The Czechs in a Nutshell

In reality, Czechoslovakia’s economy in the 1920s, broken down, in terms of GDP per head, was, according to the respected historian Vlastislav Lacina, the world’s seventeenth largest, placing itself right in front of Austria. But it was, thanks to extensive coal mining, the world’s seventh biggest exporter. Nevertheless, for most Czechs the First Republic is still associated with an economic boom that dwarfed most of the other countries in Europe.

Be that as it may, one fact remains undisputed: the end of the First World War’s carnage and the Czechs’ and Slovaks’ subsequent independence brought about a tremendous eruption of creativity, which recalls the atmosphere of Western Europe in the 1960s.

Take, for instance, the architect Josef Gočár, who redefined French cubism into the peculiarly Czech rondo-cubism. Or the poets Jaroslav Seifert (in 1984 awarded the Nobel prize) and Vítězslav Nezval, who worked out the basis of modern Poetism. In only a few years after 1918, the Barrandov studios right outside Prague (established by ex-president Václav Havel’s uncle Miloš) grew into one of the leading studios in the European film industry, with an average production of 80 movies annually.

The Čapek brothers’ R.U.R. (where the word robot was introduced) and The Insect Play gave European drama a virtual vitamin injection; the artist Alfons Mucha, who founded the graphic poster art as we know it today, further developed the unique symbioses between art nouveau and Czech folklore; and Jaroslav Hašek in 1924 revolutionized the history of literature with his flap-jawed, beer-drinking anti-hero Švejk.

Even more impressive is the fact that this eruption of creativity seethed with a spirit of relative tolerance. Certainly, the Czechs tend to exaggerate the harmony during this period, especially so in the dark years under the grossly intolerant Bolsheviks. It remains a fact that Czechoslovakia’s 3.2 million ethnic Germans, who clearly outnumbered the 2 million Slovaks, were not regarded as constitutionally equal to their Slav compatriots. But it’s a telling sign of the tolerance that a vast majority of the country’s Jews rapidly assimilated themselves.

In the end, however, neither prosperity, nor relative tolerance, blooming arts nor a liberal president Tomáš G. Masaryk helped Czechoslovakia very much. The First Republic survived its founder by a mere year and a half. Yet the nostalgic memories of this golden era and its cruel end have made their mark on modern Czechs.

First, the treason committed against Czechoslovakia in 1938, when Great Britain and France signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler and thus threw the country to the Nazi wolves, made many Czechs wary about the West, and, after the war, adequately enthusiastic about the East (see: Communism).

Second, the stabbing of the First Republic is seen as a classic example of the destiny which history has reserved for the Czechs: there is always some nasty foreigner, be it a militant aggressor or a football referee, who eagerly uses dirty tricks to muck things up for them (see: National Identity). In other words, the Czechs themselves are not to be blamed for their many national disasters.

And third, thanks to 20 years with something that resembled modern parliamentary democracy, many Czechs are firmly convinced that they, after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, had a much shorter path to Western political standards than other nations in the former East Bloc.

Foreigners

Generalizations are always dangerous, and especially when speaking about an entire nation, so let’s put it a bit cautiously: even though Bohemia and Moravia have a 700-year long history as a multicultural society (see: Germans; Jews), there are plenty of other countries where a foreigner probably will feel more welcomed than in the Czech Republic.

This, unfortunately, seems to go double if the foreigner’s complexion is darker than what’s common in Central Europe — or at least it did in the 1990s, when not only Czech Roma, but also numerous black and coloured foreigners were physically attacked just because of the pigmentation of their skin.

Except for the intolerable demonstrations of violent racism (which is on the retreat, thanks to firmer reactions from the police), it’s not totally impossible to understand why many Czechs are a bit sceptical towards foreigners.