“Then all those screenings started. And as it was in that region and I was working for the Central Committee it didn't affect me for quite some time. So I kept working there and in 1972 I was summoned by the screening committee of the Communist Party's Central Committee. So I went there. And the screening committee was good to me. They told me: 'Comrade, you have a small baby, so just sign – that it's just this friendly aid.' And I told them: 'Don't even think about that.' - 'You will bear the consequences for your whole life.' I told them: 'I can't sign this. As I couldn't look anyone in the eyes after that, not even myself.' Well, so I didn't sign and I was expelled from the party, I got to know that by mail. Within a month I was fired from my job, from the uranium mines, saying that they got this directive. For maybe six months I was without a job, I had no money, nothing. No welfare, there was nothing like that, as there was no unemployment, right, at least on the paper. When we were moving to Liberec... So I could live in Liberec, put Ruth in kindergarten and work 30 kilometers away, I bought myself a Trabant car, they were without heating. I bought it when we were still living in Stráž, where I did a driving school by enterprise. And in Liberec I would go across Ješted to work so I would manage to drive Ruth to the kindergarten in time, they adjusted my working hours, and then to pick her up again. That was demanding as there was still lot of snow at Ješted and I would be driving wearing a cap and gloves, and the road was slippery as I was in a hurry to pick her up in time and that was quite hard. After they fired me and I had no money, I sold the Trabant and we were living off that money for six months.” - “Was it even possible?” - “It was but I was so afraid that they could take her away from me. That they could say I was a parasite and put her in an orphanage. As it was illegal not to work, right? But we managed to withstand it somehow. In some cases it took quite some time and I must admit that people were so good to me as individuals. I never met anyone bad or ugly – who would say, for instance, that I was a single mother or that I was expelled from the party. In my whole life no one ever treated me badly. No one ever did indeed. I started looking for a job when I still had the car, before I sold it. I bought this large book and then I told myself: 'I will throw it away, I wouldn't bother with that.' I know I visited 60 places in the whole Liberec region where they were offering jobs. I was looking for any job, even a blue-collar one. And that was the problem: “You graduated from university? So why would you like to be a worker? We wouldn't let you do something like that.' 'You graduated from university? Oh, you were expelled from the party? In that case we can't employ you.' So I was just unemployable. And in maybe three cases they told me: 'Okay, call us in a week.' They asked the Central Committee and the Central Committee wrote them back that they were not allowed to employ me. So I was unemployed and almost penniless, and I was in Liberec. And I just had no idea what to...”
“At that time when I was at the Faculty of theatre... I was always this top student. I got all A's all the time and I was quite active. At the school I was a student leader, I was the chairman of the Union of Youth group, later I was in the Prague's student Czechoslovak Socialist Union of Youth Committee. I was so active, so Julie Charvátová asked me whether I wanted to join the Communist party. I might have been maybe eighteen or nineteen years old. And I told her: 'Well, that's just a wonderful idea, this just society.' So I was a candidate for a year and after a year they took me in, I didn't know what criteria I had to meet, I didn't do anything, none of those tasks given by the Party, but after a year, I was admitted to the Communist party. So I joined the Communist party as a university student and I was there... I have to look, I will get there in a moment... well, I was expelled in 1972. Oh! I was a candidate since 1962, I joined the party in 1963 and I was expelled at the Party's Central Committee in 1972. I am quite a dutiful person, so there was this summer for example I would spend reading Marx's Capital. In summer I would take it with me to a forest where I would go on a bike, and I tried to read it, surrounded by young people of the same age. And they would just stare at me like I was crazy, as no one would read something like that. It was so incomprehensible they they wouldn't even try. I wanted to understand that book, to know what it was about.” - “Your schoolmates were also candidates?” - “I don't know. I think that when I was at a Party meeting at the university there were maybe two people present or even just one. I was always a top student, I was always unique, so I wouldn't find it weird in any way. Do you know what? Today, when I see on Facebook: 'Stupid Commie, they were all just bad,' I know that's not true at all. As people had various reasons to join the Party. Like my father, who join the Party when he was young as he believed in the cause. And later, in 1968, as I did public opinion surveys among Communist party members I could see how diverse they were.”
“So I used to read a lot and I used to go to the public library. What a reader I had been! I borrowed those books there at the library and on my way home I couldn't wait so I would read while I was walking so I was hitting lampposts. I would read the whole afternoon after I came from school, I just read all the time. And I had these friends in Vinohrady. I went to the eight-year school in Perunova Street. That was quite interesting: It was a corner house, quite a big school it was, and back then... I started to go to school in September 1950. And there was this entrance from the Perunova Street for Protestants and there was an entrance for Catholics from the Slezská Street. We were a Protestant family. My grandmother, as it was written even in my birth certificate, was from a Protestant family and by coincidence my father's family was also a Protestant one. But my father claimed he was an atheist and didn't want to have anything to do with this. He just wanted to be as rational as possible. And I started going to this Protestant class and after I found out that my best friend... back then children didn't go to kindergarten, we were at home... and I had this friend from our house, a girl... that she went through this Catholic entrance, I got this high fever and my mother arranged that I would go to a Catholic class. So I completely missed the religious education that was still going on in schools in the early 50s. As when there was this religious education for Catholics they just sent me to wait outside the classroom. I would wait there for an hour and after that I came back and envy those sacred images they were given. I wasn't exposed to any religious education at school, which was still possible back then.”
Eliška Novotná was born on April 12th 1944 in Prague. She grew up in the district of Vinohrady and had a complicated relationship with that place, as well as with her parents. She used to escape her home mainly by reading books. After graduating from secondary school, she studied at Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU), but after a short period of time, for health reasons, she changed school to Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, where she took interest in empirical sociology. After graduating, she started teaching sociology at the Academy of Performing Arts and then did postgraduate studies in sociology and control theory. She gave birth to her daughter whom she was raising alone. From April 1968 to November 1969 she was working at the Communist Party’s Central Committee in the field of public opinion surveys. She wrote her dissertation thesis but as the ‘normalization’ process had already been implemented she didn’t obtain the title. She started working as a company sociologist at a national uranium mining company and moved to Liberec, yet after 1972 screenings she was expelled from the Party and lost her job. During the period that followed she tried in vain to find a job to feed herself and her daughter. After some time she had succeeded. She did blue collar jobs, was working in social care and in computing, often at the same time. As due to financial reasons she had to have two jobs for many years. In 1986 she decided to make a fundamental change in her life: she moved from Prague to Zahrádky, a village at the boundary of South Bohemia and Vysočina region. For four years, she was employed in local cowshed. Since 1990 she was teaching sociology at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice and then at the University of Economics’ faculty in nearby Jindřichův Hradec. At the same time she was a member of several civic initiatives and did three terms as a mayor of the village of Zahrádky. She retired in 2019 and has been an active member of civic society.
Eliška's christening, April 25th, 1944, from the left her grandmother, Eliška Dubová, her mother, her father, hed godmother, Alena Cejnarová, with her husband, in a Protestant church in Prague's district of Vinohrady
Eliška's christening, April 25th, 1944, from the left her grandmother, Eliška Dubová, her mother, her father, hed godmother, Alena Cejnarová, with her husband, in a Protestant church in Prague's district of Vinohrady
Eliška with her best friends, from the left Věra Hurychová, Karin Ratajová, Věra Kaldová; Krkonoše Mountains - villa Duncan, on a ski school trip, 1958
Eliška with her best friends, from the left Věra Hurychová, Karin Ratajová, Věra Kaldová; Krkonoše Mountains - villa Duncan, on a ski school trip, 1958
