(A lecture, presented at the University of Siena, Italy, on 2nd June, 2006.)
These are general, subjective
remarks, based on personal conversations with my Czech fellow-citizens and on
the study of Czech media, literature,
cinema and the arts from the past six decades or so.
Regrettably, there is little sociological research available, analysing
people´s attitudes to the communist regime, dating from the actual communist
times. Sociology and anthropology were regarded as alien, subversive subjects
under communism and research into opinions of ordinary people was actively
discouraged.
I have also found little research analysing people´s attitudes to
communist totalitarianism dating from post-communist times. Researchers analyse
the „methods of government“ under communist times and „the role of the elites“
in contemporary Czech society. It does not seem to have occurred to anyone to
actually go and ask ordinary people what they think.
When I have recently published,
in a Czech language internet periodical, a number of ordinary people´s views about the communist times which
questioned official orthodoxy, this provoked public controversy, and also, a
lively positive response from the people whose voices are not normally heard in
the media.
Two major topics need to be dealt with in relation to this theme.
1. The communist era in Czechoslovakia, which lasted from 1948 until 1989, was far from homogeneous. There were several distinct „stages of development“ during which popular opinion to the communist regime differed considerably. This can be easily seen when media and culture output is studied.
2. The popular perception of the communist regime may have changed
considerably in post-communist times as a result of the fact that many people
seem to have been disappointed by post-communist developments.
1. Popular attitudes during communist rule in
Czechoslovakia
1.1. 1948 – 1953: Rampant Stalinism
The early Communist regime in Czechoslovakia was characterised by quite fierce oppression. As for instance
Čestmír Císař, the long-term communist party official and a reformist
Education secretary in the 1960s testifies in his recent memoir[1],
the moderate „social democratic“
tendencies in the ruling communist party were quickly overruled. The early
1950s were marked by political showtrials, executions, shrill political
propaganda and tens of thousands of people ending up, unjustly, in communist
labour camps, for political reasons.
Nevertheless, there were a
considerable number of (mostly young) people, who, having been disappointed by
the abandonment of Czechoslovakia by the Western democracies in 1938 at Munich,
and having been polarised by Nazi oppression during the Second World War, came
to see the world in black and white and enthusiastically embraced the utopian
vision of the communist „Brave New World“. These young people included for
instance writer Milan Kundera[2]
(who was 19 at the time of the communist
takeover), the ideologue of the 1968 Prague Spring and Mikhail
Gorbachev´s fellow student in Moscow in the 1950s Zdeněk Mlynář[3]
and some other, major Czech writers (Pavel Kohout, Ludvík Vaculík, Arnošt
Lustig). (These young people, who would have been about 10 at the end of the
1930s, during the demise of democratic Czechoslovakia, never experienced life
as grown-ups in a fully-fledged democracy.)
As can be seen from literature, dealing with the 1950s (Josef
Škvorecký, Mirákl), some other
sections of society (certainly most of the intellectuals) were in denial
towards the ruling Stalinist regime, following its antics with bemusement,
trying to avoid being harmed by the regime and attempting to live as normal a
life as possible under the given circumstances.
It is not known what the attitudes of the working classes to the regime
were at this time. Again, judging from literature, some ordinary people were
quite critical of the communist regime while others enjoyed the social welfare
which the system offered.
One thing is important, to state, however, about the period of 1948 –
1968. This was the time when the Czechs
and Slovaks were still resilient towards the communist system. Large
numbers of the population were still thoroughly familiar with normal democratic
practice which they had experienced in democratic Czechoslovakia in 1918-1938,
a regime with which they fully identified themselves with.[4]
Thus the situation in the early years of the communist regime in
Czechoslovakia was as follows:
1.
There was a group of young, pro-communist enthusiasts who had not
experienced the interwar democratic
regime.
2.
The bulk of the nation was probably in denial towards the communist
regime, knowing full well the advantages of a fully-fledged democratic regime.
3.
(There were obviously some opportunists who collaborated with the
regime; there were also some people who enjoyed the welfare benefits provided
by the communist system.)
It can, then, be said with a high level of probability that there was
relatively little hypocrisy towards the communist regime in the 1950s. Some
(young) people enthusiastically supported it, most of the population was probably in denial towards it.
