A Czech Heroine Spotlight on the Baltic

Transcription

100 Kč / in the USA, Canada, Europe 6 USD • Vol. 8 No. 2 • SUMMER 2006
Are Czech Communists
Still Dangerous?
Behind the Sri Lankan Conflict
Milada Horáková:
A Czech Heroine
Spotlight on the Baltic
what is
international
law?
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contents
THE NEW PRESENCE
summer ��
Editor’s Notes
Dominik Jůn...........�
2
Opinions
The Politicians Lose, but the People Win  Simon Pardek..................................................... 3
A Fools Hero?  Libuše Koubská ................................................................................................. 3
Business as Usual  Jaroslav Šonka ............................................................................................. 4
A Hyndai Waste of Money  Lenka Zlámalová ........................................................................ 5
News Roundup
A look at events in the Czech Republic as well as key stories
from Central and Eastern Europe from the last few months ...................................................... 6
Th e C z e c h R e p u b l i c
Does the Defecit Matter?  Libuše Bautzová ............................................................................. 8
Milada Horáková: A Mountain that Refused to Move  Laura Owens ............................. 10
��
Europe
�
Structuring a Common Europe  Karel B. Müller ................................................................. 14
Nuremberg – Victor’s Justice?  Simon Pardek ...................................................................... 16
C z e c h C o m m u n i s m To d a y
Memories Should Not Fade  Luboš Dobrovský .................................................................... 20
A Toothless Dog  Jiří Pehe ........................................................................................................ 22
A Tough Pill to Swallow  Petr Příhoda ................................................................................... 26
The Naked Emperor  Petr Fleischmann ................................................................................. 28
Expiration Date  Michal Pullmann ......................................................................................... 30
��
In Focus
The Other War  Ian S. Lamb..................................................................................................... 32
The Rising Clout of International Law  William A. Cohn ................................................. 36
S p o t l i g h t o n t h e B a lt i c
The Memory of Estonia  Miloš Přelovický............................................................................. 40
The Sun and the Blacksmith  Michal Šebek .......................................................................... 42
Latvia Report  Peter Zvagulis ................................................................................................... 44
C u lt u r e
��
Revolution in the head  Neal Ascherson ................................................................................ 46
Public TV – The Last Guardian of Democracy  Ondřej Aust............................................ 50
The Ghost of Europe  Jaroslav Veis ......................................................................................... 53
Th e n & N o w
The New Presence is the sister publication of the
Czech magazine Přítomnost. Both Magazines are
published by Martin Jan Stránský, grandson of
the original publisher of Přítomnost, which under
renowned editor Ferdinand Peroutka, became
inter-war Czechoslovakia´s most widely respected
periodical publication.
The New Presence is published on a quarterly
basis. It features a mixture of original material and
translated articles from our sister publication. Due
to considerations of space and style, some articles
may vary in style and/or length from the original.
French Democracy Stalled – A Přítomnost article from 1926 ..................................................... 58
Letter From…
Laura Owens describes a trip to Budapest .................................................................................... 59
P a r t i n g Th o u g h t s
Communists in the Way  Martin Jan Stránský ...................................................................... 60
Cover: Johana Kratochvílová (www.istockphoto.com)
summer �� / THE NEW PRESENCE
[1]
e dit o r´s no te s
Dear readers,
Welcome to a new look New Presence. We’ve been receiving
comments for some time now, suggesting that we could
make this magazine more visually appealing. I hope that
you appreciate our new layout, and as always, we welcome
your feedback. Rest assured, our usual in depth coverage and
analysis will continue and all the usual features will remain.
With the surprising fall in popularity of the Czech
communist party following recent parliamentary elections,
we have a special section that examines the influence of this
controversial party. Luboš Dobrovský argues that the KSČM
remains a dangerous anti-democratic force within the Czech
Republic. Jiří Pehe, however, argues that inclusion within the
democratic process is the only way
to transform this party towards
modernity. Meanwhile, Michal
Pullmann offers a fascinating
look at how the political Left views
Marxist ideology today.
With the recent anniversary of
the execution of Czech political
activist Milada Horáková, Laura
Owens examines both the history
and the legacy of a show trial
that shamed the nation, and forever discredited the Czech communist regime. In a special
section looking at the Baltic states, Miloš Přelovický, Michal
Šebek and Peter Zvagulis reflect on how Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia continue to be haunted by the memories of the
Soviet occupation.
With the conflict in Sri Lanka between the Tamil Tigers
and the authorities continuing to dominate the headlines, Ian
S. Lamb provides a fascinating and in-depth analysis of the
background to a struggle that has haunted this tropical island
for decades. Now, for some questions: Can international
law be enforced? Can it be ignored? And most importantly,
what exactly is international law? William A. Cohn,
provides a detailed look at the ever more prevalent role that
international law is playing in the global arena, and tries to
find an answer to these questions. Meanwhile, Simon Pardek
and Jaroslav Šonka examine the legacy of the Nuremberg
Trials, pointing out many apparent inconsistencies, double
standards and failures of a process, which nonetheless
proved to be a crucial building block towards the concept of
achieving global justice.
We also have a short story by Jaroslav Veis, a look at the
role of Czech public television by Ondřej Aust, reactions to
the recent Czech elections and much, much more. As ever,
I wish you an enjoyable read.
Dominik J�n
“Jak se do lesa volá, tak se z lesa ozývá.”
“The way you call to the forest, the forest will call to you.”
-Czech Proverb
[ 2 ] THE NEW PRESENCE / summer ��
opinions
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ILUSTRACE: ONDŘEJ COUFAL
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hose Czechs that were engaged in fiery debates as
to just who the bad guys were following the recent
Czech parliamentary elections could be accused
of slightly missing the point. Pundits were quick to use
the media friendly sound-bite of a “divided nation” following the so-called 100-100 Right-Left tie that shook
the Czech political spectrum. But raised voices and the
label “divided nation” suggest an active and engaging
political process; a healthy democracy; and representative politics. In the Czech Republic, such lofty goals
were exposed by this election as little more than wishful
thinking. The political parties could be contented to see
their supporters arguing with the dreaded “other” as if
one side represented absolute good and the other absolute evil. The demonic, arrogant and dictatorial socialist-communist Left versus the greedy, callous and
ideologically spellbound Right. However, such characterisations only ever serve to prevent Czechs from
doing what politicians fear most – voters turning their
attention (read: accountability) not on the enemy, but
on to the party to which they are most ideologically
inclined. The post-election result arguably brings such
unthinkable civic participation a step closer. Civic Democrat voters must be asking why their party chose
such an unpalatably moronic neo-conservative economic programme. Social Democratic voters must be
wondering how different it could all have been if the
party had done more to root out corruption and the
stench of authoritarianism. Ultimately, the Left-Right
ideological trenches are little more than the desperate
calling cards of parties that lack vision, pragmatism and
policy. It is in this climate that they ask the electorate to
ignore policies and merely follow their instinctive ideological inclinations.
The hysteria, name-calling, fist-fights and downright slander in the pre-election cycle only proved
how the politicians misjudged the electorate. In the
basest and most primitive form, voters were asked to
vote against a caricature of either the Left or Right.
The perceived threat by this other, was then meant
to justify any dirty trick imaginable – after all, the
cause was just and the quarrel honourable (as Shakespeare put it). The election was framed as almost revolutionary in its importance. Flash forward to after
the election and the deflated faces of the leaders of
both main political parties. The voters had rejected
the hysteria, they hadn’t fallen for the hype. The politicians were clearly fighting for power not altruism.
The result: there would be no more extreme lurches
to the left or right, no one party had been convincing enough. Czech society has begun to mature. In
spite of a misguided president, apathy, corruption
and immature political and media spheres, a long
history of blindly supporting extremes appears to
be coming to an end in the country. Following the
Czech elections, politicians have no choice but to
finally speak calmly and rationally to each other
and to the public. For the first time since 1989, the
Czech people were the real victors, and through the
ballot -box have helped to put a nail in the coffin of
post-communist primitivism once and for all.
Simon Pardek
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zech president Václav Klaus recently stood beneath a portrait of Czechoslovakia’s first president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and delivered
another fervent dose of his usual euro-scepticism to
the nation: a united Europe is heading downwards
economically; the anticipated benefits of EU membership have not materialised; most Czech market
reforms were enacted before EU membership; EU
entry has damaged Czech democracy – it may help
the Turks, but not us; a new era of bureaucratisation
and legislative overload is taking over our lives.
Klaus also emphasised the need to curtail the
harmonisation and unification of the EU. He added
“An EU concerned with human rights is just a veil
for other purposes.” However, he failed to mention
just what those purposes were. Czech professor Vác-
[3]
opinions
lav Hořejší asked the president why he believed harmonisation was such a bad thing. Klaus responded
with a dystopian vision of the threat of “Europe-ism”.
Former Charles University rector Jiří Wilhelm then
asked the president why a million European students
study abroad each year within the EU. The president
answered that this fact has its upsides and also its
downsides.
The Czech daily Lidové noviny reacted with an
opinion piece, which suggested that the Czech president was not a holocaust denier, but rather an EU
denier. It added that this was also tragic, as was also
in a sense a crime. The president’s advisor Ladislav
Jakl acerbically thanked the newspaper for “an alarm
bell, which has clearly reminded us that euro-nazism
exists in this country.” The head of the Czech nationalist National Party, Petra Edelmann then wrote that
the president’s view is the clear, blunt view of a statesman concerned with the wellbeing of his country.
Sixty-six Czech scientists and university professors
responded by issuing a statement in which they stated that they strongly disagree with the president’s
position on the EU.
This is not the first time that teachers and intellectuals have clashed with the president, whilst extreme elements have applauded him. It certainly won’t
be the last.
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Libuše Koubská
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ne would be hard pressed to avoid the numerous
corruption scandals in the Czech Republic. Almost daily, we are treated to stories of who did
what, how much money was involved and how the corruption monitoring organisation Transparency International reacts to all this. One can only sigh and state
“That’s how things are here. It’s business as usual.”
I will venture against these prevailing winds and
state that this is not how things are here. I say so as a
result of an experience with the administration of the
Prague 6 municipal district.
I was living overseas, applying for a new Czech
passport. The information took five minutes to explain. A clear list of what I needed to bring, an explanation of the whole process and even a smile to
boot. Then there was the confirmation of my citizenship – a different department. A historical note
– computerisation took place at the same time as the
break-up of the former Czechoslovakia (1992) therefore some of the old Czechoslovak-era documents
must still be found by hand. But the officer knew just
where to look and after a short conversation, she asked me to wait for a while. All in all, five minutes
of dealings, a week of waiting for my confirmation
papers to arrive in the post and then another five
minutes in the section for Czechs living abroad. 300
Crowns at the till: two minutes; another stamp: five
minutes. Two weeks later, two minutes to pick up my
passport, and another smile.
In another words, the public administration (as it
is called today), was flawless. Had I brought a cup of
coffee for the official, as my mother did during communism, then it would be corruption. But the smiles I got suggested that even the coffee would not be
welcome. Not only did I pick up a passport, but also
a good feeling about this country. Business as usual
indeed.
Jaroslav Šonka
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t was meant to be the pre-election triumph of the
Czech Social Democrats. An agreement with Korean automobile company Hyundai to built a car
plant in the Czech town of Nošovice was considered
so important, that the Czech Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek was willing to send his Minister for Industry
all the way to Korea to close the deal – this despite
the fact that the President of the company is under
investigation for bribery and corruption.
The Czech government is prepared to invest 6.5
billion Crowns in the venture. In return, the country is to get three-thousand jobs. But is this really
a good deal? From a strictly short-term economic
point-of-view, the answer is yes. The factory will no
doubt contribute to Czech economic growth. But in
terms of long-term and strategic interests, the answer
is a resounding “no”. Simply put, the money that we
taxpayers are investing into this project, would be far
better spent elsewhere.
Today, no prosperous, modern country thrives
from assembling cars. It is important to note that in
Nošovice, there will be no designers or engineers coming up with new cars and new technologies. Those
jobs will remain in Seoul; the Czech Republic will
merely be an assembly point. Only a quarter of the
cost of making a car is represented by the cost of manufacturing. In other words – three out of every four
Crowns is spent on design, development and marketing. Thus, it is very easy to see what really brings
prosperity: an ability to create and sell, not construct
and manufacture.
The billions that we are spending on the Hyundai project, would be far better spent on science and
on education. For comparison, the Czech education system this year has been allotted a budget of 20
billion Crowns. This means that a single factory will
receive the equivalent of a third of the entire education budget. This, despite the fact that the ability
of a country to innovate depends on its educational
institutions.
It is true, that generous incentives to investors
have contributed towards the prosperity of this
country. Eight years ago, we had nothing to offer.
Businesses pampered by a form of banking socialism
were going bust, and doing business here remained
risky and unpleasant. Taxes were high, bureaucracy
arrogant. It took months to set up a company, and
court decisions took years. We weren’t attractive,
and so instead of changing, we offered money.
With those billions, we bought ourselves a reputation as a beloved place for foreign investment. But
such grants should have, and still should be offered
only to companies that will contribute in transforming the country from a source of cheap labour into
one that is a key innovator in Europe.
Lenka Zlámalová
[5]
news roundup
A look at events in the Czech Republic as

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10th April 2006
European foreign ministers extend a
visa ban on Belarus officials to include
President Alexander Lukashenko and
30 other officials. The visa ban means
Mr Lukashenko and the 30 ministers,
prosecutors and election officials cannot
enter EU countries. EU officials say further
steps remain possible, including freezing
the assets of the Belarussian leadership.
20th April 2006
The European Union takes legal action
against 17 member states including the
Czech Republic for failing to follow EU rules
that aim to open the 25-nation bloc’s gas
and electricity markets to more competition.
Energy security remains a key issue amidst
concerns that Europe remains excessively
dependant on Russia for its gas supplies.
series of events to commemorate the 20th
anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear
disaster at the Chernobyl power plant.


