The Czechs in a Nutshell

Anyone who has a younger brother or sister knows how most Czechs regarded their Slovak neighbours and ex-compatriots until just recently: somebody we are fond of and can lean for support in bad times, but generally, an impulsive individual who behaves immaturely and sometimes downright stupidly. So that’s why we, the elder, wiser and more experienced, consider it our constant duty to correct the young fool and give him our well-intended advice and directions.

Fortunately, public expressions of this paternalistic attitude have weakened since Czechoslovakia split in January 1993. Yet many Czechs still have an ambiguous feeling towards their eastern neighbours: “There is no other nation on this planet that is so close to us than the Slovaks. Their language is basically a Czech dialect, and we share 74 years of common history in Czechoslovakia. But compared to us, they are more emotional and, well, less sophisticated,” the hospoda wisdom goes.

Such generalizations can hardly be taken seriously, but some striking differences between the two nations are evident. Slovakia has traditionally been an agricultural society, while Bohemia — and to a lesser extent Moravia — have been industrial. The Slovaks drink less beer and more wine than the Czechs, their traditional folk songs and dances reveal more temperament than those sung and danced to in Bohemia, and most Slovaks cling to the Catholic Church, while the average Czech treats religion as a waste of time. And, yes, while God gave the Czechs an amazing number of pretty women (see: Beauty Contests), he gave the Slovaks even more.

Czechs often refer to Slovakia as a nation without history. This is, of course, a ridiculous offence, unless it’s interpreted as follows: barring a half-mythical kingdom in the tenth century and six years as a Nazi puppet state during the Second World War, the Slovaks have never experienced national sovereignty (which doesn’t mean that they don’t have any history). From the tenth century right up until 1918, the Hungarians ruled Slovakia as the province of Felvidék (Upper Hungary) and at times, they behaved as if all its inhabitants were Magyars.

Partly because of harsh pressure from Budapest and partly because of its deep roots in agrarian society, both economic and cultural developments were slower in Slovakia than in the rest of Central Europe. “To the urban Czechs of the nineteenth century,” the writer Pavel Kosatik comments, “a trip to Slovakia was almost like a safari to an exotic and picturesque country, where the natives happened to speak a Slavonic language they understood very well.”

It’s fair to say that the emergence of Czechoslovakia in 1918 meant a giant leap forward for the Slovaks. The government in Prague made great efforts to develop the eastern and more backwards part of the young state (see: Ruthenians), not least by building a functioning educational system. After 1948, the communist regime followed suit with the large-scale industrialization of agricultural Slovakia, so by 1969 Slovakia’s standard of living had risen more than any other East Bloc country. Many Czechs, however, credited this amazing achievement more to generous financial contributions from better-developed Bohemia than to the Slovaks’ industriousness.

But didn’t the creation of Czechoslovakia also lead to the creation of Czechoslovaks? This was certainly the goal of the country’s “founder” and first president, Tomáš G. Masaryk, who had a Slovak father and Czech mother. The great national enthusiasm that flared after independence and lived on during the First Republic’s early years strongly suggested that a Czechoslovak national identity was under formation. But this process would take time — Masaryk himself suggested 50 years.

Unfortunately, history had other plans. The infamous Munich Agreement, which the governments of Great Britain and France signed with Hitler in September 1938, was practically a go-ahead for the Nazi German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia six months later. Millions of embittered Czechs could never forget that the Slovaks — or more precisely, their political leaders — exploited this tragic event to establish an “independent” Slovakia lead by Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest.

Seen in retrospective, it appears that the Slovak and Czech political elites chose different paths at almost every important crossroads in the twentieth century. The divergence manifested itself not only in 1939, when the Slovaks ostentatiously preferred national sovereignty to solidarity with the Czechs. The same schism appeared in Czech and Slovak attitude towards communism.