Introduction

When on October 28, 1918 Czechoslovakia started to exist on the world map, many had their doubts about the new states capacity to defend its sovereignty and to find its place in international relations. And not only outside of the country, but also within it. Practically from the birth of Czechoslovakia, the Slovakian part wanted autonomy and gradually independence. The neighboring countries were during the “golden 20s” all enemies, except for Romania. That is why Czechoslovakia tried hard to sign ally treaties with Great Britain and France, which she finally managed (although they proved to be useless in 1938). But this ally treaty wasn’t the goal, it was only the first step. The leaders of Czechoslovakia, mainly Masaryk and Beneš, but also Švehla, Šrobár, Stříbrný, Rašín, Soukup and others had a vision. A vision that Czechoslovakia would be a bridge between the East and the West. A vision that the new state would be, basing this role on its geographical and historical position, a bridge between the Soviet Union on one side, and France, Great Britain, USA, Benelux and eventually Germany on the other side. As history has shown, this was not to be. The Munich treaty, the World War and then more than forty years of communist rule destroyed this dream.

But then came the velvet revolution of 1989 and old ambitions were reborn. Havel, Dienstbier, Dlouhý, Klaus and many others questioned themselves and others: Who are we? What is our role in the future? Where are we to be? And old answers were reformulated. In the early years, which came after the velvet revolution, the immediate goals were clear: entering NATO and the European Union, passing new laws, economical reforms, desocialisation and many more. But the old ambition lay in the minds of many. And many questioned themselves: Could we be the bridge between the East, the countries who regained or newly gained heir independence, and the West? There were many indications that this could be so. Czechoslovakia was geographically the most west laying country. It was economically the richest post-communist country. It had historical ties with the west – the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and most of all the Holy Roman Empire. And Václav Havel became, along with Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Lech Walesa and many others a symbol of the fall of communism.

But then the reality came. Czechoslovakia split in 1993, an economical recession followed shortly, communists were still strong. And when Czech republic looked around itself ten years after the fall of communism, it didn’t find itself much further than it was ten years ago. “Where did the old ambitions go?” many asked. “And where are we to go now?” were the questions of the day. It was clear that the optimism of the early 90s was gone and that dreams that all shared were not realistic. One statement for all. The artist of the coupon privatization, the current president of Czech republic Václav Klaus, stated shortly after the velvet revolution that Czechoslovakia would be at the level of West-European countries in fifteen years. It is clear now that this was no to be so. But when we looked around ourselves at other post-socialist countries, we saw that they were in the same or worse state. The former republic of Yugoslavia was in war, Romania and Bulgaria were almost endangered by famines, the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine were still under deep influence of Russia, Slovakia was governed by Vladimír Mečiar and the economical reforms in Poland and Hungary weren’t as successful as everyone hoped they would be. And so we saw that on one hand, Czech republic wasn’t behind other post-socialist countries, but on the other hand that it would take a long time to reach the level of West European countries.

In this paper I would like to look closely at the early years of post-socialism and focus on the relations between West-European countries and three East-European countries. I will concentrate on only a few but concrete examples of the problematic relations between the West and Czech republic, Slovakia and Austria, showing that the old ambition of Czechoslovakia and lately Czech republic, to be a bridge between the West and the East is far away, if it is to come to be in the future.

Three examples

Relations between people

The first problematic relationship I would like to talk about is closely connected to the phenomenon of traveling. Before the fall of the iron curtain, it was very difficult to leave the country. If someone wanted to visit a non-socialist country, he or she had to ask the corresponding office, go through an interview, be politically responsible, have enough money to change for foreign currency, promise to come back, state reasons for leaving, turn in a list of belongings and data about family, … and a lot of other information of this sort. Of course, if someone was a prominent politician of the regime, or a singer, actor, athlete and so on, it wasn’t that difficult. But there were always risks. If someone didn’t come back, his family would be persecuted, his belongings confiscated, he or she trialed and condemned, without a chance to come back without ending in prison or being executed. There were other risks too. A lot of people were uncomfortable for the regime. These always had a free way out of the country, but they knew that if they crossed the borders, they could never come back. And there was of course the illegal way of leaving – crossing the border secretly. But a lot of people paid with their lives for such attempts.