23rd April 2006
Hungary’s ruling Socialists win a second
term in office, according to national
election commission results. The governing
coalition led by Prime Minister Gyurcsany
takes 210 of the 386 parliamentary seats.
It is the first time a government has been
re-elected in Hungary since democracy
was restored in 1990. According to the
commission, the opposition Fidesz party
won 164 seats and the smaller right-wing
MDF party won 11 seats.
25th April 2006
According to a poll released by the SC&C
agency, every third Czech admits to having
paid a bribe in the past. The poll, which
surveyed 3166 people suggests that
men over 45 with secondary or university
education paid bribes most frequently and
are also the most frequent target of bribery.
Sixty-four percent of those polled said they
had never paid a bribe.
27th April 2006
At least 6,000 protesters rally in the
Belarussian capital Minsk for a march to
mark the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in
Ukraine. The anniversary march remains a
rare forum for the Belarussian opposition.
During the event, a few hundred of opposition
leader Mr Milinkevich’s supporters defy
police orders and carry banners through
the city centre. Meanwhile, Ukraine holds a
1st May 2006
After being denied their traditional venue,
the Czech Communist Party hold their
annual May Day rally in Prague’s 19th century
Výstaviště exhibition grounds. Clashes
between neo-Nazis and anti-fascists ensue. Kateřina Jacques, a candidate for
the opposition Green Party, is kicked and
beaten by police before being handcuffed
and taken away for questioning. Prime
Minister Jiří Paroubek is swift in criticising
the police action. The incident dominates
headlines for weeks, and results in limited
sanctions against the Czech police service.
5th May 2006
Czech President Václav Klaus vetoes a bill
that would have established a network of
non-profit hospitals within the country’s
health care system. The bill, which would
have transformed almost 150 hospitals
currently managed by local authorities into public facilities financed from health
insurance payments, was passed in April
with support from Social Democrat and
Communist MPs. In the weeks ahead, Klaus
vetoes a record amount of legislation passed
by the government including a new Labour
Code and a bill on the state fund for Czech
cinematography that would have seen the
film industry receive public funds. Critics
of the president accuse Klaus of stepping
beyond the bounds of his ceremonial post.

13th May 2006
Following Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek’s
election as leader of Social Democrats,
the party vows not to form a coalition
with the Communists following the June
elections. Meanwhile, the leader of the
Communist Party, Vojtěch Filip, says that
the communists are counting on silently
supporting a minority Social Democratic
government.

17th May 2006
The European Commission decides that
Bulgaria and Romania must fulfil 10 more
conditions if they wish to join the European
Union next year. A final assessment on
whether the two Balkan states can join
the EU in January, will be delayed until
October. Bulgaria has been told to address
governmental corruption and organised
crime, among other problems, while Romania faces changes in food safety and
additional bureaucracies.

20th May 2006
Czech Health Minister David Rath is
physically attacked by the former opposition deputy Prime Minister Miroslav
Macek at a meeting of Czech dentists. Mr.
Macek, a long-time adviser to President
Václav Klaus, was chairing the meeting
of dentists when he walked over to the
minister and without warning hit him on
the back of the head. He later stated that
he had been settling “a personal account”.
The Civic Democratic Party distances itself
from Macek’s action and asks him to leave
party ranks.

22nd May 2006
Celebrations break out in the former Yugoslav
republic of Montenegro, where official results show that 55% of voters said “yes” to
independence in a controversial referendum.
Pro-independence Prime Minister Milo
Djukanovic denies that breaking its union
with Serbia will lead to new tensions in the
Balkan region. The move follows a decadelong campaign to restore the independence
of Montenegro and signals the end of what
remains of Yugoslavia.

29th May 2006
Speaking before Parliament’s Defence
and Security Committee, the head of the
Czech Police’s elite organised crime unit,
Jan Kubice, states that investigations have
shown that Czech Prime Minister Paroubek
and other top officials have hindered
his unit’s work in order to shield Social
Democrat colleagues from investigation.
Evidence supporting the charges was not
made public. The PM denies the allegations
telling journalists that the opposition Civic
Democrats have fabricated the charges
to swing voters ahead of Parliamentary
elections.

June 3rd 2006
The right-of-centre opposition Civic Democrats win the Czech general elections with
35.3 percent of the vote, three percent
news roundup
well as key stories from central Europe
ahead of the ruling Social Democrats who
poll 32.3 percent. The three other parties
cross the 5-percent threshold needed to
enter parliament: the Communists with just
under 13 percent, the Christian Democrats
with over 7 percent and the Green Party
with over 6 percent. The official results
give the Civic Democrats 81 parliamentary
seats, the Social Democrats 74, the
Communists 26, the Christian Democrats
13 and the Greens 6 seats in the 200seat chamber. The result is labelled a
100:100 tie between the Left and Right
and prevents either camp from forming a
majority government.

June 5 2006
President Václav Klaus formally entrusts
the leader of the Civic Democratic Party,
Mirek Topolánek, with the task of forming
a new government.

6th June 2006
Jiří Paroubek, the leader of the Social
Democrats, declares that he is only willing
to support a caretaker government, and
that this arrangement could conceivably
last for a 4-year term. Paroubek is widely
criticised for a post-election speech in
which he accused a number of Czech
journalists of being mercenaries of the
Civic Democratic Party and also likened the
party’s policies to the Communist take-over
in 1948. Several days later, he is forced to
apologise for the remarks.
introduction of a 15-percent flat tax could
cause a serious revenue shortfall and a
flat tax of such an extent would make it
necessary to look for savings in other
areas. If these savings were not found, he
said, fiscal policy could be derailed.


11th June 2006
A report suggests that the number of
Czechs recycling is on the rise and in fact,
Czechs are among the best recyclers in
Europe. The country has already surpassed
recycling parameters set by the European
Union that are to take effect in 2012.
According to the report, 67% of people
practice recycling on a regular basis.

18th June 2006
The main leftist opposition party wins the
largest share of the vote in the Slovak
general election but falls far short of an
outright majority. Robert Fico’s Smer party
takes 29.14% of ballots against 18.36%
for Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda’s
Slovak Democratic and Christian Union.
Fico vows to undo many of the unpopular
economic measures taken by the defeated
government. Fico later forms a coalition
agreement with the centre-left Movement
for a Democratic Slovakia, led by Vladimir
Meciar, and the right-wing Slovak National
Party. The three parties together have 85
seats in the 150 seat parliament.
th

Jiří Paroubek

9th June 2006
An OECD official warns the Czech Republic
of the risks involved in pushing through a
15-percent flat tax, one of the fundamental
reforms proposed by the election-winning
right-of-centre Civic Democrats. The head
of the OECD’s country studies division,
Andreas Woergoetter, states that the
10th June 2006
All 74 newly-elected Social Democratic
MPs vow not to support a government
coalition made up of the Civic Democrats,
the Christian Democrats, and the Green
Party if such a coalition is led by the Civic
Democratic Chairman, Mirek Topolánek.
20th June 2006
Czech soldiers in Iraq say security around
their base close to the southern city of
Basra has been worsening, with missile and
mortar attacks threatening them and their
mission. Military contingent commander Jiří
Neubauer, whose unit has just completed
its 3-month mission in Iraq, tells journalists
that tension between the different streams
of Islam has made Basra the second most
dangerous city after Baghdad. The Czech
Republic has had a military presence in Iraq
since December 2003.

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21st June 2006
Leaders from the European Union and the
United States of America meet in Vienna to
discuss trans-national co-operation, issues of
security, the Guantanamo Bay prison camp
in Cuba, Iran’s nuclear policy, and US visa
requirements for EU member states, including
the Czech Republic. Despite pressure, the US
asserts it will not lift visa requirements for
Czechs travelling to the US.
26th June 2006
After three weeks of negotiations, representatives of the Civic Democrats, the
Christian Democrats, and the Green Party
sign a coalition agreement. The agreement
details a common program which focuses
on relations with the European Union,
international co-operation, family matters,
education, culture, respect for the rule
of law, the fight against corruption, the
economy, and rural and urban living
standards. The division of ministry posts
is also decided, with the Civic Democrats
allotted nine posts, and the Christian
Democrats and Greens three each. Prime
Minister and leader of the Social Democratic
Party, Jiří Paroubek, says his party will not
tolerate the proposed government. .

28th June 2006
Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek announces
that he will resign triggering the fall of
his government and opening the way for
a new administration. The move will allow
President Václav Klaus to appoint Civic
Democrat chairman Mirek Topolánek as
the next prime minister. Two days later,
president Klaus announces that he will
not accept the resignation. In response,
Paroubek withdraws the offer. The deadlock
continues.

