The Czechs in a Nutshell

Well, one might object, some corner-cutting could hardly be avoided when a market economy was created almost overnight, so there’s no reason to moralize too much. That’s certainly true, but the case of Nova is still exceptional.

Not only have Czech authorities let Nova get away with a blatant license fraud. Today, hardly anybody criticises Vladimír Železný for having caused the Czech state budget to lose 10 billion korunas. On the contrary, in June 2004 Železný was elected member of the European Parliament! The station’s hair-raisingly biased and professionally flawed news programs (unfortunately, the naked weather-ladies are gone) are still the most popular in the Czech Republic, and just to give the country’s most watched television an official blessing, Václav Klaus held his first New Year speech as president both on the state ČTV and Nova.

All in all, this makes TV Nova something more than an ultra-commercial, lowbrow TV station. It perpetuates the self-deception (see: Gott, Karel) that a majority of Czechs so nimbly practiced during the Bolsheviks’ normalization in the 1970s and 1980s: you know that something is stinking, but pretend that you don’t notice it.

Ukrainians

Officially, only 260,000 foreigners with a permanent residence permit were registered in the Czech Republic as of the beginning of 2004. Even though foreigners, because of illegal immigration, indubitably make up more than the official 2.6 percent of the population, the Czech Republic still has a markedly smaller share of immigrants than the average Western country.

This is not too puzzling, since economic immigrants still find Bohemia and Moravia more attractive as a transit area than a final destination. There is, however, one spectacular exception: Ukrainians. Because of the hopeless situation in their home country, where a tragic mixture of political mismanagement, corruption and souring criminality have wrecked the economy and caused immense social problems, Ukrainians have been flowing to the Czech Republic since the beginning of the 1990s. Officially, they number about 60,000, closely trailing the Slovaks as the largest foreign community in the country, but the unofficial number is very likely much higher.

Basically, Ukrainians have found what they were looking for: jobs. But the price they pay is high. Just like Turks in Germany in the early 1960s, the Ukrainians are doing work that Czechs don’t want, because of low pay or hardship or both. So, in all parts of Bohemia and Moravia you can find Ukrainians, some of them with academic titles, digging ditches, laying bricks or cleaning septic tanks for wages that often don’t exceed what the average Czech is paid in unemployment benefits. This drudgery is also dangerous. When a tragic accident happens at some construction site (which practically means every other day) you can bet your boots that the poor guy killed or crippled for life is a Ukrainian.

Needless to say, Czechs don’t regard these low-paid, hard-working and often also hard-drinking (who can blame them?) drudges with too much respect. According to the common and utterly cynical perception, a Ukrainian is a poor fellow who is overjoyed by the chance to do unqualified labour in a civilized country. A hundred years ago, thousands of Czechs flocked to Vienna (see: Austrians) to do the same kind of work, but that’s mostly forgotten today. “Ukrainian”, to most Czechs, has become synonymous with “miserable Gastarbeiter”.

The Ukrainians have, however, one effective image-saver at their disposal.

In 1918, when Czechoslovakia emerged from the ruins of Austria-Hungary, Trans-Carpathia (or Ruthenia), which is the westernmost region of today’s Ukraine, was declared a part of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs, who had suddenly become masters not only over the Slovaks, but also over some 450,000 Ruthenians, started to develop their new and (compared to Bohemia) backward province with great fervour. In the capital Uzhgorod, a Czech governor was installed, and Czech teachers, gendarmes, and engineers were stationed all over the small province (the writer Ivan Olbracht has written several wonderful short stories from Czechoslovak Ruthenia).

In 1939, Hungarian troops regained control over the region, which until 1918 had been ruled from Budapest for more than eight centuries, and thus scotched the Czechs’ promising career as colonizers. After the Second World War, Ruthenia became a part of Soviet Ukraine, but the Czechs have not forgotten their former eastward expansion. In school, children learn that the 20 years of Czech rule in Trans-Carpathia were the happiest and certainly most democratic in the Ruthenians’ long and thorny history.