So with all these obstacles set up before people from the post-socialist countries, no one can be surprised that the minute the boundaries were free to pass, hundreds and thousands of people were crossing the border. Some fearing that they would be closed before they could get out – this was a very common worry and it must be said that not a totally foolish one. The majority wanted to see the world which was for so many years hidden from them. And some wanted to stay. And this is where the problems began.

Countries of the West, the majority being part of the Schengen area, were rightly worried, that they would be flooded with Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians, Croats, Slovenians, Serbs, Albanese, Ukrainians, Russians and other nations. People of the West countries were worried that they would lose their jobs, due to the income of cheap labour from the East. Politicians were worried about a possible rise of criminality. Cities were worried about having to take care of poor Easterners. And so diplomatic fights started out, laws were passed, visas were requested, carrying of a sufficient sum of money was required for tourists, etc. This of course was a legitimate way for the countries to defend themselves. And the majority of Czechs understood and accepted that. It is fair to say that Czechs didn’t do much to improve the picture of Easterners in the West. Throughout the 90s, Czechs became popular for not spending money in foreign countries. They were known for carrying their own food from home, sleeping on the ground in sleeping bags and so in a minimal or no way supporting the local economy. But then Czech republic entered the European Union and real problems began, because it was not legitimate to prevent its people from entering the Schengen area, to prevent them from seeking jobs in other European Union countries. Eventually, some countries launched a seven year transition period. And Czech republic had to agree to the compromise.

But the question here is not about the legitimacy or appropriateness of such actions. The question is: “Why didn’t West-European countries want people from the East to have access to their territory, to their job markets?” The answer can differ depending on different points of view, but a very strong answer, with strong arguments is that of the differences between people of the East and people of the West. Let us now look at the differences between an average Czech and an average Englander.1 An average Czech living in Czech republic had around forty years. He never travelled to a country which wouldn’t be in a significant way under the influence of the Soviet Union. The dream vacation was Tito’s Yugoslavia, or the Bulgarian shores of the Black sea. For his whole life he worked eight hours a day in a factory, where in fact he didn’t have to work too much. After coming home from work, he opened himself a beer, read the newspaper “Rudé Právo”, helped his children with their homework, watched manipulated news in the evening and went to bed to be fresh for his job in the morning. Occasionally he made some utensil in his work-room, helped his friend on the black market or went to a pub to watch a soccer game between Slavia and Sparta. On the weekends he went to his countryside hut, where he pulled weed out of his garden for the whole weekend and then went back to the city to continue his work in his factory. Altogether a dull but secure life, with no ambitions, no destiny but a comfortable way of living, at least to what he was told every week at obligatory political sessions, where he studied the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. He never heard anything of fashion, news from abroad without political manipulation, western social norms, freedom and so on. On the contrary a typical Englishman in his forties could go whenever and wherever he wanted; he could read, think and say whatever he wanted. He had many opportunities how to enrich his cultural, social, intellectual and personal life. He may not have had so many social and employment securities, but he had the freedom.

Now when the boundaries to the West opened, these two civilizations, one with a forty years slack in experience, evolution, knowledge and culture, clashed. And it was a clash on which Samuel Huntington could write a new book. People from the East weren’t prepared to see what they saw in the West. They saw wealth, prosperity, freedom, opportunities – and they wanted to have it as well. But they wanted to have it immediately, skipping the absence of the forty year gap. So they started copying everything they saw in the West. They had to have the same marks. But they didn’t have enough money to buy them, so they shopped in second-hand shops. They wanted to see the world, but again they didn’t have money, so (as I mentioned earlier) they took their own food on vacation and slept on the ground. They wanted to live in the West, but didn’t know how to behave. They didn’t know how to use credit cards, they didn’t know how to drive on highways, and they didn’t know how to borrow money (and then how to repay it). There are millions of such examples of how people from the post-social social countries had problems to get used to the western style of life. But the West had it harder. I remember that after the fall of the Berlin wall, most Czechs flooded Germany and Austria (because these were our democratic neighbours). And shortly afterwards, many cities and villages in Austria put up signs in Czech language saying: “We don’t steal here!” Because Czechs were used, under the popular motto: “Who doesn’t steal, steals from his family!” to take whatever they saw laying unguarded. And Austrians weren’t used to this. Villagers in Austria leave their bikes unlocked; gardens opened, entrance doors to their houses open, because nobody steals in Austria. So it was a shock for them to see Czechs stealing everything that wasn’t glued to the ground.