7th July 2006
Poland’s Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz announces his resignation, though
no reason for the decision is given. The
PM’s governing Law and Justice party
recommends the post be taken over by
its chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski – the
identical twin brother of President Lech
Kaczynski. Over recent weeks, there have
been frequent reports of a rift between Mr
Marcinkiewicz and Jaroslaw Kaczynski over
economic policy.
[7]
the czech republic
Does the Deficit
Matter?
Libuše Bautzová
Is an almost �� billion
Crown deficit wise when
the Czech economy is
doing so well?
A
s politicians and political parties
jockey for positions in the post-election period, the issue of the budget
deficit still looms in the background.
The most recent approval of the Czech
budget in 2006 anticipated a deficit of
74,4 billion Crowns (approx. 3.3 billion
USD or 2.6 billion Euro), with an estimated 884,4 billion Crowns of government
income and an approved 958,8 billion
Crowns worth of government spending.
This deficit is about 2.4% of GNP.
As in other countries, the primary
source of income for the government is
taxes, government insurance schemes,
duties, levies and several other payments.
The main expenditures are primarily in
the form of pensions, healthcare, education, government administration costs,
social security and state investments.
The government pays for motorways,
railways, schools and for aid to developing countries.
As to whether a balanced budget is
important, even a layperson would be
inclined to answer yes. However, in the
case of a government budget, there is a
different scenario: as a rule, governments
that decide on deficit spending are usually not the governments that end up
paying them off. The debts are the re-financed through government bonds,
which the government promises will
yield dividends in the form of interest.
Every borrowed ten billion can over time
grow by a further several million in interest. This means, that unless there is not a
strong economic upturn, today’s reckless
budget keeping can lead to a loss in the
overall standard of living.
However, the Czech Republic is a
member of the EU, with certain obligations. For instance, the country aims to
adopt the Euro by 2010. In order for this
to happen, Czechs must fulfil the Maastricht criteria, which do not allow a deficit of more than 3% of the GDP. For this
reason, the Czech Republic has prepared
a convergence scenario, which will mean
that by 2008 the country will meet these
requirements.
Last year as well as this year, the economy remained extremely robust, and
the country continues to fulfil the Maastricht requirements. However, this scenario may not continue. The promised
expenditures for this financial year - the
ones for which Czechs are partly forced
to borrow, are no guarantee that they
will propel the economy towards greater growth. Public expenditures, particularly salaries and budgets are largely
guaranteed (and politics dictate that they
can grow but not shrink), and thus the
government has little choice but to pay
out. How will such things be paid for?
According to the current predictions, the
2007 deficit is to reach 88 billion Crowns.
In 2008, it is hoped that the budget deficit will be reduced to 71 billion Crowns.
the czech republic
The Czech government is not the only
one to see many positives arising from
deficit spending. Outgoing Czech finance minister Bohuslav Sobotka has argued
that the deficit is not an issue, because
the economy is strong, and that under
the current circumstances, the deficit is
within acceptable EU norms. He
also added that the adoption of the
Euro will not be hindered. Thus,
the current deficit has become both politically and economically acceptable, and
the notion of a strong economy being
used to truly pay off this deficit is simply
something one is not likely to hear Czech
from politicians.
A deficit budget is by no means universally condemned by economists. There are situations when it can actually help
a country. Setting aside extremes such as
times of war, recessions can also be cured by increased spending. Should the
state receive less revenue in the form of
taxes, it becomes necessary to increase
borrowing, rather than lower expenditures which, most economists agree, only
deepens a recession.
It is also possible to imagine an economy with a long-term deficit posing
little threat to economic stability. Here,
however, expenditures must have a different structure, in that the priority of government spending should be to ensure a
level of growth that ensures that the GDP
rises faster than the actual deficit (meaning that the interest paid on the deficit
“loan” will not grow as a percentage of
GDP, thus posing no threat to economic
stability – Ed.)
The Czech economy is currently
growing at a rate of between 4-5% and
outgoing finance Minister Sobotka has
claimed that the current budget is designed to promote growth. His priorities
are not only the valorisation of money,
but also the co-financing of EU programmes, science and research and higher
education.
With regards to domestic projects co-financed by the EU, the situation is less
clear. Recent reports have suggested that
the Czech Republic is far from adept at
making use of EU funds. The fact that
during last year, the government made
crucial savings, which resulted in the
budget deficit being lower than predicted, is partly attributed to using fewer
EU resources for co-financing the deve-
lopment of projects. This can hardly be
regarded as a great plus.
What the government under Paroubek arguably does deserve credit for is
increased channelling of resources into
science and research. This financial year,
18 billion Crowns have been earmarked
for scientific institutions, which is 10%
more than last year. High schools have
fared even better, with a 25,7 billion
Crown infusion, an annual increase of
almost 14%. Such prioritised spending
has yielded great dividends in countries
such as Ireland, and so this appears to be
a laudable path.
In order to asses the state budget,
examining the differences between income and expenditures is not sufficient.
What must also be assessed is the overall
amount of money flowing through the
state coffers. Is it crucial that this figure grows on a yearly basis? One theory
holds that lower taxes and lower levels of
social insurance (which mean less revenue for the state) lead to greater employment and thus lessen the burden on state
social expenditures. The danger of increasing social support without accompanying reforms has been pointed out
by numerous economists. Here, the Ministry of Finance knows full well that its
current budgetary politics aren’t entirely
in order. The government branch recently sponsored an analysis, which warned
that without reforms, in 2013 mandatory
expenditures (pensions, social support
etc) could make up more than 91% of the
overall state budget (today the figure is
around 66%).
How will the state fund other projects? Despite the fact that between 2007
and 2013, Brussels could give the Czech
Republic as much as 800 billion Crowns,
this may not be enough. In the post-election period, it is hard to imagine that
any of our politicians will offer a radical
proposal for the reform of government
finances.
Nevertheless, the problem will remain. Should the next Finance Minister
open a framework for discussions, this
would be a good start. The country could
also benefit from a wider review of spending. At present, the state coffers can
hardly be described as open and transparent. Alongside the state budget, there
exist several non-budget related funds
(transport, housing etc.). The budget also
does not take into account payments for
healthcare (which are based on public-private individual insurance schemes),
with all its associated debts. Then there is also the Czech Stabilisation Agency
(Česká Konsolidační Agentura), which
has to deal with the effects of bad credit
and which is often accused of covering
up its losses.
Key counter-weights to these expenditures are the revenues from state privatizations, but in and of themselves,
these distort the amount of money the
state is able to spend, since they are one-time gains on assets that the post-1989
Czech “acquired” and did not pay for.
The budget is also deformed by the aforementioned government savings (spending less than the allotted budget) which
are then channeled into the next financial year.
In the end, ordinary citizens probably should not be excessively concerned.
What really matters is getting value for
one’s money. And that question has
always concerned the public.

Libuše Bautzová is a journalist and works as
the deputy editor of the Czech business weekly
Ekonom. Edited from the original Czech. .
[9]
the czech republic
the czech republic
Milada Horáková
Laura Owens
A Mountain
that Refused to Move
To many Czechs, Milada Ho- Birth pangs
Horákova was born Milada Králová on
ráková is a national heroine. Christmas Day 1901 in the Czech city of
On ��th June ��, Horáková became the first woman to be
hanged for political reasons in
the former Czechoslovakia. The
images of her Stalinist show trials remain firmly etched in the
Czech consciousness. Her implacable calmness and relentless
defence of her position in the
face of trumped up charges of
treason continue to provide
Czechs with a rare counter-image
to those “dissidents” that were
ultimately broken by a system,
which demanded false confessions, scripted responses
and utter capitulation.
Prague. Her mother was a music teacher
and her father was a pencil factory owner.
At the age of twelve, both her older sister
and younger brother died of scarlet fever
complicated with meningitis. By the end
of the WWI, she had become politically
active and joined a group of radical socialists.
In 1926, Horáková graduated from
Charles University with a degree in law
and philosophy. Horáková soon entered
the world of politics and spent several
years working within the Prague City
Council as the director of the welfare
department. During this time she focused on social issues such as housing and
employment and also campaigned for
the rights of women as well as becoming
involved in projects involving young people. She soon became a member of the
Women‘s National Council, an association dedicated to promoting women‘s
rights, and also joined the National Socialist party (no relation to the Nazi party).
In 1927, she married Bohuslav Horák an
agricultural engineer whom she had met
at university. He would later work alongside her on several political projects.
The first resistance
When the Czech lands were made part
of the German protectorate, Horáková
became involved in the anti-Nazi resistance, using the Women’s National
Council as a front for her activities. She
also belonged to two underground organisations known as “Political Centre”
and “We will be Faithful.” She and her
husband Bohuslav were ultimately ar-
rested by the Gestapo in 1940. The judge
trying her case wanted her to be executed but this was later reduced to a prison
sentence. Horáková spent her sentence
in numerous prisons including the notorious concentration camp at Terezín. Her
husband was also sent to prison.
During her imprisonment, Horáková spent much time in solitary confinement. In one of her letters she wrote that
she was kept in a small room without any
natural light and heating for several days.
One of her colleagues from those times
also remarked after her release that there
were what looked like cigarette burns on
her arms.
“Liberators” - May ��
Following the end of WWII, and the Soviet liberation in 1945, Horáková was released from prison. She returned home
and soon re-entered the political field,
having become something of a celebrity.
After being persuaded by the then Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš, she
again became a dominant figure in the
Czechoslovak National Socialist party
and became a member of parliament.
During this period, she helped found the
Union of Political Prisoners and Survivors and Victims of Nazism organisations. What is less known about Horáková
is her involvement in the controversial
post-war programme instigated by President Beneš to remove millions of Sudeten Germans from the Czech lands,
which she strongly supported. During
this time, she was also elected as head of
the Women’s National Council and worked tirelessly to prevent it´s communist
members from taking control of the organisation.
[ 11 ]
the czech republic
As the communists continued to
exert more influence over Czech society,
the situation in Czechoslovakia began
to grow ever more tense. In 1946, the
now Communist-controlled secret police accused Horáková of spreading false
reports stating that the Communist-controlled People’s Courts had falsely convicted hundreds of people following the
war. In February 1948, the communists
seized power in Czechoslovakia, and an
era of Stalinist intolerance and authoritarianism ensued. Horáková gave up her
seat in parliament on the 10th March in
protest and thus stripped herself of her
political immunity. Horáková continued
to be politically active, despite the increased infiltration of communists into all
public groupings. Friends began to plead
with her to join the many others who had
by now fled into exile, but Horáková refused, partly believing that the communists would never execute a woman or
arrest an anti-Nazi freedom fighter. She
was, however, soon proven wrong.
Former members of the National Socialist party, including Horáková continued
to meet in secret and effectively began
to organise a de-facto new resistance. At
a secret meeting it was even discussed that
attempts be made to form an anticommunist government but such efforts proved
futile. The Czechoslovak communist government meanwhile, began to see Horáková as one of their greatest enemies.
An enemy of the state
On 27th September 1949, Milada Horáková, a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance
was arrested by the communist regime
along with several other members of her
group. Specifically, the charge related
against Horáková was that she was the
leader of a group that was attempting to
overthrow the government. All members
of the group were harshly interrogated
and subjected to various forms of torture
whilst the secret police began to build up
a case of treason. Her husband, however,
managed to evade arrest and escaped to
the West in December 1949.
Seemingly wanting to cement their
hold on power, the communist government made an active decision to execute
all those it deemed to be conspirators.
Along with Horáková, twelve of her colleagues were to be tried by the state. By
choosing not to flee Czechoslovakia, she
had essentially given herself the death
sentence, one that would leave her daughter Jana without a mother. Whilst in
prison awaiting trial she wrote several
letters, including one to Jana in which
she stated “My task here was to do you
good….. By seeing to it that life becomes
better, and that all children can live well
and therefore we have to be apart for
a long time. It is now already the second
time fate has torn us apart.” she also added “When you realise that something is
just and true, then be so resolute that you
will be able to die for it.”
During this time, Horáková was again
exposed to repeated acts of torture designed to break her will before a televised
show trial. These included being forced to
stand wasit deep in water for up to twentyfour hours and also being placed in tiny
cubicles measuring less than one square
metre with no light, heat or food for several days. Following such brutal methods,
Horáková confessed to all the charges levelled against her, though she continued
to reject the legality of the communist
regime and refused any knowledge of her
husband’s whereabouts. Horáková also
shared a cell with a woman who had been
ordered by the secret police to spy on her.
She would bring back messages about
Horáková, report on her condition and
what she had said.
Show trial
On May 31st 1950 the trials of Horáková and twelve other male co-defendants
began. They were the first grandiose
show trials in Czech history. Defendants
were expected to read from a script and
confess unwaveringly to all charges. It is
difficult to establish what was really said
during the trials as they were subject to
heavy censorship at the time.
But the trials were clearly extremely
one-sided affairs, with prosecutors making wild proclamations about associations with “Imperialists” who sought to
undermine the sanctity of the nation and
reverse the communist revolution, whilst
defendants made solemn, mechanical
confessions. Horáková, evidently sensing
she had nothing to lose, chose to conduct herself in a manner that was both
calm and showed no signs of weakness.
The Stalinist show trials were designed
primarily for public consumption, and
Horáková’s staunch dismissal of the official lies about her continually tested and
undermined the court. Several times, she
contradicted the allegations and arguments of her prosecutors, even though
each act of defiance was undoubtedly
sealing her fate.
It is only today, that concerted attempts are being made to reconstruct the
trial. Numerous contradictory sources
prove how difficult a task this remains,
particularly in light of communist censorship and embellishments. The trial
was recorded in several ways: on film, on
radio, by a stenographer and then in an
another highly doctored record known
as the “grey book”. By comparing these
sources one can easily witness the communist attempts at re-writing history.
For example in one excerpt the “grey
book” reads:
the czech republic
PROSECUTOR: Mrs Horáková come
here please. (She comes) Did you hear the
prosecution? Did you understand the meaning of the charges?
HORÁKOVÁ: Yes
However, the official transcript reads
very differently:
PROSECUTOR: Do you feel guilty of
the activities that you are being prosecuted for?
HORÁKOVÁ: Yes I feel guilty of the activities that I have already said according
to modern criminal law. Well I did these
things but now you say that these things
are wrong.
“Right now after 50 years” says Petr
Blažek of the Czech Institute of Contemporary History “This is still a great issue...Only now are we finding out exactly
what was said.”
Horáková was ultimately found guilty
and sentenced to death. Several global figures learnt of her case and openly petitioned for her life. These included Winston
Churchill, Albert Einstein and Eleanor
Roosevelt. They sent letters to Czechoslovak Communist president Klement
Gottwald arguing that those who worked
against the Nazis should be held as heroes, not enemies of the state. The verdict
also caused consternation back home. In
an exceptionally rare letter, the head of
an elementary school in Prague wrote “I
believe that the judge worked properly
and followed the law, but please make
a symbolic gesture of humanity and lend
grace to a woman. God and millions of
people will be grateful for this one life.”
Several days later the man was fired from
his job and was unable to find another.
Ultimately, such pleas fell on deaf ears;
the fate of Horáková and her co-accused
had been sealed.
Dying on her feet
On the evening of the 26th June 1950, the
convicted political prisoners were told
that the next day they would be executed.
Milada Horáková had recently been informed that her sister was expecting a baby and mentions this in her last letter to
her family. “I have in my heart my sister
Věra and the little baby that will change
my life into her life.” Horáková was finally
hanged on the 27th June 1950. She was
the last one of the group to be hanged,
and in all likelihood before she died, saw
the coffins of her fallen compatriots being
taken away following their deaths.
The alleged last words of Milada Horáková were “I´m falling I´m falling. I have lost this fight but I‘m leaving with my
honour. I love this country and I love my
people...I´m leaving without any hatred.”
Around the same time, hundreds of
other men died under similar circumstances. But Horáková’s case is unique in that
she was the only woman to be executed
by the communists, making her not only
a martyr for justice but also an inspiration to those of her gender. Following her
death, the communists carefully crafted
an official truth with regards to Horáková. School children were taught about her
“espionage” and “betrayal” and the image
of a traitor was firmly cemented in the
official history books. The bodies of political prisoners were not returned to their
families and today it remains unclear where, if anywhere Horáková was buried. It is
widely assumed her body was cremated
after her execution. A symbolic grave in
Vyšehrad, Prague, however, does provide
a place for those paying their respects.
An enduring legacy
As an anti-fascist and women‘s rights
campaigner, Horáková’s execution by the
communist regime firmly underscored
the brutality and inhumanity of the post-war communist “liberators” of Czechoslovakia. The early Fifties are frequently
referred to as the darkest days of the Cze-
choslovak communist regime. But Horáková’s death was not futile. To those that
saw beyond the propaganda, her death
served as a painful reminder that far from
being liberated, Czechoslovakia was being thrust into a new totality; one which
did not even spare those that had fought
against the Nazi occupation. Though her
fate was sealed from the outset, Horáková demonstrated that a fight to the end
for one’s principles was the only way that
this regime could be prevented from
stripping a person of their dignity. It was
this fact, that helped to convince a new
generation of dissidents and activists that
the official party line was little more than
a falsehood designed to silence all forms
of free thought and opposition, and that
resistance to it was an imperative.
It was not until the pre-invasion thaw
in 1968 that the verdict in her trial was
officially quashed. But Horáková did not
start to be publicly recognised until after
the Velvet Revolution in 1989. In 1991,
then president Václav Havel posthumously awarded Horáková the Order of
T.G. Masaryk First Class. Her life and death are marked by a public holiday in the
Czech Republic, which commemorates
all the victims of the communist regime.
A street in Prague is also named in her
honour. Surprisingly, Milada Horáková
remains little known outside the Czech
Republic and Slovakia. But what arguably remains far more important is that
Czechs themselves are finally re-labelling many of their officially proclaimed
traitors as heroes. Milada Horáková was
once described as a mountain that refused to move, and though she has been
dead for more than half a century, the
full impact of her life and death is only
now being properly assessed.
Currently, efforts are underway by
Czech filmmaker Martin Vadas to film
a full reconstruction of the trial. Unfortunately, he has run into the same problems as those who have attempted to
punish those responsible for Horáková’s
death – namely a lack of resources, and
a lack of official interest. In this sense,
Horáková’s death still represents an open
wound for Czech society.

