The Czech Republic – Part II – The 20th Century
Post World War I…
World War I ended with the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the Czechs won recognition as a free and independent state. Actually, the Czech people and the Slovak people decided to join up and unite. They created what became known as Czechoslovakia: a single federal state of two equal republics. Things were moving right along, going well, until the Great Depression came, and they, like everybody else, fell on hard times. The economy plummeted so low that the Slovaks started thinking they should secede (as though the rest of the world wasn’t suffering as well, and it was the Czechs who were holding the Slovaks back!) So there were definitely some problems, some underlying tension in this unification.
World War II
But all of that became meaningless with the outbreak of World War II. Czechoslovakia’s location was disastrous for them. I mean, in actuality, their location was strategically fantastic for them in other times. They sat right on one of those most significant land routes in Europe, which was all very good for shipping goods in and out, for their military to move in and out, for trade to travel. But with all of Europe gone to hell, Czechoslovakia was caught right in the middle.
Look at a map of Czechoslovakia, and take a look at the countries surrounding them (at the time, Slovakia was part of the nation though, of course). It is obvious how trapped they were. It is like they are trapped in a vise: Germany chomping on them to the West like a big Pacman, Austria yawning beneath them like quicksand.
Czechoslovakia had millions of German-speakers, who got caught up in the nationalistic fever happening in the Pacman-country to the West. They wanted to join their country-men. They NEEDED to join their German countrymen. Hitler agreed. This is the whole “Sudetenland German” problem. The first terrible moment of appeasement.
The Munich Agreement, the betrayal of the Allies
And this is where Czechoslovakia was sold down the river in the Munich Agreement in 1938. Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland be returned to him. And then (famous last words): “That will be my last demand! All I want is the Sudetenland!” It was given to him. Czechoslovakia was handed to Germany by the countries of Europe.
There was a Czech underground, there were protests, there was some preparation for going head-to-head with Hitler all on their own, since the big leaders of Europe seemed willing to let them be chewed up and spit out. Europe basically said to Czechoslovakia in the Munich Agreement, “Buh-bye. We are feeding you to the lions. Sorry. We just can’t fight this guy.” Most of the Czech intelligentsia were killed (and this is very important to remember: resistance in Czechoslovakia has always been at the hands of the intellectuals). So the Germans, of course, knew this, and all of the intelligentsia were shipped off to concentration camps or just killed outright.
Ivan Klima, a Czechoslovakian writer was sent to a concentration camp as a small boy. There is a wonderful collection of his essays called The Spirit of Prague which I’m going to quote from later. He’s awesome. He can describe the experience of living under a totalitarian fascistic regime, using no theory, no abstractions.
But anyway. Onward.
The Germans leave, the Soviets arrive
In 1945, the Czechs were rising up against the German forces, war breaking out, mini-battles, fighting for their lives. With no help from the Allies, who had abandoned them in the Munich Agreement. Meanwhile, the Soviets were closing in on them from the east.
On May 5, 1945, the Czech resistance in Prague rose up so fiercely against the Germans, that the German troops retreated out of the country. By that point, the German army was a rag-tag bunch of terrified starving soldiers, trying to do their best for the Fuhrer, but losing, losing, losing. They had already lost. This was a big victory for the Czechs, but then, on May 8, 1945, three days later, the Soviets rolled into town.
Under the Soviet umbrella
Czechoslovakia was established as an independent state in the Soviet sphere. There were large-scale deportations of German and Hungarian populations. The Germans who were deported following World War II, are still, to this day, demanding the return of their property. The country was permitted the freest multiparty democracy in Eastern Europe. This was mostly because there was genuine sympathy for Communism already existing in Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia you didn’t see the kind of harsh enforced Communism the way you saw in Poland or Lithuania or many other places.
An interesting factoid that I pulled off the CIA website (and take these statistics – like all statistics – with a grain of salt): the religious breakdown in the Czech Republic goes like this:
39% atheist
39% Roman Catholic
4% Protestant
That really stood out for me – I haven’t encountered any other country in the Factbook with religious statistics like that, and so it got my attention. Atheists are tied as the largest religious group in the country. If this number is true, then it would make sense that the Communists didn’t have as tough a time. In other countries, seriously Catholic countries like Poland, atheism had to forced down the people’s throats, and the Poles fought back HARD against this. Catholicism was an essential part of their identity – it was the receptacle of their collective spirit. This intensified with Pope John Paul II – a Pole. They looked to HIM for guidance, not to the Politburo. The Communists, to punish the Poles, would turn their cathedrals into “Museums of Atheism”. This would not have outraged the Czechs as much as it did other more religiously faithful countries.