1.2. 1953 – 1968: A movement towards freedom
After Stalin´s death in 1953, Czechoslovak society remained faily
immobile for several years to come. There was almost no movement towards
liberalisation in Czechoslovakia in 1956 (the exception being some bold
speeches by poets Jaroslav Seifert and František Hrubín at the 1956 Writers´
Congress). Nevertheless, in otherwise fairly Stalinist films (see the musical Music from Mars, 1954!) there appeared
first signs of unorthodox support for civic activity and grassroots democracy.
The publication of Josef Škvorecký´s demythologising novel The Cowards in 1958 spelled out the end of „socialist realism“, a
„literary“ writing method which had turned belles letters into a propaganda instrument
for the communist party.
Following the publication and the banning of The Cowards in 1958, the
regime orchestrated a clampdown against reformists in the literary and cultural
circles, but a movement for freedom nevertheless fully asserted itself from
about 1963. The five year-period 1963-1968 was unique.
1.2.1. 1963-1968: Freedom achieved through cultural effort
There was a precedent, the 19th century „Czech National
Revival“. When no political activity was possible for the Czechs who lived in
the Austrian police state during the Chancellor Metternich era in the first
half of the 19th century, they devoted themselves to literary and
cultural effort in the Czech language, which the Austrians could not
understand. As a result, by 1848, the year of the democratic revolutions in
Europe, the Czechs had emerged as a
mature, aware, modern political nation.
The Czechs and Slovaks used the arts to push for freedom also in the
1960s. The impetus for the freedom movement was the feeling of guilt felt by
the young communist enthusiasts from the early 1950s. Former young Stalinist
supporters of communism (Milan Kundera, Pavel Kohout, Ludvík Vaculík,
Zdeněk Mlynář) snow felt ashamed that they had been duped by the
communist system in the 1950s – they
had not been able to bring about a beautiful Utopia, but had helped to
subjugate their nation to Russia, a foreign imperialist power. These
individuals, now in the mid or late thirties, were at this time in positions of
power. They set out to liberalise the system. Mostly, they did this by supporting the creation of highly
sophisticated, authentic, works of art. These works of art, which were often
strongly critical of the communist state, were fully financed by the state.
Three things are important about this truly exceptional chapter in
modern European history:
1.
It would be wrong to assume that the Czech/Slovak writers and artists
produced anticommunist propaganda. Czech culture from this period is extremely
important exactly because it is anti-ideological.
Czech/Slovak artists knew full well that the regime was violating reality
by subjecting it to a primitive, lifeless ideological interpretation. They
fought this enslavement by producing authentic, anti-ideological images of
reality: „This is what life really is. See how much more convincing it is when
compared to the nonsense, spouted out by ideological apparatchiks.“
2.
As the mid-1960s was still not a period of total freedom, the communist
authorities could not be criticised openly. The media was muzzled – political criticism
was indirect and was expressed in the arts, in a roundabout way. Thus two things happened: (a) In their frustration, the population
was led to works of art which under normal circumstances, ordinary people would
not be interested in. (b) In works of art, people learnt to look for hidden
criticism of the regime. They learnt to read between the lines. They really
used the metaphorical meaning of art. This was very good for art itself – since
art thrives on ambiguity.
3.
Many of these „subversive“ works of art worked simultaneously on two
different levels. They were accessible and fun – they were part of popular
entertainment – and yet, they also
often functioned on a very sophisticated level of high art. There were many
examples of this work in cinema, literature, pop-music and theatre. Thus a
unique public arena atmosphere came into being in Czechoslovakia in the
mid-1960s.
Let us consider the comedy feature film Bílá paní (The White Lady) by
Zdeněk Podskalský (1965) on DVD, (with English subtitles). This is a comic
study of power, as exercised by two small-town communist executives when
confronted with a supernatural phenomenon for which their ideology has no
explanation. Although it is comic, the
film functions as a profound sociological analysis of crowd behaviour and its
expediency and conformism when confronted with totalitarian power. In
the words of one commentator: „The film contains all you need to know about
popular attitudes to communist totalitarian rule.“
1.3. The Prague Spring of 1968: A festival of freedom
which ended in tragedy
The „cultural“ drive for freedom was extremely successful during the
1960s, especially since it used entertainment and thus it fully mastered the
public arena in Czechoslovakia. It culminated in the Prague Spring of 1968, a
period some six months of total media freedom when Stalinist abuses and
political oppression were openly discussed on radio and TV and torturers were
confronted on live TV with their victims. As far as can be judged, the
Czechoslovak public passionately supported these reforms and when they ended
due to a Soviet-led invasion in August 1968, the public still strongly
supported its communist, reformist leadership. Since, during this six month
period, the media assumed its proper role under the conditions of freedom, the
role of the arts became somewhat secondary.