Special thanks to Petr Blažek. This article
was written as part of the New Presence
internship programme with the assistance
of the editor of this magazine.
[ 13 ]
europe
Structuring a Com
Karel B. Müller
The decline of the nation-state presents a unique opportunity to form a true European identity
I
f Europeans wish to retain their cultural diversity and let it flourish, they
must continue to cultivate a European civil society and European identity.
Why? Because nation-states are in crisis.
National governments are proving themselves incapable of dealing with many of
the issues and problems that accompany
globalisation. Many of these issues are
not tied to specific locations and thus
cannot be addressed solely by one state.
The sovereign state is now being seen in
an entirely new light, and is increasingly
dependant on co-operation with other
states. As such, Europe requires pan-European institutions. Indeed, much of the
debate is not focused around whether or
not we need such institutions, but rather
how to create them and how to make
them legitimate.
No such thing
as “European” politics
The only true source of legitimacy for
pan-European institutions is a European
civil society. The problem of European
integration is very closely tied to the problem of European unity. The manner and
type of governance in European states
and also the overall European political
system is increasingly at odds with the
cultural and social roots of European
society. Though technology is causing
shifts in the way we do business, and
global economy is becoming ever more
prevalent, European identity remains a
singularly national affair. This may prove
unsustainable in the long run.
A process of European integration
lacking a notion of common European
identity can only be maintained if there are universal gains for all parties in-
volved. However, any greater social or
economic crisis could rock this boat and
produce many unforeseen consequences.
Without a European citizen-based society and a European identity, rather than
seeking common answers and mutually
co-operating, we could find ourselves
blaming our neighbours and the “Brussels bureaucracy”
The absence of a true “European public,” according to many sociologists, is the
main problem in Europe. European politics cannot merely be the politics of trans-national governments, answerable only
to national populaces. Another problem
is the European Commission, which thus
far remains answerable to nebulous mechanisms rather than to actual populaces.
Only a responsible European public can
be a true guarantee of responsible European politics. Without identity, however,
there is no public; without the public there are no responsible politicians.
The political discussions within nation-states remain focused primarily on
national politics, even when the discussion is at least framed as being European
in character. European politics and European institutions have become little more
than irrelevant caricatures in the national debate. This then results in paradoxical situations, as was evidenced in the
last European parliamentary elections,
when a large number of nationalistic and
anti-European parties were elected to
serve in a parliament designed to serve
all of Europe. European issues remained
largely off the agenda. To add to the air
of irrelevance, many populaces used the
elections to protest against national governments, propelling a great deal of opposition parties into the European fold.
All this further added to the impression
that European politics is little more than
an illusion.
Human solidarity from identity
Human identity is a particularly contextual and multi-layered social and psychological phenomenon. For example, a citizen a particular country can be critical of
it whilst at home, but is often likely to be
defensive abroad when others criticise it.
The American psychologist Erik Erikson (1902-1994) distinguished between
positive and negative identity. Negative
identity has as its primary trait a lack of
empathy. In this sense, identity is arrived
at through the pathological victimisation
or domination of a perceived opponent.
The long-term effect of negative identity is
a growth in hatred, frustration and a loss
of self-respect. Whilst a negative identity
leads to one-sided debates and attempts
at domination, a positive identity is far
more productive and inherently leads to
a far greater sense of gratification.
In traditional societies, identity was
intertwined with a complex system of
social ties, rituals and practices. In modern society, identity needs to be repeatedly constructed. As the British sociologist Stuart Hall (1932-) once noted, the
problem of identity today is far more a
question of routes than roots.
History, language and culture are thus
ceasing to be the sources of identity in
the traditional sense, and are rather becoming sources of their active features.
It is therefore no longer important who I
am or where I am from, but rather what I
will be and what do I represent.
With regards to politics, in traditional
societies there was a dominance of reli-
europe
mmon Europe
gious, dynastic and territorial identities.
In modern society, there is a far greater
emphasis on national identity. Under the
conditions of the modern nation-state,
individualism has metamorphosed into
its exact opposite, whilst national identity has become has become the basis for
the mobilisation of the populace.
The politics of fear
Nothing can be more effective at creating
human solidarity (and this can be misused by leaders for their own ends) than
a common enemy. The global politics of
the 20th century contains many examples
of governments creating over-simplified
portraits of an enemy. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th
2001, we have returned to a sense of perpetual fear, a subject
touched upon by the controversial film-maker Michael
Moore in his films Bowling
for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. As regards the
Czech environment, the
so-called “fear of the Euro-bureaucrats” is the local version of such populist
fears.
While the national identity crisis spurned by globalisation is bound to continue unabated, the personal identity crisis
will also arguably continue. The European integration process can be
grasped as an opportunity for a positive
identity, so long as the pathological negative traits of dominance and self-superiority do not rear their heads. In fact, as
long as European politics will exist solely
within the sphere of the defence of national interests without the emphasis of collective European interests, pathologically
negative traits will be strengthened.
The German sociologist Ulrich Beck
(1944-) stated that European integration
should be an attempt at both solidifying
and easing the European national sen-
se of over-complication. The process of
transformation of the national identity
should also be a process of de-nationalisation, which means a confirmation
of the cultural dimensions of collective,
pan-national identities and a reduction of the pathologically negative traits.
This view is not based on the creation
of a European super-state, but on a notion of liberation from nationalism. This
can result in, as the Czech thinker Ernest
Gellner (1925-1995) pointed out, a true
“spiritual liberation” of Europe.
The problem of de-nationalisation of
European cultures is thus primarily a
problem of mutual understanding and
respect. Prejudices need to be demolished, and national events need to be looked at from a European perspective.
It is arguably wrong to think that political solidarity necessarily leads to cultural homogenisation. Indeed, cultural
diversity is a European trait and can be
a facet of European identity, which can
form the basis for the existence of legitimate political institutions, which will in
fact defend this diversity and will encourage its further development.
European identity can be defined as a
project of civilisation, based on religion,
common history and western values.
However, this approach is troublesome. To define European identity
on the basis of Christianity would
exclude the large and growing
number of European indigenous Muslims, in Albania and
Bosnia for example. The phenomenon of common history
is also questionable. Indeed,
historically, Europe has frequently fought with itself, rather than with outsiders. The
common history of Belgian, British, French, Portuguese, Spanish
and Dutch colonialism is a source
of shame rather than pride. Thus, the
notion of a common history should be
framed as a common learning of mistakes that have led to disaster. Indeed,
the lessons of our common past are at the
very core and birth of the European integration process. European diversity must
be seen as an asset that forms the basis of
European identity.

