to the other and shouting at us: ‘You are enemies of socialism and we will treat you accordingly. We will evict you to places where you will not do any harm.’ One farmer says: ‘And where is that going to be, the Ural Mountains?’ ‘This is up to us, you don’t need to worry about that!’ And they continued persuading us. All the time. The men then said: ‘We go out to the hallway to discuss it.’ One of them said: ‘Guys, you know what? We will probably have to sign it. They will evict us, and what would our old parents do then? Who knows where they would send us, somewhere in the Ural…’ And so we signed it. A week later a large tractor with a wagon arrived. They came to the shed for our four cows, two horses, two heifers, two pregnant sows, and three one-hundred kilo pigs. They started loading them onto their wagon. Grandma and grandpa were crying in the yard: ‘For God’s sake, what shall we (do)? But why are they taking them from us?’ I said: ‘Grandma, we are not enemies of socialism.’ ‘And what is it?’”

“I had to go to the cow-house. To milk the cows. It was not a big change for me, because I had been milking cows at home as well. That’s true. But I had to get up at half past three in the morning. At six they already came to pick up the milk. Maruna was born at that time; we were already part of the Unified Agricultural Cooperative. She was born in February and throughout the whole January I had been going on bike to the cow-house to milk the cows there. When she was to be born, I was not at home. Only after I had given birth, I was at home with Maruna for a week or two. But the zootechnician came for me and he told me: ‘You know what? You will have to come to milk the cows. The women there do not want to milk your cows.’ Each of the milk-maids had twenty-five cows and they had to divide my cows among themselves while I was at home. I replied: ‘My God, I have just given birth.’ ‘You got your other kids, don’t you, they will take care of the baby.’ The kids! Stadin was just about to finish school and Bohuška was ten years old. He tells me: ‘Just milk the cows, and go back home. You don’t have to wash them or anything.’ We always had to wash the milking pails and milking cups and everything after they had taken the milk away. ‘They will wash them for you, but please, just come for the milking. I cannot find anybody else.’ The milk-maids said: ‘Let her come milk her own cows.’ (Among the cows that you were milking, were there any that had been confiscated from you?’ I don’t know where they placed them. There were cows from people from Blatnice. There was one cow which they called Míštěna, the Míšek family gave it to the cooperative. Auntie learnt that I had this cow. They came to me and they told me: ‘Girl, you have to be careful, this cow likes to kick! You have to sing to her when you milk her, otherwise she will not give any milk.’ I said: ‘Oh, so that’s really great!”