Czechs didn’t know foreign languages, they couldn’t communicate, but when they ran into trouble in a foreign country, they expected that the state would take care of them – and they were very surprised that that wasn’t so. Their way of thinking was socialistic but their way of life was becoming capitalistic. Czechs didn’t know how to behave. They became popular for going into hotels and during breakfast taking away in bags, pouches and pockets everything from the buffet tables that they could manage. With this, they could get through the whole day, without having to pay for lunch or dinner.

So it is not so surprising that so many personal, local but also nationwide conflicts took place and that the majority of people living in the West, who came into contact with people from the East, were reluctant to have them as co-workers, neighbours, fellow citizens. And voices calling against this were becoming louder and louder as the entrance to the European Union by the East countries became closer and closer. It wasn’t much use trying to convince people from the West, that we are now not the same as fifteen years ago. Memory is strong in this sense and it will take many years to erase from memory the wrong that was done from our side to the people of the West.

Relations between groups

It is a question of popular knowledge to see that there are very few countries in the world that would be homorganic, with only one ethnic group living within its boundaries. Even the state of Israel, which is the only state in the world established for a specific ethnical group and religion, has Arabs, Christians and other groups living side by side with the Jews. Many European countries were forced to solve, or try to solve, similar problems taking place within their boundaries. Spain with Basques, Catalonians and practically every region which Spain consists of; Britain between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; Belgium between the Flemish and Walloon part of the country; Italy between the north and south of the country; Germany with Turks; France with Islamites; Yugoslavia with Serbs, Kosovo Albanians, Croats, Slovenians and others. As we can see, many countries have regional, ethnical, multicultural, racist or other similar problems. And every country has a specific way of dealing with these problems. Some are more successful than others, some don’t solve anything, but problems are trying to be solved. In this part of the paper, I would like to concentrate on the problematic with gypsies living in Slovakia. I chose Slovakia to speak of this topic, because it serves as a good example of how countries under communist rule solved (or tried to solve) problems.

Today’s Slovakia has around five million inhabitants. It is estimated that 20% percent of this population is either gypsy or of gypsy origin. It cannot be stated exactly, because some gypsies have a tendency to mask their ethnicity and in statistical polls don’t identify themselves as gypsies. But 20%, which is one million inhabitants, is thought to be a fair guess. This ethnic group has always been thought of negatively from the side of its fellow countrymen. And these ambivalent feeling date back several centuries. In old writings and old novels, gypsies play the parts of thieves, criminals, comedians, travellers, liars, etc… On the whole, gypsies have a very negative image in the society.

During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, personal movement wasn’t regulated too severely. Then came the establishment of Czechoslovakia and gypsies weren’t seen as the gravest problem. Nobody of course took interest to take care of them during World War II. And then the communist rule came. And communists hated if everyone wasn’t the same, if someone endangered their idea of egalitarism, if someone wasn’t controllable, if someone stood out of the line, if someone didn’t care to obey orders. And this is exactly what the gypsies did or didn’t do. They were used to travel a lot, never stay too long on one place, work when and how they wanted, etc. It was unthinkable for a gypsy to go to work regularly and in certain hours. And this of course was a problem for the communists. How could they keep up 100% of employment with this? How could they control the gypsies if they never stopped to travel? And communists hated these specific communities. They thought of them as of seedbeds of reaction. They were afraid and disgusted with them. So they decided to resolve the issue fast. They ordered everyone to have a stable job, a stable address, to register with local authorities etc. Those who refused were trialled and sentenced to prison. So the communists violently forced gypsies to change their natural way of life. They made them live in flats, go to schools, work in factories, pay their bills and taxes – in short – do everything a normal citizen is doing.