They had elections in 1946 and the Communist candidates won the majority of the popular vote. This was one of the only instances where a country occupied by the Soviet Union willingly chose Communists to run their country. But by 1948, with the economy still suffering, the country going bankrupt, support for Communism was definitely waning.
The Communists could feel that they might be losing their grasp, so in 1948 they organized a coup d’etat, and seized absolute power, through the unions and the police. And Czechoslovakia fell. And fell. And fell.
After 1948
It soon became one of the most repressive regimes in Eastern Europe. People imprisoned, executed, sent off into exile, sent off to prison camps, the gulag … All dissent was squashed, through fear and terror. Only the intellectuals kept the identity of Czechoslovakia alive. Only the intellectuals tried to keep the Czech language alive. Only the intellectuals tried to maintain the memory of the country. Everybody else was cowed. Beaten.
Then along comes:
The 1960s
Czechoslovakia started waking up. I suppose it must have been the tenor of the times, but there were other factors as well. The 1960s was a fever, spreading all over the world. The Czechs experienced a cultural awakening, they started remembering who they were.
But along with the Zeitgeist of the time, a lot of this awakening had to do with who was in charge of the country: Alexander Dubcek. He was a Communist, he was one of the founders of the Czech Communist Party actually. But he had different ideas from Moscow. He began making moves to liberalize the country. He wanted to end censorship. He wanted to open up dialogues again. His motto was: “We will show the world Socialism with a Human Face.” Socialism with a Human Face. He wanted to prove to the world that Communism need not be synonymous with Dictatorship. He dismantled any vestige of a personality cult around himself (a necessity for all other Communist leaders). He promised the Czechs “rule of law”.
It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like for the people of Czechoslovakia at that heady time. I can only try. I can only read what they write, the memoirs of that time – Kundera, Klima, Havel, and others. Hope rising up, happiness, freedom, being able to SPEAK, being able to feel like they are joining the rest of the world again, after decades of repression, hope, hope, all of this hope coming from their LEADER. Who seemed to hear what they were saying, expressing their own desires.
All of this was going on without the blessing of Moscow. Dubcek, a die-hard Communist, assumed that the Soviets would not care. He trusted the leaders in Moscow. He underestimated them.
He, maybe even more than the Czech people themselves, was devastated by what happened next.
1968: The Prague Spring
The Prague Spring refers to the cultural awakening coming to a real head through the early months of 1968. There was a sense of possiblity, of hope.
Moscow was alarmed by what was going on in Czechoslovakia. They had no interest in promoting Socialism with a Human Face. Freedom of the press means that people can criticize the regime, can criticize Communism, and if people can criticize then the cracks in the entire facade will widen. Moscow felt that they must have an unbroken Red Wall of Unity to present to the rest of the world. Nobody can deviate from the party line.
Moscow demanded that all of the Warsaw Pact allies participate in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush Socialism with a Human Face, to crush what was also called “the Czech Experiment”. (An interesting sidenote: Nicolae Ceausescu, dictator of Romania, refused to join in the invasion, and because of that, the West LOVED him, and ignored the fact that the man was a villain, a despot, a crackpot. He was wined and dined all over the West for not stepping in line with the rest of the Warsaw Pact, and hailed as a maverick leader. Yeah, he was a maverick all right! So maverick that he starved his own citizens in order to built dams, he turned off heat and electricity in the middle of the winter so he could pay back the country’s debt ahead of schedule, he criminalized birth control … you remember those horror images of starving Romanian orphans strapped to their beds in the late 1980s? That’s his doing.)
In early August of 1968, the entire leadership of Czechoslovakia was flown to Moscow, to be scolded by Brezhnev. Actually, no, it wasn’t a scolding. He was warning them. “Cut this shit OUT.” Dubcek (a real hero) refused to cut the shit out. Dubcek refused to turn his back on his ideas that Socialism did not have to mean cruelty and tyranny. He would not denounce the Prague Spring. But Dubcek still did not believe that Moscow would invade. He did not believe that Moscow would turn on him. And so – in a way – he was brainwashed by the Politburo as well.
