The Czechs in a Nutshell

Here, inhabitants of countries stretching from Iceland in the north to Greece in the south and from Portugal in the west to Russia in the east, are asked to present their opinions on matters such as religion, sex and openness about sexual matters; their acceptance of foreigners; the importance they attach to family relations, law and order, social security, and material goods; and whether they prefer liberal or authoritarian relations between children and parents, respectively between pupils and school teachers.

When the answers to these value-related questions are sorted out, the Cold War distinction becomes meaningless. Europe is not divided east/west, but north/south. Or to put it more precisely: when it comes to attitudes towards life, Europe has two anti-poles — the Balkan and the Scandinavian attitude.

According to the extreme Balkan model, it’s crucial to maintain “traditional values” (fathers as the unrivalled head of family, children blindly obeying their parents), religion is very important, and neither foreigners nor “new ideas” such as feminism are very welcome. In school, teachers are supposed to maintain strict discipline, and sexual matters, let alone homosexual ones, are not to be discussed in public.

The extreme Scandinavian model, on the other hand, is characterized by a very strong openness and a liberal attitude towards everything from children and education to sex and religion. Contrary to the southerners, the northerners don’t cry for more law and order, they don’t attach too much importance to material goods (maybe because they are too spoiled), and their negligence of family ties often results in social isolation and even loneliness.

So, where do the Czechs and Central Europe fit in?

As one might expect, the answer is not entirely ambiguous. In some matters, Czechs display downright extreme tendencies. Few nations in Europe have less confidence in official institutions (see: Kajínek, Jiří; Scepticism), and the Czechs are generally distrustful towards other people — be it foreigners or compatriots. When it comes to religion, only the former East Germany can boast more lax relations with God, and where sex is concerned, the Czechs confirm their reputation as extremely broad-minded. In family matters, on the other hand, they tend towards the traditional model, which is especially apparent when it comes to education (see: Dancing Schools).

The survey targets numerous other areas as well, but when all of the answers are tallied the conclusion is quite apparent: the Czechs end up much farther to the north than their geographical position indicates. So while the Poles, because of their strong religiousness and respect for traditions, end up in the near vicinity of the Romanians and Bulgarians, the Czechs (and also the Slovenes!) land not far away from Sweden.

This, of course, should only serve as an indication that the old Cold War divisions are practically irrelevant in real life. And the Czechs themselves, sceptical as ever, would certainly remind you not to put too much confidence in what people declare in different surveys. As Winston Churchill, the inventor of the term Cold War, once confessed: I only trust statistics that I have forged myself!

Velvet Revolution

Almost 50 years of totalitarian rule, when disgusting crimes were hailed as heroic actions while heroic actions where condemned as disgusting crimes (see: Horáková, Milada), have left the Czechs utterly suspicious of any officially “verified” explanation of the many dramatic events that have taken place in their country.

This widespread distrust has given rise to a wild array of historic myths. All of them have one common denominator: events that seem to have a simple and perfectly logical background are, in reality, the result of a conspiracy conducted by “dark forces”. This is not entirely inappropriate when it comes to the 1950s and early 1960s, when conspiracies evidently flourished. However, it’s more surprising that an event as relatively recent and significant as the Velvet Revolution in 1989 is also entangled in a mesh of myths.

According to the official version, the Velvet Revolution started on November the 17th, when the Socialist Youth Organization (SSM) arranged a demonstration in Prague’s Albertov district to commemorate Jan Opletal, a medic who was shot dead by the Nazi occupants in 1939. After some brief speeches, the students marched to Karel Hynek Mácha’s grave at Vyšehrad — and then towards the centre of Prague.