Karel B. Müller
teaches political sociology
at the Prague school of Economics.
[ 15 ]
europe
Nuremberg–
Victor’s
Justice?
Simon Pardek
Sixty years after the Nuremberg trials, there still remains
no universal standard for the prosecution of war crimes
S
ixty years ago, the trials of 22 accused Nazi war criminals and 7
institutions of the Third Reich (including the Nazi party, the Gestapo the
Sicherheitsdienst -the intelligence service of the SS- and the SS itself) were in full
swing in the German city of Nuremberg.
The international court that was set up to
try the accused was unprecedented; trials
of this nature would not to be repeated
for decades and the proceedings spawned
much debate regarding international law,
humanism and ethics.
The international war crimes tribunal
convened 138 times, and heard 3800
testimonies (mostly written affidavits
signed by 155,000 people). The court
transcript runs at 17,000 pages long.
The accused stood trial for crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and
war crimes. Amongst those tried were
Herman Göring (second in command of
the Third Reich), J. von Ribbentrop (Nazi
foreign minister) and Hans Frank (who
ruled occupied Poland). After nine months of arguments and deliberations, judgement was finally pronounced on the
1st October 1946: twelve death penalties,
three life terms, four shorter sentences
and three acquittals.
Many of the events surrounding the
trial were popularised in the film Judgement at Nuremberg (US, 1961) starring
Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster. The
film focused on the 1947 courtroom trial of four judges who were accused of
helping to carry out Hitler’s decrees (the
so-called Judge’s trial). The film covered
one of several non-Nuremberg-process
trials that proceeded in the American
zones of Germany up till 1949. Officially
known as the “Trials of War Criminals
before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals” (NMT), these military tribunals
were also designed to prosecute crucial
members of the Nazi apparatus. While
the major Nuremberg trials were presided over by judges from Britain, France,
the US and the USSR, the judges as well
as prosecutors in these “subsequent trials” were all American. These trials were
facilitated by a law known as Control
Council Law No. 10, which empowered
any of the occupying authorities, namely Britain, the US and the Soviet Union
to try suspected war criminals in their
respective occupation zones. When the
major Nuremberg trials concluded, these
secondary trials continued to deal with
members of the Nazi apparatus lower
down on the chain of command. In all,
185 other functionaries were charged
with carrying out the atrocities ordered
by the Nazi leadership.
Creating the trials
The very creation and existence of the
Nuremberg Trials was complicated. During the war, the Allied powers began to
actively ponder the fates of those involved in the Nazi apparatus. The Permanent Court of International Justice of the
League of Nations, established in 1922,
had long since collapsed, along with the
institution that created it. The International Court of Justice of the newly created United Nations only covered issues
between nations rather than specific war
europe
Nuremberg´s Palace of Justice
crimes issues. This meant that a judicial
process designed to deal with Nazi criminals would have to be designed from
scratch.
Initially, both the USA and Britain
supported a proposal known as the Morgenthau Plan (after US Secretary of the
Treasury Henry J. Morgenthau Jr.) designed to openly punish Germany for its
aggressions. The surprisingly punitive
plan called for the partitioning of Germany, as well as its de-industrialisation
and transformation into an agricultural
economy. The plan also effectively meant
the use of German forced labour, mass
executions of Nazis and arguably the
crippling and perpetual humiliation of
an entire nation. Ultimately, this highly
controversial proposal was shelved and
replaced with the Marshal economic plan
(a US plan designed to rebuild Europe as
well as fight the threat of Communism)
which was strongly opposed by the Soviet Union. Despite growing tensions
and disagreements, the Soviet Union did
manage to agree along with the US and
Britain to the establishment of an official
judicial tribunal to try members of the
Nazi Regime.
The Nuremberg Trials were guided
by a series of specially created principles and codes, the roots of which lay in
a document written in Moscow in 1943.
It was there that the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union issued the so-called Moscow Declarations. These not
only recognised the need for the creation
of an entity resembling the United Nations (eventually created in 1945), but also
formally stated that Nazi officers would
be sent back to the countries in which
they had committed crimes and would
be “judged on the spot by the peoples
whom they have outraged”. Those Germans, whose criminal offences had no
particular geographical location, would
be punished by a joint decision of the government of the Allies. Such ambiguous
pronouncements were refined during
several meetings of the so-called “Big
Three” following the end of WWII. On
August 5th 1945, the London Charter of
the International Military Tribunal (or
the Nuremberg Charter) was formally
[ 17 ]
europe
issued, establishing three categories of
crimes which the court could try, namely War crimes, Crimes against peace,
and Crimes against humanity. The trials
also limited the purview of the court to
dealing with war crimes that had occurred following the outbreak of war on the
1st September 1939 and also forbade the
prosecution of any members of the Allied powers.
As military tribunals, the proceedings
were not to be constrained by burden of
proof issues, (for example, hearsay evidence would be allowed) and were designed to be prompt, decisive and free
of political propaganda. The trials were
specifically guided by legal declarations
known as the Nuremberg Principles (see
TNP, Spring 2006, Definitions of Convenience), which defined exactly what constituted war crimes and crimes against
humanity. The trials also led to the establishment of the so-called Nuremberg
Codes, a series of principles detailing
what constituted illegal scientific experimentation on human beings. The codes
came about primarily as a result of the
so-called “doctors trial” in which Nazi
scientists based their defence on the lack
of legal definitions of just what constituted “illegal human experiments.”
During the main Nuremberg trials, the
defence argued that the court was retroactively applying newly established laws
to those who stood before it. In response,
The “Big Three” –
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin
Because the trials
took place around
the birth of the
Cold War, this
ultimately prevented not only their
continuation, but
the process
of moral regeneration associated
with them
the prosecution noted the illegality of the
entire Nazi expansion, citing the Briand-Kellog treaty signed in Paris in 1928.
This treaty explicitly denounced war as
an instrument of national policy and was
signed by fifteen countries, including
(crucially) Germany. This seminal international agreement provided a basis for
declaring the aggressions committed by
Nazi Germany on its neighbours as illegal under international law.
Doubts
Some say that because the Nuremberg
Trials took place around the birth of the
Cold War, that this ultimately prevented
not only their continuation, but also the
process of moral regeneration associated
with them. After a while, the Allies could
no longer agree on a common approach,
which meant that the entire process eventually collapsed. At the time of the Nuremberg trials, the Soviet Union was in the
midst of Stalinist tyranny. The USSR was
therefore not fully enthusiastic regarding
the moral and internationalist aspects of
the Nuremberg process. Indeed, Stalin
had openly spoken of mass executions of
perhaps 50,000 Nazis following the war.
At the same time, much of the former Nazi apparatus throughout Europe
was also finding itself subject to “citizen’s
justice,” with public executions, beatings
and other reprisals against former Nazis
taking place.
Some German revisionists claim that
the Nuremberg trials were simply a form
of “victors justice” based not on any principles of law, but rather designed to provide the appearance of justice. Doubts
have also been cast on some of the judgements of the Nuremberg trials. Albert
Speer was one of three Nazis who were
spared the death sentence. As Hitler’s
chief architect and later as Minister for
Armaments, Speer was one of the few
defendants who expressed remorse at the
atrocities committed by the Nazi regime
during the proceedings. He was ultimately
sentenced to twenty years imprisonment
and was finally released in 1966. During
the trials, Speer successfully argued that
he was not aware of Nazi genocide. Only
years later did historians find documents
that suggested that Speer knew far more
than he was prepared to admit.
Similarly, Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi
party Rudolf Hess, received a life sentence, which many have either described
as too lenient or too severe. Hess flew to
Britain in 1941, apparently to negotiate
a peace deal with the British government.
Although the exact reasons for Hess’s
trip remain unclear, Hess was nevertheless arrested upon his arrival in Scotland
and spent the rest of the war in a British
prison. During his trials at Nuremberg,
Hess expressed no regrets at his actions.
He died in Berlin’s Spandau prison in
1987. Critics of his sentence have pointed
out that Hess was quite probably clinically insane, whilst proponents of a stronger
sentence have pointed out his pre-arrest
record and strong anti-Semitism.
Then there is the fact that the Nuremberg process ultimately limited itself to
europe
the crimes of only one Axis power, namely Germany, which, according to critics, underscores the notion of “selective
justice”. On the 29th of April 1945, the
Fascist dictator Mussolini was extra-judicially and publicly executed, along with
his wife, by Italian partisans. His body
was then put on public display in Milan.
Pietro Badoglio, was an Italian soldier
and politician who publicly parted with
Mussolini in 1940. During the autumn
of 1943, Badoglio was effectively made
leader of Italy following a coup against
Mussolini. Following the failure of the
coup, Badoglio disappeared into a life of
seclusion. He was never placed on trial,
even though he was responsible for the
use of poisonous gas during an invasion
of Ethiopia in 1935. His story closely mirrors that of Rudolph Hess who received
a life term at Nuremberg.
After the evaporation of the Nuremberg process, many Nazis managed to
elude justice, whilst others were found,
abducted and then taken to Israel to face
justice.
Newer tribunals
Despite many contradictions, the Nuremberg trials are seen by many historians as crucial building blocks that paved
the way for formation of the United Nations, and which helped develop the concepts of the “international community”
and international law. As such, the trials
have significance to this day, when notions pre-emptive wars and “enemy-combatants” dominate the headlines.
Since the Nuremberg trials, a number
of war crimes tribunals have convened to
try those accused of similar atrocities as
those committed by the Nazis. The most
famous tribunal of recent times is the
International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (or more properly the
International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Vi-
olations of International Humanitarian
Law Committed in the Territory of the
Former Yugoslavia since 1991). This particular tribunal was empowered by the
UN to try individuals (not organisations)
accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The tribunal is
based in the Dutch city of The Hague,
which in itself has become an “international city of peace and justice.” The Hague
is home to hundreds of other international organisations, including the world’s
oldest organisation for the settlement
of international disputes, known as the
Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA).
Established in 1899 during the Hague
Peace Conference, the court is designed
that its settlement activities in the West
Bank and Gaza could leave settlers exposed to prosecution for war crimes. The
court was also rejected by China, Iraq,
Libya and several other states. Despite
this, 60 countries ratified their participation, and the court was founded in 2002.
However, the court remains controversial
and is limited in scope and powers.
Sixty years after Nuremberg, there still
remains no worldwide standard for the
prosecution of war crimes. Today, many
view the Nuremberg trials as of little
more than of academic interest. Under
communism, the notion of Nuremberg
as the birthplace of modern humanitarian law was nowhere to be seen. The
Hitler with Mussolini
to hear cases between any parties that
choose to bring a case before it, be they
individuals, companies or governments.
The aforementioned International Court
of Justice, created by the UN charter, is
also based in the city.
In 2002, the International Criminal
Court was established as a permanent
global court to try individuals accused
of genocide, crimes against humanity
and war crimes. The institution was established as a court of “last resort,” in that
it would only hear cases if nations were
unwilling or unable to investigate them.
Despite this, many nations objected to
the creation of the court, and either did
not sign or did not ratify the treaty designed to create it. The US cited concerns
that its own troops could be tried in the
court, whilst Israel expressed concerns
undeniable guilt of the Nazi leaders was
frequently used by the communist apparatus to indicate that the victors were on
the correct side. Many Nazi victims and
opponents eventually came to share this
view, though many found themselves
inexcusably tried and executed by a regime fearful of its own freedom fighters.
In both the East and West, the Cold
War meant that as far as human rights,
and international law, the “gloves were
off ”. Today, with the “war on terror,” the
same attitude still prevails. The lessons
of Nuremberg are only slowly being
learnt.

Simon Pardek is a journalist.
This article is partly based on material
written by Jaroslav Šonka for a similar
piece in our sister paper Přítomnost.
[ 19 ]
czech communism today
Memories Should
Despite their recent fall in
popularity, the Czech Communists still represent
a threat to our political
stability
W
e often hear that today’s KSČM,
by many estimates an unreformed old-school communist
party, no longer represents a threat to
our democracy. Czech President Václav
Klaus recently told us that there was no
difference between the reformed former
communist and now socialist Hungarian
former prime minister Gyula Horn and
the former head of the KSČM Miroslav
Grebeníček. As minister of foreign affairs, Horn opened up Hungary’s Austrian border in 1989, which led to thousands of East Germans making the trip
into Western Germany. However, finding
any positive achievements that one could
pin on Grebeníček is a far more difficult
affair. Of course, he does have one rather
unusual accomplishment: it was the votes of his party that enabled the right-wing politician Václav Klaus to become
the country’s president.
We often hear that even during the
communist regime, the Czechoslovak
Communist Party was a flexible pluralistic entity, capable of admitting to its
mistakes and changing course. But what
such an argument seemingly fails to consider is, that any incidences of the communist party admitting to its misdeeds,
only came about as a result of unwanted,
oft brutally suppressed, public scrutiny
and pressure that ended in the toppling
of the former regime.
The new KSČM leader, Vojtěch Filip
was part of the pre-1989 communist apparatus, and as such, continues the KSČM’s blinkered denial of its own historic
record. Instead of an acceptance of the
labour camps, executions and mass arrests of those who opposed the regime,
we hear euphemisms such as the “excesses” of the past. In fact, revisionism of
the past appears to be coming from all
quarters.
Martin Škabraha from the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Olomouc
has argued that Communism was and
continues to be a legitimate tool for the
criticism of the many shortcomings of democracy. And the outgoing Czech premier, Jiří Paroubek, who stated that he was
FOTO: IGOR MALIJEVSKÝ
Luboš Dobrovský
unwilling to go into government with an
unreformed KSČM, was perfectly happy
to rely on the party to pass his legislation.
Just as before the recent elections, the current leaders of the Czech political parties
act as if there is really nothing to fear.
Communism as an ideology is according to some, difficult to define. Nevertheless, one can look at it in practice.
Communist governments all over the
world established undemocratic totalitarian states. In these states, dissent was punishable by imprisonment or even death.
In these states, intellectuals and artists
were forced to either become puppets of
the regime or were robbed of their livelihoods. In these states Marxism-Leninism became the only acceptable global
outlook and overriding philosophy. In
these states, countless people were im-
Not Fade
prisoned within their own countries by
barbed wires – those that tried to escape were mercilessly shot or imprisoned.
All of these horrendous truths are today
described as mere “excesses” by KSČM
leader Vojtěch Filip. Not a single one of
our contemporary communists has managed to find the strength and humility
to publicly remember those who worked
to their death in Uranium mines for the
former regime. We do however find the
KSČM fawning over the good military
service of former border guards - who
once shot at their own citizens trying to
escape the regime.
Despite proclamations that the party
will have to apologise for the past and
undergo reforms in order to become a viable coalition partner, the reality is that
in order for the Social Democrats to remain as a vital opposition party, co-operation with the KSČM may become the
only realistic option. At the same time,
Jiří Pehe, in an article for this magazine
(see following article) argues that today’s
communist party, stripped of the support
of the Soviet bloc, no longer poses a true
threat to Czech democracy. Indeed, even
the former dissident and president Václav Havel no longer warns against the
KSČM.
This author vehemently disagrees.
Even as a minority coalition partner, the
KSČM is a threat to this country. Non-communists who fail to see the threat
posed by the KSČM may well be more
dangerous than the KSČM itself – after
all, such people are far more credible.
Should we join these people and abandon those ideals, which in 1989 led us
out on to the streets to reject all that the
Communists stood for? Should we join
them in losing our memory and revising
history to read that harmful activists prevented the communist party from implementing economic changes – as President Klaus himself has suggested?
The communists, not only through
their bloody past, but even through their current political programme remain
a risk to our political stability. Their radicalism, tolerated by their apologists, does
little more than to create an artificial
class-hatred between the rich and poor,
and undermines the very social solidarity of the citizens of this democratic state.
In its foreign policy, the KSČM propagates a warped form of nationalism,
fear of Germany, anti-Americanism and
a rejection of the NATO alliance. In doing so, it threatens the very geo-political
orientation of this country. Is such a risk
really so small?
The difficulties associated with precisely defining the communist mantra are
irrelevant. All that one need to do is remember the past and look at the present.
To see the KSČM as anything other than
a grave risk to this country, even after its
loss in the most recent elections, is to re-write this country’s own history.