On the night of August 20-21, 1968, the Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Prague and took the city back by force. By the next day, 58 people had been killed.
Wenceslas Square, in Prague, was the focal point of the resistance to the Soviet invasion. (See the movie “Unbearable Lightness of Being” for an incredible look at what it must have been like.) Chaos. Horror. Grief. And utter betrayal. The “Czech experiment” was over.
The world was horrified. But nobody did anything. Nobody stopped it. The Czechs, once again, were thrown to the wolves.
Dark dark days ahead.
The Crackdown
After the invasion, Gustav Husak was responsible for whipping the country back into shape. He himself had been a victim of Stalinist repression and had spent 8 years in prison. That, to me, is one of the most insidious things about such tyranny: the persecuted become the persecutor. Nobody escapes.
Husak whirled through the country like a tornado. He did a major purge of the Czech Communist Party, getting rid of anybody who might have sympathized with the idea of Socialism with a Human Face. Anybody who might even be on the FENCE about it was gone. And major Stalinist hard-liners were brought in to replace them.
And once again, nothing changed in Czechoslovakia until 1989 when everything fell apart in two weeks time.
The country was completely closed off from the rest of the world. Prague became a Communist backwater, as opposed to one of Europe’s premier cities. Nobody could travel, nobody could leave. Censorship was imposed. All liberalization programs introduced by Dubcek were cut off.
Oh, and what happened to Dubcek?? The father of Czechoslovakian Communism was forced to resign, obviously, in 1969, and then he was kept under house arrest from 1968 until 1987. And he wasn’t allowed to communicate, or write, or let the Czech people know he was alive, and still around. The Communists, in the words of the Mafia, “disappeared” Dubcek. I am so glad they didn’t “disappear” him forever, because once the Soviet Union started collapsing, suddenly Dubcek emerged again, and the Czech nation was able to express, openly, to him just how much he meant to them. Just how much they appreciated his sacrifices. How much, basically, that they loved him. Nobody had heard from him in decades. They thought he was dead. And then … like a ghost … he came out from house arrest, accompanied by Vaclav Havel, and the people of Czechoslovakia, waking up once again, could not believe their eyes. Dubcek! The man who tried to set them free! His emergence made them remember who they were. And then they fought back like hell, and toppled the house of cards. At last.
1968 – 1989
But up until 1989, the Czechs suffered under a hardline Stalinist regime. Who knows what was going on in the privacy of Czechoslovakian homes, but on the outside: they became a drab backwards silent Communist country. The borders closed, the trade unions shut down, everything got very reactionary, and extremely rigid.
GLASNOST
Gorbachev’s idea of glasnost was a huge threat to Gustav Husak. Husak LIVED in the shadow of the 1968 invasion. He did not want the humiliation of Dubcek, being rejected by his former Communist friends. Husak refused to take on glasnost as a concept, even though Gorbachev was encouraging all of his “clients” to do so. Husak held on, and held on tight, to the old way.
And again, it was as though the Czech people were under a cloud. Glasnost did not infect the Czech nation. The 1968 invasion had been so devastating, so painful.
The only people protesting, and demanding that Husak start adopting glasnost, were the intellectuals. The writers. Vaclav Havel, most of all. Vaclav Havel had been there the whole time, stirring up shit, creating human rights organizations, writing plays, getting arrested, getting in trouble … but it was never enough to make the population, as a whole, rise up. It was more like a “cafe” revolution. Tortured intellectuals talking about a better world over cups of coffee, while outside, all the normal people slogged off to work, unaware, uncaring.
As the astonishing changes started sweeping through Eastern Europe, during 1988 and 1989, the Husak regime became more and more alarmed. Their response was to crack down harder and harder, isolate their country even more. Idiots. You can’t keep out life!
Oh, and I forgot to tell about one important thing:
Jan Palach … and what he meant
The year after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, in 1969, Jan Palach, a young student in Prague, burned himself to death in the middle of Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of his country. He killed himself on January 16, 1969.
In the years after, the decades after, nobody was ever allowed to memorialize Palach. People would secretly gather together on the day of his death to remember him, but any public sentiment of mourning for Palach was punishable with prison time. This was one of Havel’s raison d’etres: every single year he would stage some sort of public memorial service for Palach, and every year he would get arrested. But this never stopped him, this never shut him up. Palach WOULD be remembered.