1.4. 1970-1989: „Normalisation“
After an interregnum of several months, a period of renewed political oppression began. The Russian imperial overlords of Czechoslovakia realised that intellectuals and people in the arts had managed, by their sustained cultural effort, almost to dismantle communism in that country. What inevitably had to follow was a direct assault on the Czech intellectual classes. The „dangerous“ intellectual elite of the country needed to be neutralised.
The Neo-Stalinist 1970s and the 1980s were not as murderous as the
Stalinist 1950s, but in many respects this period was much more destructive
than the period of early, rampant Stalinism.
The reason for this was that
the renewed oppression from 1970 onwards coincided with a major demographic change. People who had had experience of life
under interwar Czechoslovak democracy would have left the stage around
1970. Those who were left were only
individuals who had ever only experienced the communist system. Thus the
population was now much less immune to political oppression.
Thus, Czechoslovak society in the 1970s and the 1980s lost its resilience to the occupation
regime. A disturbing, although as yet unreflected development occurred.
Although most Czechs and Slovaks appeared to have enthusiastically
supported the democratic reforms of the 1960s and especially the 1968 Prague
Spring, within the matter of months –
undoubtedly also as a result of fierce purges and the presence of the
Soviet army of occupation – most Czechs now quite enthusiastically embraced the
new imperial regime.
The Czechs and Slovaks seemed
to have just as enthusiastically
adapted themselves to the perhaps most claustrophobic and the most emasculating
political regime during the whole of the twentieth century. It was as though
they had concluded: „We will always be slaves and the only way of surviving is
to do what our masters want of us.“ Needless to say that such an attitude is
just as self-destructive as the dangerous campaign of violent struggle for
freedom.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, a Czech intellectual had two choices: to
conform to communist propaganda and relinquish all attempts at original,
independent thought, thus submitting to emasculation and enforced silence, or
to defy the totalitarian authorities, and become a non-person. Either way the
lines of communication between the intellectual 'head' of the nation and its
'body', the ordinary people, were blocked. Without the head as a guiding force,
the decapitated body of the Czech nation blindly and aimlessly stumbled off
track into a dead end, being tempted
materially, even under the cloak of communist ideology, towards various
consumerist vices. In the 1970s and 1980s,
people had to abdicate their adulthood. They filled their lives instead
with various displacement activities. This time, no one believed communist
ideology, because its falseness had been exposed in the 1960s – but people
pretended to support it out of opportunism.
Some time ago, a debate in the Observer newspaper defined the British working class lifestyle by the concepts of diffidence, self-restraint (which includes lack of open debate) and conformity to superimposed rules. The debate associated British middle class lifestyle with the concepts of choice and freedom, open discussion and highly valued education. The life of most of Czech society seems undoubtedly still guided by the principle of constraint. Czech people are still used to deferring to regulations imposed from above, just as in totalitarian times. From the times of communism they are also used to lack of open debate. This leads one reluctantly to the conclusion that communism in Czechoslovakia succeeded in turning most of society into proletarians. This seems to be a natural consequence of the rule of mediocrity and the elimination of spontaneous, independent thought processes in an attempt to impose artificial controls on reality.
In the 1970s and 1980s, most Czechs willingly turned themselves into children – giving up their grown-up choices.[5] They seem to have accepted the view of the Russian colonisers that the subjugation would last „for ever“.
2. The situation since the fall of communism
2.1. November 1989: People caught on the hop
A number of interesting developments seem to have occured since the fall of communism, which seem to have altered the people´s perception of the communist regime.
Most Czechs and Slovaks were unprepared for the fall of communism in
November 1989. They had adapted themselves to life in a Soviet colony and had
no alternatives for life in a new situation. Most people did not know what
regime would originate from the changes – many envisaged a kind of return to
reformist communism of the 1960s. The arrival of rampant capitalism was for
many quite an unpleasant surprise.
With hindsight, it became obvious that the value system of the handful
of Czech dissidents was far removed
from what ordinary Czechs and Slovaks think. The „proletarian“ values of the
„normalisation“ society of the 1970s and 1980s prevailed in Czech society after
1989, incorporating the worst aspects of Western-style consumerism.
Many people felt guilty in the
1990s for having „collaborated“ with the communist regime, and so they became ardent anticommunists.
