The Czechs in a Nutshell

The 20 years that followed the Soviet invasion are probably the main reason why so many Czechs are loath to look in the historic mirror. In its effort to “normalize” society back to Soviet-style communism, the new secretary general Gustav Husák and his fellow hard-liners kicked some 500,000 members out of the party, and then dissolved every single organization in the country that had shown even the slightest sympathy towards the Prague Spring reforms.

But simultaneously, the neo-Stalinist regime tried their best to secure the common Czech an agreeable standard of living. Their message could be interpreted as follows:

“If you just pretend to respect the fact that we’re running this country, shut your mouth and show up at a pro-regime demonstration from time to time, we will guarantee you a (certainly not too exhausting) job, decent housing, the possibility of buying a Škoda car, a cottage in a beautiful place in the countryside, possibly a vacation at some Black Sea resort, plus, of course, the opportunity to fully exploit all life’s carnal delights (see: Hedonism), starting with inexhaustible quantities of the world’s probably best and definitely cheapest beer.”

A vast majority of the population accepted the deal. Even though the Communist Party was thoroughly cleansed for “liberal” elements after the Prague Spring, it soon had about 1.8 million members, which was, compared to the size of the population, more than in any other East Bloc country, bar Romania (as an expression of their gratitude, the Kremlin made the Czechoslovak officer Vladimír Remek in 1978 the first non-Soviet kosmonaut ever). The human rights movement Charter 77, on the other hand, had about 1,800 signatories, so there were 1,000 Bolsheviks for every singly person who signed the document...

It may sound like a sweeping statement, but it’s tempting to conclude that widespread collaboration with the neo-Stalinist regime, or at least a pragmatic tolerance of it, lasted to the very moment when the economic stagnation became evident to everyone, and it was clear that the Bolsheviks’ days were numbered.

It’s easy, especially for foreigners who never experienced communism, to poke fun of the Czechs for the way in which they kowtowed to a rotten regime. And yes, after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 it has undeniably been a bit comic to witness the veritable explosion of anticommunists in the Czech Republic. Even some of the country’s most libertarian politicians are known to have been either former members of Husák’s neo-Stalinist party, or at least to have flirted intensely with it (see: Lustration).

Yet there are some quite understandable arguments in the Czechs’ defence. In the 1970s, most people really felt that the “normalizors” managed to raise the standard of living. Of course, ruthless exploitation of raw materials, such as coal, and total neglect of ecological measures were the other side of the picture. At the same time, they maintained a hard and repressive line towards any sign of opposition. As a result, the common Czech was markedly better off than the average Pole or Hungarian, while the punishment for openly disobeying the regime was far stronger than those imposed by the regimes in Warsaw or Budapest.

Another effective deterrent was the Bolsheviks’ perverted take on the Bible’s original sin: if you make any trouble, your children will be denied access to higher education and a decent job. So, from a human point of view, it was maybe not exactly heroic, but at least quite understandable that most Czech parents thought twice before stepping out of the line. In that respect, the playwright Arnošt Goldflam probably spoke for a majority of his countrymen when he stated after the Velvet Revolution that “the best thing with democracy is the freedom not to be brave”.

What about those not-too-numerous Czechs who defied the widespread opportunism and put their health, family, future and even lives at stake by speaking out for freedom? For the former political prisoners, it’s utterly disheartening that several known torturers (among them Alois Grebeníček, father of the Czech Bolsheviks’ current boss) have not been taken to court, but are allowed to spend their last years living happily with their families.

So far, only one of the hard-liners who formally “invited” the Soviet Union to invade his country in 1968 has been tried and sentenced for sabotage. Among the younger generation of apparatchiks, Miroslav Štěpán, Prague’s last and infamous party boss, is the only one who has served some time in jail.

This has both practical and morale-philosophical reasons.