Today, the spot of his death is marked with a cross and a plaque. People every year gather around to remember this martyr for the cause of a free Czechoslovakia.
So back to glasnost.
Glasnost 1988, 1989
Suddenly, unbelievably, during 1988 and 1989, without Moscow’s “permission”, without Husak’s “permission”, Czech people started flaunting forbidden things: the Czech flag, photos of Dubcek, photos of Palach. They were, in the words of Havel, “behaving AS IF they were free in an unfree nation“. It was a quiet rebellion, though. No demands for change were made, and Husak had created an environment that barely let the Czech people breathe on their own.
On November 17, 1989, the Communist youth movement in Prague organized a demonstration, a peaceful demonstration, to memorialize 9 students killed by the Nazis in 1939. A peaceful crowd of 50,000 people gathered. Mostly students and intellectuals. The workers of the country remained slumbering. Rip Van Winkle. The Husak regime brutally crushed this peaceful demonstration. 500 people were beaten by the police. 100 people were arrested.
And this, suddenly, was the spark. The straw. The galvanizing moment when the entire Czech nation woke up. When the entire Czech nation suddenly HEARD what Havel had been saying for so many years, and stepped in line beside him.
Instead of crushing the rebellion, the regime, through its own actions, exploded it into an inferno.
The Velvet Revolution
Let me try to describe it to you from an uber-perspective, so you can get just how fast this all happened. It stuns me.
In 1988: Czechoslovakia remained a place of repressive calm. The only loudmouth was Vaclav Havel. And nobody was listening, except for people in the West. His own country ignored him.
In 1989: a movement began, a student movement. The students began calling for a change in government, they began calling for change.
Oct. 1989: 10,000 students demonstrated, calling for change. There was a massive show of force from the government. Heavily armed police put down the demonstrations, and the tyrants stayed in power. (Here’s something else: by December, 2 months later, the entire Communist Party in Czechoslovakia had resigned. I mean, this is stunning. But I get ahead of myself.)
Nov. 17, 1989: The memorial demonstration for those killed by the Nazis, people arrested, people beaten … This was the spark I have spoken of.
The days following Nov. 17: Instead of backing down, the students kept demonstrating. Every single day. Every single day the crowds got larger, and larger, and larger. The students, the intellectuals, kept begging the workers to join them. They needed their support. It was a difficult fight, it took a lot of persuading over the days following Nov. 17, but the workers, so long asleep, finally left their jobs, went on strike, and joined the students. Constant demonstrations. Husak had no more authority.
More in November, 1989, it was a big month: Vaclav Havel, at the forefront, created an organization called the Civic Forum, to investigate charges of police brutality on November 17. He was relentless. And every day, the crowds got bigger. And louder. Vaclav Havel not only was calling for investigations, he was also calling for the entire Communist Party to resign.
And…
on November 24, 1989 They did. The entire Politburo resigned, in one shot.
From November 17 to November 24 is just 7 days. Unbelievable.
AND: (it gets better, it gets even more breathtaking)
On December 29, 1989, Vaclav Havel is elected president of the new free Czechoslovakia. And Dubcek emerged from hiding, at Havel’s side, and was elected speaker of the national assembly.
A peaceful transition of power. A so-called “velvet revolution”. The Communists basically gave up, and walked away.
There was not one casualty in Czechoslovakia, following the Nov. 17 demonstration. Compared to other countries in Eastern Europe, this is phenomenal. A tribute to the Czech people, I would say.
In 1993, the nation experienced what they called “a velvet divorce” from the Slovaks. They split into two national components: the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Havel was president of Czechoslovakia for 10 years. He stepped down in February of 2003, and Vaclav Klaus is now the President. The Czech Republic is now a member of NATO, and were invited to join the EU in 2002. It is expected that they will be ready to join in 2004. Their economic policies have been working for them, and they have made an amazing economic recovery, after decades of Soviet mismanagement. Tourism is booming. The industrial base (completely decrepit and outdated through the years of Communism) has been updated, and is functioning at a very high level. There are goods to buy, the cities are blossoming, Prague is back. They’ve still got problems, of course. Every country does. They suffer from severe pollution, much of the land was destroyed during the decades of Communism, there’s a lot of crime … but these are the basic problems for every city. The Czech Republic has joined the world again.
It’s one of my favorite stories of the 20th century. The story of their “velvet revolution”.