2.2. Czech Republic/Slovakia 1989-1997
The period between 1989 – 1997, both in Czech Republic and in Slovakia,
can be seen as a „preparatory stage“ for democracy. During this period,
potentially authoritarian regimes ruled in both these countries. Until
1996/1997, the citizens of these countries had not experienced what is normal in a democracy, ie. that opposing political parties také turns
in governing the country. Until the opposition won the election in both
countries, many people believed that „if the current government does not
continue, it would be a catastrophe, tantamount to the return of communism“.
For instance, in 1996, a Czech TV commentator warned that if the Social
Democratic opposition won the election, this would be equal to the 1948
communist putsch! The opposition had to
win the elections and to také over power in order for people to realise that this was not a catastrophe, but a
normal state of affairs in a democracy.
I see the year 1989 as possibly a less important watershed in
Czechoslovak history than the year
1970. After 1989, many habits, acquired by the Czechs and Slovaks in the
pernicious 1970s and 1980s, continued unchecked. The ethos of the 1970s and
1980s flourished in the 1990s, enhanced by the worst features of „foundation
capitalism“.
2.3. The present attitudes
of the Czechs/Slovaks to communism
„Authoritarian elitism“. Authoritarian attitudes on the whole have survived in most of the media and amongst
politicians. Throughout most of the 1990s, anyone who criticised „our glorious
building of capitalism“ was attacked for being a „communist“. The notion that
democracy needs sustained criticism of those in power has not taken root in
Czech society. Those who voice public
criticism, are still attacked by many as „bolsheviks“.
The media and the politicians are more or less agreed on the only one,
correct, interpretation of history and contemporary times. „Communism was bad
and what is now is the best possible world.“
The media and the politicians do not bother finding out what ordinary people
think. They proselytise. In a throwback to communist practice, they tell
the people what are the „correct“ views
and what they are supposed to think.
There seem to be large strata of Czech society whose voice is not heard
in the public arena. Their views of the former communist regime seems to differ
considerably from the „received view“ disseminated by the media.
It is very hard to tell what these views mean and how representative
they are.
I seemed to have opened a can of worms, at the end of 2005, when, in
the Czech-language internet periodical I edit, I asked readers to make
statements about the „hidden history of communism and post-communism“. [6]
2. 3. 1. A sting in the tail: „Communism was much better than what we have
now“ -
current experience gained from Czech students
In March 2006, while I was teaching a seminar on Czech dissident literature of the 1970s to a class of some twenty 23-year-old students at Ostrava University, Czech Republic, I asked them to prepare presentations on what life was like in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. „Go and ask your parents,“ I said.
The students were reluctant to do so. They said that:
1.
Their parents refuse to talk to them about what life was like under
communism,
2.
All of them without exception are of the opinion that life under
communism was much better than now.
And, indeed, this was the result of their research: Their parents,
reluctantly, told them:[7]
They had not experienced any
political oppression under communism. When the communist authorities tried to
pressurise them to take part in political action, the students´ parents ignored
the pressure. They were not punished for it. They ignored the communist regime
and lived their lives, happily, in private. They were never politically
persecuted. They had heard rumours that some people may be politically
persecuted, but they never met such a person or persons. They did not mind that
there was censorship; they did not miss an open, intellectual discourse and did
not mind that the public arena was clogged by communist ideology. Unlike today,
they had security of employment and enough money. The only thing they did not
like was that they could not travel abroad
under communism – they had to apply for permission to communist
officials and it was usually denied. But they cannot travel abroad now anyway
because they do not have enough money to do so. They do not feel particularly
free: since there is unemployment, they must keep mum at work: if they
expressed their opinions, they would be sacked.
Maybe the views of these people have been distorted in the course of
time and turned into sentimental memories. However, there seems to be a
significant section of Czech population; individuals who hold these views, even
though they remain unreflected in official literature.
When I asked a person living in Prague what this positive attitude
towards the former communist regime might mean, I received this explanation:
„Under communism, when you needed to achieve something, you knew whom to bribe.
It was enough to bribe a single official and the bribe was usually effective.
Now the situation is much more chaotic. You have to bribe many different people
and the outcome is always uncertain.“
[1] Čestmír Císař, Paměti, Formát, Prague, 2005, ISBN 80-86718-56-5
[2] The whole literary work by Milan Kundera is an attempt to exorcise his communist past. See Jan Čulík, „Milan Kundera“, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 232, 2001, Gale Group, London and Boston.