Luboš Dobrovský
is a journalist and former
Czech Ambassador to Russia .
ADVERTISEMENT
[ 21 ]
A Toothless Dog
Ji�í Pehe
The push for the isolation of
the Czech Communist Party
﹙KSČM﹚ reflects a wider
unresolved conflict within
Czech society
O
ne of the most frequent questions
being asked by foreign journalists
is this: How is it possible that an
unreformed communist party has such
strong support in the Czech Republic?
The question is a valid one, particularly
when one considers that this country
is a relatively stable and economically
prosperous democracy. In such an environment one would expect very little
support for the ideology offered by the
Czech Communist Party. In reality,
very few Czechs are actually asking
what this party truly represents.
The present day KSČM has kept several of these ideological tenets, but it has
also had to abandon many. Tactically, the
present day KSČM can no longer afford
to speak of a dictatorship of the proletariat or of world-wide revolution. Rather, it
presents itself as a party that respects the
rules of a democratic system, whilst advocating what many would view is a farleft economic position. But even in the
economic sphere, the
present day KSČM
is far from advo-
The scrap-heap of history
The main difficulty in understanding the
strong influence of the KSČM stems from
the false perception that the party is an
extreme left-wing party. It’s pre-WWII
communist era (1948-1989) predecessor, which seized power after the second
world war, could undoubtedly be framed
as being geared towards the ideology of
classical Marxist utopianism. In those
days, the Czechoslovak Communist Party was characterised not only by its stated
aims of economic egalitarianism, a classless society and the replacement of existing democratic and economic models,
but also with the notion of a pan-global
struggle designed to spread Communism
to all parts of the globe.
After the communist parties came
to power, they quickly proved that their
utopian classless societies could not
be realised and that the elimination of
multi-party democracy through absolute
state power invariably leads to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Despite
this, communist parties continued to
cling on to the notion of internationalism. Their verbal attacks against the West
were framed as class warfare being waged
against “imperialists” and “capitalists”. In
this regard, communist ideology could
easily be described as far-left rather than
nationalistic.
cating widescale re-nationalisation and the
annulling of private ownership. The party’s rhetoric has
instead shifted towards a defence
of social justice within the framework
of the current economic system.
Meanwhile, the battle against capitalism has adopted a new form. Today, the
KSČM views globalisation as the greatest
embodiment of the evils of capitalism.
And because communism is based on
the Marxist notion that the foundation is
the key to the structure, the party views
new forms of global administration such
as the EU as the embodiment of the
domination of global capital. The nation
state, which under the old communist
perception of the global “internacional”
was meant to wither away, has now been
transformed into a fort which must be
defended against the onslaught of global
capitalism. Thus, in the last fifteen years,
communist parties have become considerably nationalistic.
In this sense, today’s communist ideology shares much common ground not
only with the far-right, but with much of
the mainstream Right as well. In recent
times, the Right has also undergone an
ideological shift. Traditionally, it was
geared towards the undiluted free flow of
capital, today, it too argues against the reduction in the role of the nation state in
the global political process. It frequently
calls for a strong national state, able to
stand up to both global economic pressures and pan-global institutions.
Thus, paradoxically, the main proponents of globalisation have arguably
become the Social Democratic parties,
which like the communists, emerged
from a viewpoint, which was critical of
capitalism. If we accept the communist
definition of globalisation, then it could
be argued that Social Democratic parties are the greatest proponents of global
capital and other facets of globalisation,
for example pan-global institutions.
Clean hands
In the case of the KSČM, the shift towards
nationalism was brought about not only
by a necessary post-Cold War ideological
shift, but also by tactical considerations.
At some point during the mid-1990s, the
KSČM realised that there was a portion
of the Czech populace that had rejected the current democratic system but also was
not naturally adherent to far-Left politics.
After the failure of the short-lived nationalist Czech Republican Party in the
1998 Czech parliamentary elections, the
KSČM notably shifted its rhetoric into an
arena hitherto occupied by the Right.
This ideological shift towards ultranationalism is arguably one of the keys
for the continued influence of the KSČM.
Today, the party fills the role that is occupied by Jörg Haider’s Austrian Freedom
Party in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen’s
National Front in France. Naturally, the
failure of the mainstream Czech political parties has also played a significant
role. It was they that notably erred when
they failed to give the Communist party
an ultimatum – either apologise for the
past and undergo reforms similar to
those undertaken by their compatriots in
other countries
or face being
outlawed.
Since the Velvet Revolution, there have
been several attempts to have the KSČM
outlawed, all unsuccessful.
Instead, the democratic parties chose
to make toothless declarations and pass
weak laws designed to “bring to justice”
those responsible for the crimes of the
former regime. Even though the KSČM
has continued to resist all attempts at
wide-scale reform, it continues to exist within the framework of the Czech
democratic multi-party system. Initial
opinions which suggested that due to
the demographic make-up of the party, it
was only a matter of time before it ebbed
away into significance were soon proven
to be erroneous. Suddenly, the Czech
political spectrum had to contend with
the fact that the KSČM wasn’t going to
go away.
On the one hand, the KSČM has continued to have a high level of visibility, primarily because it has a notable
share of seats in the Czech parliament. On the other hand, with zero
[ 23 ]
The social democratic factor
One other very “Czech” factor has also
contributed to the relative popularity of
the KSČM. The Czech Republic is the
only Eastern European post-communist
country in which a strong Social Democratic party has emerged and grown independently rather than emerging from
a reformed or defeated Communist party. Whether this is a positive or negative
fact is best left to historians. In Hungary
or Poland, the “problem” was solved by
the Communist parties transforming
themselves and becoming part of the
political mainstream. These parties then
undertook the same open-market reforms that the Czech Social Democrats
undertook. This resulted in a far less
polarised society and avoided the problem of a political party with no coalition
potential holding on to a block of 20% of
parliamentary seats.
However, a counter-argument can
be made that a strong barrier between
the Social Democrats and the Communists has proven to be far healthier for
the Czech political system. It is true that
there are several former Communists
within the ranks of the Social Democrats,
and this arguably gives the party a different kind of political legitimacy than the
post-communist parties (Editor’s note:
the right-of-centre Civic Democrats also
have several high profile members who
were once members of the Czechoslovak
Communist Party). But Communists
serving within an overtly Communist
party are arguably far more visible than
if they were hidden within a party camouflaged as a modern democratic left-ofcentre grouping.
From wall to wall
This specific division of the Czech Left
into the Social Democratic and Communist has existed in the Czech consciousness since the defeat of the Prague Spring
in 1968. During the post-1968 normalisation era, the KSČM cleansed itself of all
reformist voices and essentially became
a neo-Stalinist party, in contrast to Poland or Hungary where reformists were
gaining ground. This meant that in 1989,
as Czech streets were full of protesters,
the party lacked the necessary voices
able to transform it towards democratic,
modern centre-left politics.
Today, non-communist voters find
themselves in a dilemma about how to
deal with this party. Reactions range
from moral condemnation – particularly
in light of the KSČM’s failure to apologise for past crimes, right though to unperturbed pragmatism. Whilst the moralists openly call either for the outlawing,
boycotting or renaming of the party,
pragmatists maintain that we should accept and come to terms with the existence of this party in Czech politics. What
one cannot deny is that around one in six
Czechs continue to vote communist.
A key problem presented by the KSČM
is the simple truth that Czech society as
a whole has not yet come to terms with its
Communist past. The militant anti-communism of many of today’s democrats
only masks the fact that a significant part
of Czech society was entangled in a web
of collaboration and support of the old
regime. As former dissident Václav Havel
wrote in his book The Power of the Powerless (1990), the communist system entangled into its web all of those who were
not openly opposed to it. Ceremonies
at which attendance was compulsory,
and a whole series of other mechanisms
meant that in truth you were either with
the party or against it.
A harmless evil?
The trauma of the communist experience
as well as the continuing inability to confront the issues posed by today’s KSČM
FOTO: KRISTÝNA URBÁNKOVÁ
coalition potential, it has successfully
avoided having to bear any responsibility for the post-revolution governance of
this country. In this sense, it can sit back
and play the white sheep amongst the
wolves of the political establishment.
The mainstream political parties have
always claimed (often for the sake of political point scoring) that they categorically rule out any kind of co-operation
with the KSČM, despite much co-operation in local politics. Thus, the KSČM
has found itself in a very unique and advantageous position in that it is able to
use its high profile to criticise the policies
and actions of its opponents whilst taking no responsibility whatsoever for the
running of the country. Over time, the
party has also shaped itself into a party
of protest attracting many voters who are
sick of the mainstream political establishment.
has another notable effect: one has trouble placing the former regime and its
practitioners into an applicable historical
context. Communism was able to survive
so long as the ruling elites were able to
manage the flow of information and the
movement of people. The absolute unification of political, economic and ideological might, held by a small coterie of party
apparatchiks required a great deal of centralisation. Such authoritarian might today is impossible, as people have access to
wide ranging sources of information.
Then there is the fact that today’s
KSČM may well have undemocratic tendencies, but that it lacks the means to
facilitate them. The communist world
has fallen apart and today the Czech Republic is a member of NATO. Further,
the country continues to have strong
memories of the Communist experience
and therefore remains far more sceptical than it did in 1948 when the defeat of
Fascism made Communism an attractive
inevitability to many. Many Czechs in
the political and cultural establishment
continue to warn of the dangers posed
by the ascent of the KSČM, but are often
the true threat posed by such a coalition
would actually be minimal, particularly
if the KSČM had a minority voice. A coalition between the Social Democrats
and Communists could mean significant
concessions being made by the Social
Democrats in the economic field, but
even so, the limits within a global and
EU framework remain clear. Whilst it
could be easy for the Social Democrats
to defend their relying on the silent support of the Communist party to their
own constituents, the KSČM would have
a far harder task. They would have to explain to their constituents that they had
become a minority partner in a coalition
government that would almost certainly
betray most of the fundamental principles of communism.
Ultimately, all protest parties have
problems working within the framework
of the democratic establishment. Working in the very system that the party’s
principles berate often seems to be the
ultimate act of selling out one’s ideals.
This then results in a certain degree of
fragmentation as happened to both the
communists in France and the far-right
Freedom Party in Austria.
unable to point out how this party could
actually threaten our freedoms.
A moral problem
Simply put, the KSČM is no longer
a danger in the sense that it will attempt
to create a totalitarian dictatorship. The
foundations of Czech and European
society make this all but impossible.
Further, many communists themselves
would surely not wish for a return to the
old days, since many of them have found
success and prosperity within the new
system. They know full well that any attempts to create a communist regime today would lead to consequences entirely
different than those that existed when
they came to power 1948.
Naturally, the existence of the KSČM
in its current form remains foremost
a moral problem. However, this problem is far wider than the KSČM. It
continues to be particularly difficult
to express moral indignation solely at
a political party, when wider society remains entrenched in the post-normalisation era mentality. In this sense, the
KSČM exists as a mirror of a society,
which needs to come to terms with and
reform itself.
The continued electoral success of the
KSČM and the failure of efforts to do
away with or reform the party has had
the effect of weakening the resolve of the
other political parties to continue to boycott it. Because of this, there has been an
inevitable slide by the Social Democrats
towards further co-operation with the
communists. Prior to the recent parliamentary elections, the ruling three party
coalition between the Social Democrats,
Christian Democrats and Freedom Union, essentially collapsed, existing only
on paper. The Social Democrats increasingly began to rely on the votes of Communist MPs in passing legislation. It is
perhaps difficult to condemn this in light
of the Right’s intransigence and inability to work more closely with the Social
Democrats, which would make isolating
the communists far easier.
A Reality Check
The June elections have indicated that
the Communist Party’s success in the
elections in 2002 (the party then won
18% of the popular vote) was possibly
an aberration. Many voters, it seems, reacted at that time to a highly unpopular
opposition agreement—a hidden grand
coalition between ČSSD and ODS between 1998 and 2002. The fact the Communist Party won only 13% of the votes
in this June’s elections was undoubtedly also caused by a higher voter turnout than in 2002. In general, however,
it seems that the Communist Party has
a greater problem: post-election surveys
show that very few young people voted
for the party. Clearly, the real strength of
the Communists (and supposed dangers
associated with it) had been grossly overestimated before the elections.

