“Our class teacher told us that Mrs. Principal wished that we wore decent clothes. Decent meant not to wear jeans, not to have T-shirts with signs of foreign music bands, not to have long hair, not to have badges with symbols of rock bands. We wore Youth Union uniforms when we were on duty in the gatehouse. Normally we did not wear them to school, only if there was some celebration – the May Day and the October Revolution Day – and on those days we were supposed to wear the Youth Union uniform. May Day parades were taken very seriously. Participation was compulsory. It was closely observed. We had to carry banners and it was ridiculous. It is true that later we really didn’t give a damn about some of these things. Like clothing. From the second or third grade onwards we ignored it. From time to time someone would scold us or the principal would storm into the classroom and yell at those who had long hair or who were not dressed the way she wanted.”
“I don’t like to remember the grammar school in Zábřeh, because I was already getting aware of the situation at that time, and to put it simply, it was obvious to me that it was a terrible grammar school which was heavily controlled and watched in terms of ideology. The management prided itself on the communist nature of the grammar school. Some of the teachers probably did not take it seriously, but most of them submitted to it. Very few of them were willing to protest against the ideological pressure from the management. We took turns serving as guards in the gatehouse and we had to wear the Youth Union uniforms. We used the greeting: Labour be honoured. We had a class of ideological education. It was compulsory for us to be members of the Socialist Youth Union, and if somebody did not want to, it caused quite a stir. We had an unusually active chapter of the Union of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship at the school. We had to attend nonsensical events and discussions about the Soviet Union.”
“Especially at the beginning, there were really not many people at those protest rallies. We had a protest really in the yard in Bráf Street. There were very few students and the school management behaved quite arrogantly at the beginning. No, they did not make threats to us. They would not dare to anymore. But they treated us with disdain. They were telling us: ‘You will soon let it be, it is cold outside, now there are thirty of you, tomorrow there will be twenty of you and then only seven on Friday.’ Some of the teachers were kind of scared and they were telling us that it could collapse anytime. ‘Do not play with fire,’ they were saying. They did not urge us to let it be, but they said: ‘Do not be too radical. Sure, changes are necessary, but don’t’ overdo it.’ One teacher claimed that the People’s Militia would intervene in Ostrava, that he had already heard something like that.”
Prof. Mgr. Jan Malura, Ph.D, was born September 24, 1971 in Opava. His father Miroslav Malura, a musicologist, was one of the most active people who were involved in the political restoration process in Ostrava in 1968. As a result, he lost his job at the pedagogical faculty in the subsequent normalization period. The family moved to Ostrava and Jan studied at the grammar school in Volgograd Street in Ostrava. This grammar school was extraordinary, because until the very end of the 1980s it was governed by exceptionally strict totalitarian rules and most of the teachers were staunch supporters of the communist regime. Jan often had conflicts with them. Nevertheless, he was still admitted to the pedagogical faculty in Ostrava to study Czech language and history. He began studying at the faculty immediately before the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Jan became actively involved in the revolution and he was one of the first people in Ostrava who participated in the protests. The pedagogical faculty was transformed into Ostrava University. Jan graduated from its Faculty of Arts in 1994. He remained working there as a lecturer and later he became a university professor and the head of the Department of Czech Literature of the Faculty of Arts at Ostrava University. He is a foremost expert on Czech Baroque literature.
