Haveľs personal account from the political kitchen in the 1990s, stripped of political cautiousness and diplomatic concerns, would certainly be interesting. But if he finally decides to dedicate the rest of his life to gardening at his villa in Prague’s Střešovice or to drinking wine under a palm at his country house by Portugal’s Atlantic coast, most Czechs would find that perfectly well-deserved. And his petty critics will, sooner or later, have to admit that Havel has earned himself a place right beside Tomáš G. Masaryk in Czech history.
Take a look at the following statistical data: with an average consumption of 161 litres per capita, the Czechs drink more beer than any other nation on this planet. The relative frequency of Czech alcoholics is one of Europe’s highest, and although their love of meat has slightly weakened after the Velvet Revolution (in 1990, the common Czech gulped down 50 kilos of pork and 28 kilos of beef), the Czechs still belong among the world’s most gutsy meat-eaters.
Then add information from the national census in 2001, which showed that almost 60 percent of the population describe themselves as atheists or non-believers, while tolerance towards sex in general and marital infidelity in particular is notoriously high. Don’t forget either that there are more owners of cabins and cottages where you can hide away from work and stress (see: Fridays), than in most other countries on the European continent.
What is the inevitable conclusion of these data? That the incomparably largest religious society in the Czech Republic is that of the hedonists!
Sadly enough, the Czechs have a pretty bad track record when it comes to discrimination against their fellow Roma citizens, and they cannot be said to be exceedingly warm towards foreigners either. However, when it comes to sexual minorities, they display a broadmindedness that is downright amazing.
True, there are still some lunatic Parliamentarians who believe that gays can be cured (see: Academic Titles; Moravia) and therefore have succeeded in blocking a draft law on registered partnerships. But this medieval stance strongly contrasts with that of the Czech mainstream.
According to the researcher Peter Weiss, only six percent of the population say that they don’t accept homosexuals, a result that places the Czechs among Europe’s most tolerant nations. During the first years after the Second World War, Jaroslav Foglar’s homoerotic serial about the Fast Arrows, a group of boy scouts, even became some of the best-selling books in Czech literary history.
One obvious reason for this sexual tolerance (perhaps indifference is a better word) is the relatively weak position that religion occupies in the average Czech’s life. Contrary to the neighbouring Poles and Slovaks, where the Catholic Church is a national cornerstone and homosexuals are openly discriminated against, the largest “religious” society in the Czech Republic is that of people without any affiliation (6.1 millions according to the 2001 census).
Another, although more speculative explanation, is that the Czechspeaking elite, which emerged under the national revival in the middle of the eighteenth century (see: Czech Language), focused more or less entirely on one object: the Czech cause. Thus, categories like male-female (see: Feminism) or sexual preferences were treated as completely inferior to the crucial issue — to be a good and loyal Czech.
The Bolshevik regime also turned out to be less rigid against gays than their comrades in other East Bloc states. In 1961, homosexual acts, which during the Stalinist era of the 1950s were punished by up to five years imprisonment, were decriminalized, and, in the 1980s, they were completely deleted from the official list of illnesses. Still, to a regime so profoundly intolerant and suspicious of any signs of inconformity as the Czechoslovak communists, a citizen’s sexual orientation was of great interest.
StB, the secret police, meticulously registered every person who might be suspected of not being entirely heterosexual — not least if they also happened to be political dissidents — and frequently tried to blackmail them into co-operation (see: Lustration). Needless to say, when being an open homosexual represented a possible threat to your professional and social existence, lots of gays and lesbians preferred to hide their sexual orientation. And plenty of those who were not protected by the anonymity of a big city chose to cover up by getting married and having children.