The biggest problem
If we ignore for a moment the negative
moral and emotional effects of a potential
government coalition with the KSČM,
Jiří Pehe is the head
of the New York University,
Prague where he teaches politology.
[ 25 ]
A Tough Pill
to Swallow
The psychological and
political ramifications
Petr P�íhoda
of our communist past
T
here is a well-known saying about
communism: “Anyone who wasn’t
Left-wing in their twenties didn’t
have a heart. Anyone who remained one
at forty has no brain.”
Today, many are still engage in heavy
soul searching regarding communism.
How could an ideology offer so much potential good and do so much harm? Was
it a sadomasochistic exercise, or an outside evil imposed upon us? Perhaps the
greatest tragedy of communism was that
instead of uniting us, it turned neighbour
against neighbour.
In practice, communism and Nazism are
often said to come from the same spring.
The totalitarian approach, not to mention
the dehumanising form of governance and
the countless lost lives that both ideologies
inflicted on populations all over the world,
mean that stylistic differences between the
two can easily be dismissed. However, the
two forms of totalitarianism have left differing marks on European society. Europe
came to terms with Nazism far more easily
than communism. While Nazism was easily portrayed as something entirely foreign
and deformed, communism in many ways
stemmed from our own core. In Czech society, this could be said to be doubly true.
Barriers within us
Today, our society continues to feel the
impacts of what this era did to us. Those
of us who lived through the era all carry
a quiet shame and sadness. The Czech
form of communist utopianism had its
roots in the pre-war cultural political Left.
The acceptance of Communism (or Stalinism) appeared to be a remedy to the terror inflicted by the Nazi occupation of the
Czech lands in 1938. During their six year
rule of terror, the Nazis managed to decimate our intellectual elite to the point that
in 1948, when the communists came to
power, we were caught off guard. In 1968,
twenty three years after our “liberation,”
the Soviets again stifled our resistance.
Today, the forty years of communist
rule remain in our mindset, though
mainly in the sub-conscious. Consciously, we have taken a giant leap towards materialism, leaving little room
for philosophical contemplation. A lack
of civic and individual responsibility,
both in the elites and the masses, means
that the building of our post-communist
democracy remains very much stuck in
its foundations. The barrier that once
separated the communist regime from
its people is mirrored by the chasm
that separates today’s civic and political spheres. The anti-Western, anti-religious, anti-German and anti aristocratic tendencies of today’s society are
arguably a direct result of communist
rule, which mercilessly advocated these
warped positions.
Communism was a mindset that
continues to haunt our present. Social
tension, xenophobia, isolationism and
a mistrust of others remain Czech na-
tional traits, rather than echoes of an unpleasant historical experience.
The party carries on
Today’s communist party (KSČM) functionaries have very little to do with now
mostly dead officials who committed
the worst crimes during the 1950s. After 1989, many of the old guard were
either booted out or left the “sinking
ship” of their own accord. Thus the communist party was left in the hands of the
so-called B-list. But despite an unapologetic inflexibility and a lack of invention
or modernity, the party remains intact.
Why? In part, because it re-modelled its
rhetoric and framed itself as the champion of the national interest – it was the
first to protest former President Havel’s
apology towards the Sudeten Germans
expelled from this country after WWII.
Today, with president Václav Klaus
whom the Communists helped to elect,
such protests are unnecessary. Instead,
the party now focuses on the failures of
the post-communist transformation – an
easy target to say the least.
The media have also helped to foster
the image of the KSČM as an oppressed
outsider. Historic truth about the past has
fallen by the wayside in favour of the new
reality, in which politicians criticise the
KSČM and yet simultaneously co-operate with it. After all, a fifth of the electorate supports the KSČM, and they can’t be
ignored. With the omnipresent vulgarity
FOTO: MILAN COUFAL
[ 27 ]
and vanity of the other major parties,
namely the Social Democrats and Civic
Democrats, the KSČM look even better.
The collective failure of our national
memory makes any attempt at re-emphasising the crimes of the communist
past as a way to reduce the effect of today’s KSČM futile. Indeed, those that
criticise it the most are the politicians
who have the greatest fear of their own
political standing, such as ODS leader
Mirek Topolánek and Christian Democrat leader Miroslav Kalousek. So can
anything be done about the KSČM?
Firstly, strong criticism against the
party could be maintained in an effort to
further marginalise it. However, a distrust
of the messenger tends to breed a distrust
of the message. Thus, this approach could
have the reverse effect, propelling the
KSČM into the role of a saviour. This approach views the KSČM as a permanent
outsider and a negative weight on the political system. The other option is to bring
the KSČM into the game as a real player,
such as a coalition partner with the Social Democrats. This may be messy, but
the end result could finally both bring
about the reform of the KSČM and strip
it of its role as a white sheep. The results
of the recent parliamentary elections
have both seen an increase and decrease
in the Communist party’s significance.
The decrease results from a surprising
drop in the party’s popularity. The increase stems from the 100-100 right-left
tie, in which every parliamentary vote,
even a communist one has the ability to
bring down the next government. In this
sense, the only solution may be a grand
coalition, that finally renders this party
irrelevant.

Petr Příhoda is a former politician,
noted psychiatrist and journalist.
The Naked Emperor
Petr Fleischmann
A true fossil of communism, the Czech Communist Party lingers on
T
oday’s Czech Communist party
(KSČM) will presumably continue
to exist into the foreseeable future.
Both faithful to itself and at the same
time gradually chipping away at its own
ideals, the KSČM is a party denying its
identity as well as its past. The very communist name that hangs above the party
serves as a testament to the KSČM’s inability to reassess its own historical role.
It this sense, its continued use of the
“communist” name reveals a party torn
between pragmatism and ideology.
Such uncertainty stems from basic
issues of how to interpret the works of
Karl Marx, which form the cornerstone
of the Communist outlook, as well as the
manifesto of the party itself. This short
proclamation, once taught to all students
in the Communist bloc, appears to have
fallen from public scrutiny. The mani-
festo calls for the violent overthrow of
the existing (capitalistic) political order.
It criticizes the current political system
as a front masking the continuation of
societal tensions. Only after overthrowing the contemporary system will social
cohesion return.
What is of particular note, especially
for Czech society, is that the manifesto is
far less of an attack on the loathed bourgeoisie as is it is a critique of those within
the proletariat who maintain the illusion
that society can be transformed. This
creates the basic quandary as to whether,
upon victory, working within a pluralistic multi-party system is truly possible
for a Communist party.
This is the key to understanding the
schisms that formed between the communists and social democrats during
the early 20th century. Today, ideological
tensions within communist parties that
are forced to function within the democratic framework linger. In Western
Europe, all former communist parties
have largely been re-named (as socialist or otherwise). The Czech Republic is
unique in that the KSČM maintains not
only its name, but also its rejection of any
socialist or social democratic leanings. It
has never abandoned its old rhetoric.
Thus, the KSČM is in a delicate spot
– it seeks power via the democratic process, a process it frowns upon. Then there
is the fact that the communists had 40
years to sell their version. How does one
convince a public to return to those days?
The core of the contemporary communist dilemma is this: how to be both communist and non-communist at the same
time? So the question remains - when is
a communist not a communist?
Can communists reform?
During the infamous 20th congress of
the Soviet communist party in 1956,
measured criticism of the Stalinist era
was heard by the party faithful for the
first time (in a secret speech, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced what
he described as the “cult of personality”
that his predecessor had created –Ed.).
But this did not stop the Soviet invasions
of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and
a return to hard-line totality both in the
Soviet Union and in the vassal states of
Eastern Europe.
An example of a communist party
working within the democratic framework is the communist party in France,
which has publicly acknowledged a new
era and has modified its policies and
rhetoric accordingly. At its 12th congress
in 1976, it disregarded communism’s
czech communism to da y
The Czech Republic
is unique in that
the KSČM maintains not only its
name but also its
rejection of any
socialist or social
democratic leanings
most basic principles (those which make
communists communist), namely revolution, class warfare and the dictatorship of
the proletariat. It also signed a coalition
deal with Francois Mitterand’s Socialist Party, discarded Marxism-Leninism
and entered blithely into a “bourgeoisie”
coalition government. This was seen
as a betrayal by many of its voters, and
ultimately it had to withdraw from the
government, only to eventually rise like
a phoenix from the ashes, chanting “away
with European capital.”
One reasons for the KSČM’s survival
is that the party has assumed the position of a “key” critic of the current Czech
political scene. This has enabled it to endure, without having to change its basic
identity. The fact that the emperor has
no clothes at all is masked by the failings
of the Czech political system. In the undeniably bizarre world of Czech politics,
the communist party has mutated into
a vulgar reformist party on the ideological fringes of the social democratic
spectrum, willing to compromise with
anyone.
Another reason for the KSČM’s survival is the constant stream of voices that
argue that the party can be kept successfully at bay as a minority partner within
a democratic government. Critics have
not been able to undermine this view,
and hysterical proclamations (about the
party’s return to power) can easily sound
like communist rhetoric as well. Thus,
the KSČM will continue to exist as long
as there remains something to criticize
and as long as other parties fail to effectively criticize it.