But of course, this was a violent way of pressuring a group to go against its natural way of life. And it was predictable that when this violent pressure was gone, their way of life would change as well. And this was to be so. After the fall of communism, all the problems that the regime either kept secret or managed to keep under pressure using violence came up to light with absence of restrictive power. Gypsies didn’t go back to travelling around the country, they stayed in their ghettos, but the state could no longer pretend that they earn fair money for their work. With the transformation to capitalism and privatization, many of these gypsies lost their jobs, because they were lazy, inefficient and irresponsible. But with the slow process of reformation, passing new laws, transformation of economy and all these other transitory processes, gypsies (and groups or individuals who acted similarly) went along quite well for several years thanks to the so-called social net, which ensured them a sufficient economic income from the state to live a quite comfortable life without the need to work.

But then came the reforms, which the government of Mikuláš Dzurinda from SDKÚ passed in Slovakia at the turn of the century. It was a set of laws which severely cut down all these state expenses given to people who didn’t work and didn’t want to work. A series of riots followed when gypsies started to rob stores under the pretence that they are hungry and have nothing to eat. Later on it was discovered that what was actually really missing from these stores were cigarettes and alcohol. Demonstrations were held to stop the economic reforms, for Mikuláš Dzurinda to resign, for the government to give jobs to the people. Many gypsies decided to demonstratively emigrate to Great Britain (where they in a short period of time discovered that life will be harder there and so returned to Slovakia).

Then there is another example which will help to understand the conclusion I will make concerning intergroup relations and in concrete gypsies in Slovakia in the post-socialist era. A small city outside of Žilina decided a few years ago to build a typical “panelák” – a house full of flats and rent it for a symbolic price to the local gypsies. The house was totally new and the mayor took it as an opportunity to make some PR for himself and so he invited a TV station STV1 to make a short story about it. The reporters came, the gypsies thanked the mayor in public for giving them a wonderful place to live in and everyone was satisfied. Only three months later, the same gypsies called up the TV station, because they wanted to publicly blame the mayor for not taking care of them. As an example, they showed where they were living. The reporters couldn’t believe their eyes. The beautiful new house they saw three months ago was now a total wreck. A local later explained to the TV reporters what happened: When the gypsies got the house, the first thing they did was that they sold every radiator, every battery, every toilet, every bathtub, and every shower hose they could find. When they ran out of money they earned for this, they sold the wooden doors with which the flats were equipped with. When this money was gone, they sold their windows. But the nights started to be cold, so they started to tear the wooden floors they had, and make fires inside the flats from this wood. When the flats were destroyed enough by the fires, cold, wind and rain, the gypsies started to actually push bricks out from around the empty holes where their windows were before and started to sell these bricks. But with this, the holes grew bigger and bigger and it was becoming very unbearable and dangerous to live in the flats. And at this point, the gypsies called the TV to complain about the mayor.

As can be seen on the two above mentioned examples, the socialist way of thinking left a big impact and trace in the minds of the people who lived under communist rule. I cannot imagine British gypsies doing the same thing as the Slovak ones. They know that if they started to rob stores in London that the police wouldn’t take it. They know that if they got a house practically for free that they would have to take care of it. And that if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to rely on the state to help them. But this is a toll that we are now paying for the communist rule. People, in this concrete example its the gypsies, are expecting that everything will be taken care of by the state. And when they realize that this will not be so, they start complaining and they cannot understand it. And I don’t blame them. The former governments violently changed their way of living, taught them a new way of comporting and when they finally got used to it, they have to start learning how to exist in a completely new system.

