Things stay the same in the Czech Republic (or Bohemia, or Czechoslovakia, or whatever name it is known by), for a long long time. Centuries sometimes. And then – suddenly – everything collapses, spectacularly, in a matter of 2 weeks.
Back in the day
In the 5th and 6th centuries, the Slavs arrived in the region. The various tribes adopted Christianity soon after and eventually cohered into an empire. An empire that didn’t last very long. It was called the Great Moravian Empire, and had its glory days from 830 to 906. It was a large empire, encompassing areas in Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Silesia and Bohemia. Silesia and Bohemia are now regions in the Czech Republic.
At the end of the 9th century, the Czechs seceded from this empire to form the country of Bohemia. (See? Bohemia. Beautiful! A country named Bohemia clearly would eventually elect Vaclav Havel as president.) But the Czechs still were factioned off into little tribes, squabbling tribes, without any unification. So it was very easy for King Otto I (King of Germany) to stroll into Bohemia in 950 and conquer them. Bohemia was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, but still: King Otto gave the Bohemian prince (Otakar I) at the time the right to some degree of autonomy (again: this is a theme which also comes up again and again in Czech history) and self-rule. The son of the Bohemian prince (Otakar II) was more ambitious than was expected of him: he tried to claim for himself the title of Holy Roman Emperor, and he also tried to proclaim himself King of the Czechs. This all happened during the middle ages … the 1200s.
Otakar II was doomed for disappointment. The imperial crown instead went to Rudolph Hapsburg, which ushers in a whole new phase in Czech history.
The Hapsburgs were strong rulers. Tyrannical to some, benign to others. It was an empire, after all. The Czech people were subjects in this empire, subjects with a long memory, a memory of a grand past, when they had princes and kings. This past is symbolized (to this day) by Prague Castle, an undeniable reminder of the greatness of this nation once upon a time.
Under the Hapsburgs, Bohemia flourished. They had strong protection from the empire, and so were able to blossom, and experience a Golden Age, since they didn’t have worries about self-defense or keeping enemies at bay. Prague became one of the most important cities in Europe.
Moving along in history…
I know a lot of stuff went down in the 14th and 15th centuries, but it gets confusing. I know there were revolutions, I know there was some sort of mass religious reform movement which alarmed the Catholics, and caused a lot of problems. The status quo of Catholicism in Europe was threatened by the reform. And then along comes the Hapsburgs again. The Hapsburgs were, of course, a Catholic empire.
The Czech nation came under their sphere again in the 1500s. The Hapsburgs made promises to the Czechs, and did not follow through on their promises. (This is yet another theme in the story of Czechoslovakia.) They said that they would have religious tolerance for minorities, they promised freedom, and they also promised the Bohemian royal families that they would maintain their royal privileges. None of this occurred. The Bohemian Royal Estates revolted against this, violently. Two Hapsburg officials were pushed out of a window, and plummeted to their deaths. This event sparked the Thirty Years War. Well, no. That is an exaggeration. There was a hell of a lot of religious turmoil swirling all across Europe at that time. And THAT was what sparked the Thirty Years War … but the Bohemians were so rebellious, and so angry, and actually KILLED some of the Hapsburgs, that the Hapsburgs felt they had no choice but to crack-down, and crack down HARD, on the pesky little Czechs.
But the real issue in Bohemia, is that the Hapsburgs wanted to stomp out Protestantism, squash it like a bug.
The Thirty Years War
This war was crushing to the Czechs.
Here’s a quote about what happened: The Austrian Habsburgs had failed in their efforts to increase their authority in the Empire and to eradicate Protestantism, but they emerged from the war stronger than before. In Bohemia, they had stamped out Protestantism, broken the power of the old nobility, and declared the crown hereditary in the male line of their family. With Bohemia now firmly in their grasp and with their large group of adjoining territories, they were ready to expand to the east in the Balkans, to the south in Italy, or to interfere once more in the Empire.
So in the end, the Czechs lost everything. Everything. They lost all of their rights. They lost all of their hard-won freedom. They lost their property. They also then were put through forced Catholicization and forced Germanization. The Hapsburgs (again: sometimes benign, sometimes tyrannical) wanted to wipe out the concept of Czech national identity. They wanted to erase the individuality of the Czech experience off the map forever. This was devastating. And it nearly succeeded.
What is so incredible, and hopeful, is that it did NOT succeed. You cannot do that to people. You cannot. They will, no matter what the hell you do to them, remember who they are, and where they came from.
But here’s what’s even more incredible:
After the Thirty Years War, the Hapsburgs kept Bohemia under such a strong thumb that nothing changed in that country for THREE CENTURIES. I mean, of course, people grew up, got married, died, had fun, cried, built buildings, tore buildings down. But I’m talking about evolution as a nation. That completely stopped. They were beaten. Defeated.
The Hapsburgs won. Hands down.
Until …
The mid-1800s
Tracy Chapman may think that revolution “sounds like a whisper”, but the year of 1848 was a year of shriekingly loud revolutions, which caught on like a brushfire, leaping across borders, igniting in first this country, then that one.
Bohemia got caught up in it, too. Despite the lead cloak of the Hapsburgs. They began to buck against the authority (the Czechs seem to have a talent for that). They may LOOK like they are being compliant, but underneath it all: they are seething, they are ready to explode and make some demands.
I read a great quote about Vaclav Havel’s many years living under Soviet oppression. And of course, he was a big trouble-maker, writing inflammatory plays (none of which were allowed to be performed in his own country), creating human rights organizations, ignoring the ban on public meetings of more than 10 people. Vaclav Havel, at one point, decided to “behave AS IF he were free, in an unfree nation”. He was arrested countless times, he was constantly followed, spied upon … but he behaved AS IF he were free. This seems to me to be a talent of the Czech people.
Slowly, slowly … the Czech people began to contemplate being a free and independent state. This desire percolated for many years, as the Hapsburg Empire slowly deteriorated.
All of that ended when Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian student, stepped out of the crowd one day in Sarajevo and assassinated the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Of course, this was the shot heard round the world. The shot that began World War I.
History was about to speed up again for the Czechs. Only to come to a shrieking halt once more.