[3] See Zdeněk Mlynář´s memoirs about 1968 Mráz přichází z Kremlu (Nightfrost in Prague)
[4] In 1968, Czech sociologists carried out a rare investigation into the views of the populace about the political system. The research was never completed and part of the data was lost. When the remaining data was reviewed after the fall of communism in 1989, it transpired that almost everyone in 1968, including the communist reformers, believed in Western-style democracy. All the talk about „socialism with a human face“ was evidently expedient – the Czechs and Slovaks knew that since there were under Russian rule, they could not talk openly about how they wanted to live in a normal Western-style democratic country. - See Brokl, L., Seidlová, A., Bečvář, J., Rakušanová, P. (1999) "Postoje československých občanů k demokracii v roce 1968", SOU AV ČR, edice Working Paper WP 99:8, 88 pp.
[5] Czech author Bohumil Hrabal has recurrently dealt with this major theme of modern Czech existence: „I am incapable of resisting my oppressors, so I actively cooperate on my subjugation and the destruction of my culture. I hate doing so, but still I do it.“ (See his Příliš hlučná samota [Too Noisy Solitude], Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále [I served the King of England], and Dopisy Dubence [Letters to Dubenka].)
[6] A brief summary of this debate was published in English in Czech Business Week, here: http://www.cbw.cz/phprs/2006010208.html
Time
to examine the hidden history of 1989
By: Jan
Čulík, 02. 01. 2006
Will there be time, in 2006, for a new
look at the most recent Czech political history?
Revolutions create their own myths. But I’ve been receiving evidence from readers that seems to show that the “Revolution of 1989” wasn’t such a triumph of freedom, democracy and decency as has been generally maintained. It appears that while the post-communist regime has almost completely failed to punish crimes committed under communism, it’s highly likely that a large number of innocent people, many of whom were persecuted under communism, became victims of the post-1989 political purges, which were often motivated by greed. I have been receiving testimonies maintaining that large numbers of capable individuals were illegally dismissed from their posts by the revolutionary Civic Forum committees in the wake of the 1989 revolution. These committees were often made up of unscrupulous careerists who jumped on the bandwagon of the “democratic revolution,” hoping to gain lucrative posts and covering up their incompetence with a newly found “democratic” political zeal.
According to one
correspondent, probably tens of thousands of mid-ranking technical managers
were sacked for the sake of others’ greed in the first months after November
1989. He goes on to say, “I believe that, later, the overwhelming majority of
these highly competent people again found good jobs, to the absolute anger of
the incompetents who had tried to destroy them.” Former Health Secretary Ivan
David remembers those times well.
“One of the youngsters in
the Civic Forum committee at our institute said clearly, ‘It isn’t our role to
assess people objectively, it’s our role to look for people’s mistakes so that
we can sack them.’ I turned to another member of the Civic Forum committee, who
had been purged from the Communist party in 1970 and also remembered the ’50s
purges and asked, ‘Do you understand this?’ He replied, ‘Well, you see, they
think that this is the last revolution in their lives.’”
Most of these stories seem
tragicomic. Miloš Kirschner, the adoptive father of the well-known Czech
puppets Spejbl and Hurvínek, was imprisoned by the Stalinists in the ’50s. The
creator of the two puppets, Josef Skupa, tried to help the former political
prisoner to return to his work. It was arranged – without Kirschner’s knowledge
– that during a trip to the Soviet Union, he would be made a member of the
Communist party in a public ceremony. This was an offer you couldn’t refuse.
Paradoxically, because of his “communism,” Kirschner was driven out of the
theater after 1989, as a “representative of the totalitarian regime.”
A leading Czech writer
spied on a left-wing colleague at work for the new “democratic” secret service
for two years in the early ’90s. He confided to me in an interview, “It took me
only about two years to realize that the people working for the new secret
police were just the same bastards as the secret policemen under communism. It
was wrong to inform on my colleague. He was a decent and honest man,” he said.
Stories like these are the
hidden history of contemporary Czech society. It appears that the Czechs have a
deeply felt need to paralyze their professional classes by political purges
every 20 years or so. They did it in the ’50s, in the ’70s and, it would appear,
again in the early ’90s.
Is it too soon to examine
these skeletons in the cupboard? Or will 2006 be a year when an honest debate
about these excesses might eventually start?
[7] I wrote about it in Czech for the Metro daily on 15th March, 2006, also see http://www.blisty.cz/art/27699.html (also in Czech)