Relations between states

“Ich liebe Temelín!” is a cry which could be heard often in the south of Czech republic. Not so often these days as shortly after the fall of communism, but Temelín, the atom power plant is still a sensitive topic. And not only in local discourses but in national ones as well. To put it shortly, Austrians are afraid of the new or relatively new power plant which is located near their borders. In the following text I will try to analyze why the Austrians are afraid. I will not concentrate on reasons why they shouldn’t be. Temelín is a modern power plant, it meets all the requirements that the European Union states for such facilities, it has never had any problems which would be out of ordinary and safety is the first interest of its managers. But even though from a technical, statistical and logical point of view there is no need to worry about Temelín, or at least not more than from other atom power plants, these worries exist.

Although the problem of Temelín was at some points discussed on an official level between the highest political representatives of Czech republic and Austria, it has eventually declined from a transnational problem to a local problem. Today it is dealt with by people living by the boundaries between Czech republic and Austria where Temelín is nearby. There is a theory, and I am willing to believe it that the whole problem of Temelín is artificially being kept alive by local political representatives, because it is a good way for them to be visible, gain popularity and therefore have success in elections. It seems to me possible that if Temelín ceased to be an object of popular and political discourse that people would forget about it. But nevertheless it is important to see why the Austrians are afraid of Temelín. There of course are risks involved in atom power plants but many countries have such power plants. And Temelín is new and modern. So I figured that the reasons cannot be just logical, but more emotional than rational. In the next paragraph I will try to explain why I believe that Austrians are afraid of Temelín and not of any other atom power plant.

First of all, I must state that I am personally convinced of the political propaganda and manipulation. But these practices have to be based on some discourse and this discourse is the one which I want to present here.

I believe that Austrians, just like the majority of Europeans, have in mind the catastrophe in Chernobyl in 1986. The tragic fire that lead to many deaths, illnesses, destroyed lives a destroyed country etc. Although it is not yet wholly clarified, it is believed that Chernobyl happened because of a technical failure. It can be said that this can happen everywhere, anytime to anyone. But the fact is that this tragedy happened in the then Soviet Union and so it is understandable that in many peoples’ minds this tragedy is not connected to a specific person, specific time, specific place, specific whatever, but to the East. To the countries under communist control. And so, although this explanation is not rational at all, in the minds of people, to have a power plant in the hands of communist countries is a dangerous business. And many people in the West, including Austria, still consider us to be heavily influenced by communist. And they cannot be blamed for this, with the support the communists get in elections. So from the point of view of Austrian people, they are living next to a second Chernobyl, and it is only a matter of time, before it will explode. Adding to that, Czechs have the national aura of being irresponsible, able to cheat anywhere (including on atom power plants), lazy, stupid – the “Švejk” ideal. And the Austrians know this. And they know Czechs personally, because they flooded Austria after the fall of the Berlin wall as I mentioned earlier. And they know how Czechs behaved in those times. And these are memories and prejudices which are based on some reality, which now may not be so true as it was fifteen years back but it takes time to erase such memories. Austrians know the quality of communist products. There are many jokes talking about communist production, quality and durance. And they are afraid that this, along with the Czech personality, atom power plants and communist influence is a deadly combination. And I don’t blame them. It is a toll we have to pay for the past. And only the future and time will resolve this.

Conclusion

In the above text I tried to summarize the Czech idea of being a bridge between the East and the West, how this idea evolved, and in what state it is now. I illustrated on some concrete examples relationships which East-European countries (Czech republic, Slovakia) have or had with West-European countries (Austria, Germany and other in general). There are countless examples of how relationships were hard between the East and the West after the fall of communism. In the above examples (Czech tourism, gypsies, Temelín and others) I tried to illustrate some points in these East - West relationships seen from the point of view of several countries either from the West or from the East. I believe that these examples may be helpful to understand why some problems exist and why some problems, although they may seem marginal, may take years and generations to resolve or overcome.

Notes

1 The following characteristics are based on personal impressions not statistical data. But I believe that they are quite precise and above quite helpful for this paper.