Petr Fleischmann
is a philosopher and journalist.
[ 29 ]
S
ince the fall of Soviet communism,
the core base of the political Left
has been shifting away from manufacturing and industry. Part of the reason
for this is that these professions are increasingly being transported to the Third
World. Meanwhile, the large growth in
the wealth of skilled technological workers is being accompanied by the growth
of large groups of people without a valid
function in our post-industrial society.
So what place does Karl Marx’s recipe for
the dysfunctions of capitalism have in today’s society?
Scorned and venerated
Michal Pullmann
In the Czech equation, the work of Karl
Marx had a very specific historical position. The connection of Marx with the
totalitarian regimes of the 20th century
is more of a political-ideological one,
For communists and social democrats, does
Karl Marx still really matter?
Expirati
which blurs Marx’s radical analysis of
capitalism. At the same time, the communist legacy leads many to openly accept communist symbols and slogans,
without any deeper need to review the
relationship between these symbols and
today’s problems. Thus, in looking at
Marxism today, one side reacts with utter dismissal, while the other reacts with
utter almost spellbound acceptance.
For some politicians, Marx and Marxism are not necessarily limited to the confines of the communist diatribe. Indeed,
Marx’s analysis of capitalism continues
to have many interpretations, which to a
greater or lesser extent can still be found
in today’s political practice. An attempt
to analyse and enlighten the differences
between the communist and social democratic understanding of Marx can teach
us much about the various strains of leftwing politics in the Czech Republic.
Marxism
The basic premise of Marx’s work argues
that the essential core of the individual is
found in the practice and in the results of
one’s labour. It is here that one finds reassurance about their place in the world,
while gaining confidence and strength.
The process of gaining individual
strength is not automatic and is fatally
disrupted by the conditions of capitalist society. Instead of freedom, equality
and brotherhood, society is instead condemned to “rootlessness”, poverty and
greed. Marx emphasised a materialistic
social and cultural impoverishment in a
capitalist society, in which estrangement
and alienation prevail.
This alienation, according to Marx,
has four facets. The first was alienation from the product of one’s labour,
because the conditions of wage slavery
prohibit ownership of the end product.
The worker looks upon the end product
as an enemy entity. At the same time, the
labourer is alienated from the process of
production, because a wage slave does
not gain spiritual satisfaction from their
labour and merely uses it as a means to
ensure survival beyond it. Through this
process, the labourer is then alienated
from his or her own self, because the labour that one offers is not one’s own, and
belongs to someone else. Labour, rather
than validating, serves to repress the individual. Finally, the labourer is alienated
from their loved ones, primarily because
in them, he or she is forced to see mere
instruments of similar productive-based
goals. According to Marx, a society
based on wage slavery is prevented from
developing and evolving basic human
instincts, making capitalism a pathological and systematic wrong, which must
be overthrown by its victims (the proletariat).
In later years, Marx slightly weakened
the speculative basis of this diagnosis.
Instead of alienation, he talked of immortalization. Under the pressures of
evaluating capital, people enter a situa-
tion where they are forced to think only
of the material, thus corrupting themselves and their understanding of the
world. Capitalism, or a process based on
wage slavery is internally destructive and
a flawed direction for society to be heading, since it prevents people from leading
a happy life.
Marx was somewhat miserly when
it came to describing the detailed creation of an ideal state – or communism.
It seems that he consciously wished to
avoid any reference to a specific ideal that
would undermine the practicalities of
the struggles that he prescribed. Marx’s
works were far more concerned with the
causes of why current ideals aren’t applied to each individual as well as how the
pursuit of money was corrupting human
values. It is these passages in his works
that leave many spellbound, because they
cial Democrats, the dictatorship of the
proletariat leads to even greater oppression than that described by Marx’s view
of capitalism. In a world permeated by
wage slavery, there is still space, for the
true realisation of the human ideal. The
liberation of mankind is not the abolition of private ownership, but rather the
tireless and long-term practice of dialogue and democratisation of the civic
decision-making process, from which
no-one is excluded on social grounds.
Thus, the social democratic interpretation of Marx differs from the communist interpretation in that it recognises
that alienation is not universal and that
there are means and opportunities in
which people can assert themselves and
help create a more just society. From this
stem the social democratic concepts of
regulation, such as the eight hour work-
knowledgement of both democracy as a
central tenet of public decision making
and the plurality of private ownership.
Such communism, which blends democracy with public ownership of private
property, is inconsistent and contradictory. Much of the semi-reformed communists are at odds with the communist
view of Marxism, which would describe
such cocktails as false ideologies. Today,
it’s not clear which side the KSČM holds
in greater regard.
It seems that the declared programme
of today’s communists leans more toward
democratic socialism, which is itself a
wing of the social democratic spectrum.
In this case, the very name of the party
is an anachronism, harking back to the
symbolism of the pre-1989 era. In this
case, the ultimate political aims of the
communists remain murky indeed. On
ion Date
seem to comment on many of the ills of
our polarised and divided world.
The communist view of politics is
closely tied to Marx’s notion of the inherent evils of capitalism. Wage slavery,
according to the communist, is abolished
through the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. This
will cease the warping of human values
and lead to the ideal communist society,
one based on communal ties and individual prosperity.
In such a scheme, the notion of democracy is problematic, in that it is
viewed as a false bourgeoisie-led mask,
which conceals the true pressures of society. Certain forms of democracy can be
permitted to arise after a successful revolution, but parliamentary democracy is
not viewed by the communist ideal as
part of the goals of this ideology.
The social democratic recipe
Social democratic politics have always
had a notably different view from the
one described above. According to So-
ing day, the minimum wage, universal healthcare, universal pensions etc.
Social democratic reforms can thus be said
to represent a link between social justice and
democracy. Government social support is realised according
to the demands and needs of the populace. Democracy as a form of government
is validated only because people have a
realistic chance of active participation
against the comforting background of
the social safety net. It is easy to argue
that this version of equality played a far
greater role (viz. Roosevelt’s New Deal)
in balancing out the divisive inequities
of feudal capitalism throughout the 20th
century than the communist prescription.
Communists in a trap
In the Czech Communist party’s (KSČM)
current political programme, we find ac-
the flip side, one can reject the communistic aspect of the party, and instead focus on a form of democratic socialism in
which private ownership is arranged in
such a way as to ensure maximum inclusiveness, social well-being and cohesion.
However, for the KSČM it would become
necessary to abandon Marx’s thesis as
well as its very name. This would be a difficult step indeed.

Michal Pullman is a historian.
He works at the Institute of Business and
Social History at Charles University, Prague.
[ 31 ]
The Other
On Sri Lanka and how this tiny nation recorded
many terrorist firsts
Ian S. Lamb
A
s the world anxiously focuses on
the Middle East for developments
in the USA’s so-called Global War
on Terror, a mysterious group in a very
different part of the world is quietly yet
unmistakably reasserting its position as
one of the most established and successful terrorist organisations in the world.
It is a group that has set up an efficient
world-wide funding system to coerce donations out of the 800,000 or so expatriate members of the ethnic group it claims
to fight for, and it is so successful that it
has already set up a quasi-governmental
entity in the area it wishes to become an
independent state. It commands a small
FOTO: ARCHIV
in focus
War
navy, a powerful guerrilla army and untold numbers of ordinary people - young
and old, men and women and even children – all who want nothing more than
to die for the same cause.
This group is the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as
the Tamil Tigers (or simply the Tigers).
Led by a reclusive and almost mythical
figure, this force of ethnic Tamils residing in Sri Lanka has been fighting since
the early 1980s for the establishment of
a sovereign Tamil state in the north of the
country, which they refer to as Eelam, in
a war which has cost an estimated 65,000
lives. Through the use of suicide bomb
in focus
attacks, assassinations and co-ordinated
military-style invasions of villages populated by the rival ethnic Sinhalese, the
Tamils have been attracting publicity to
their cause for decades. The Tamils argue
that the Tigers are fighting a justified war
against decades of violent oppression
by the Sinhalese majority, in which any
tactics necessary for victory are permitted. But to many others, including the Sri
Lankan authorities, the Tigers are a brutal terrorist group, fighting for nothing
more noble than absolute political power
within their small sphere of influence.
Colonial blowback
Along with a number of smaller ethnic
groups, the Sinhalese and Tamil communities have lived on the island of Sri Lanka, for up to two thousand years - though
the origins of both groups are murky and
are only explained in a number of ancient religious texts. The Sinhalese traditionally practice Theravada Buddhism,
the oldest surviving form of that religion,
and the Tamils are mostly Hindu. But the
roots of the modern conflict are not considered religious in origin, and are generally traced to much more recent times.
The first Europeans to occupy what is
now Sri Lanka were the Portuguese who
first arrived in 1505, bringing Christianity
to what was a largely Buddhist, Muslim
and Hindu nation. The kingdom of Kandy
was established at this point, when the
Sinhalese, forced out of the coastal areas,
moved inland to areas better suited for
defending against foreign powers. Some
Sinhalese converted to Christianity, leading many local leaders to denounce the
occupiers and their influence. The arrival
of the Dutch navy in 1608 was thus a welcome sight, though the kingdom of Kandy
remained unconquerable. The Dutch
ruled for around two hundred years, giving rise to a half-Dutch, half-Sinhalese
race known as the Burghers. The British
then captured Sri Lanka during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.
Kandy was, predictably, the last area to
fall to the British, after two bloody wars in
1803 and 1815 and a Sinhalese rebellion in
1817. Now in control of the entire island
for the first time, the British embarked
on an ambitious agricultural campaign
by first seizing the lands of the Kandyans
and importing thousands of Tamils from
southern India (where a large population
of Tamils still lived) to work the highland
areas, which were well-suited for growing
coffee, tea and rubber.
While the Indian Tamils were forced
to work in conditions resembling slavery,
there were a sizeable number of Tamils
of Sri Lankan origin who found favour
with the British, along with higher-caste
members of other ethnic groups. The
British followed their standard procedure
for handling colonies with pre-existing
ethnic divisions. This method entailed
exacerbating existing tensions between
ethnic groups in order to weaken the
power of each and thus strengthen colonial rule - a technique known as “divide
and rule”. As in other colonies, this led to
increased strife and animosity between
the various groups.
The Sinhalese accused the Tamils of
enjoying a favoured position under colonial rule. They alleged that more missionary schools had been built in the city
of Jaffna (predominantly Tamil) than in
the rest of the island. This led to Tamils
being over-represented in the civil service and in professional occupations at
the time of Sri Lankan independence
in 1948. The Tamils, however, also had
their grievances. Until 1931, the local
government on the island had consisted
of a system of community-based electorates that the British felt would safeguard
the rights of the various minority groups.
In an attempt to grant the island greater
autonomy, the British recommended
that a new constitution call for territorial
constituencies. This proposal met fierce
resistance from minority groups, especially the Tamils, who boycotted the first
elections under this constitution. The
Tamils had enjoyed some limited sovereignty under the communal electorate
system, but with the new system, their
area of dominance was dissolved into
a larger territorial grouping which they
felt put their very ethnic identity at risk.
The seeds are sown
The new constitution also extended suffrage universally to all adults, which
was a radical move at the time. But it
also imposed a residency requirement,
which intentionally disenfranchised all
the Indian Tamil workers who were still
considered migrants. The new constitution was even disliked by the majority
Sinhalese who, along with higher-caste
Tamils and Burghers, were opposed
to the masses being allowed to vote (as
opposed to the rigid caste system) and
disliked the wide-ranging veto powers
of the British governor and his powerful
committee of appointees who oversaw
the judicial system, public administration and defence. The constitution failed
in 1946 after claims of discrimination by
the minority groups on the island. Ministers soon drew up a new constitutional
draft, which they felt granted fairer representation, and this was approved in
slightly modified form in 1947.
[ 33 ]
in focus
The impoverished Indian Tamils were
the first targets of the Sinhalese nationalist movements that arose in the 1940s in
anticipation of the island gaining independence from the British. Many Indian
Tamils were deprived of their citizenship,
and there were popular and repeated attempts to repatriate them to India. But
the focus still remained on removing
Britain from Sri Lanka, a cause that almost all the ethnic groupings could agree
on. The British eventually relented and
granted Dominion status to the country,
allowing greater autonomy, but keeping
enough influence to safeguard their interests. A year later, the country finally
gained independence from the British.
Tamil politicians consistently agitated
for the establishment of a federal system
that would grant relative autonomy to the
heavily Tamil areas in the north and east
of Sri Lanka. They did this largely under
the auspices a political grouping known
as the Federal Party.
By the early 1970s young Tamils had
grown increasingly disenfranchised by
the direction the Sri Lankan state was
heading and became more and more
radicalised. In 1972, the Federal Party
joined other parties such as the All Ceylon Tamil Congress to form the Tamil
United Front (TUF), which changed its
name to the Tamil United Liberation
Front (TULF) in 1976 after officially
adopting a platform based on the establishment of a separate Tamil state. They
called this state Tamil Eelam, based on
the concept of a homeland, a place where
Tamils traditionally belong and would
not be subject to outside control.
In 1972, a constitution was enacted to
affirm the country’s status as a republic
and to officially change its name to Sri
Lanka. This was viewed as a direct affront
to Tamils and other minority groups, as
it removed pre-existing minority protection rights and established Buddhism as
the favoured religion of Sri Lanka, making it a “duty of the state to protect and
foster” the religion practised mostly by
the Sinhalese. This directly led to the formation of the Tamil New Tigers (TNT)
by Velupillai Prabhakaran, a young, shy
student who had grown bitter from what
he saw as institutional discrimination
against Tamils in education, government,
employment and other areas. This was
the most effective of the early Tamil mili-
Reclusive Tamil Leader
Velupillai Prabhakaran (right)
tant groups and many students flooded
into its ranks, claiming they were treated
unfairly in the admissions process to
post-graduate schools. Their first major
action was the assassination of the mayor
of Jaffna in 1975, which some attribute
to Prabhakaran personally. In 1976 the
TNT joined with another militant group
to form the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) that we see today.
Sri Lankan elections in 1977 gave
Tamil United Liberation Front members
a place in the country’s parliament representing the north and east of the country. But they met with fierce opposition
from politicians in the rest of the country
and were forced out of parliament after
refusing to renounce their demand for
a separate state. This led to even greater
radicalisation and disenfranchisement.
Turning to terror
The LTTE carried out a number of further assassinations (some involving police officials) as well as bank robberies to
acquire funds. By 1978 they had established themselves as a serious security
threat by liquidating a police patrol that
had discovered a Tamil training camp. As
a result, in 1979 martial law was declared
in Jaffna (the capital city of the northern
province). This led to a series of attacks
by the Tamils against the Sri Lankan military authorities, including a particularly
devastating one that killed 13 soldiers.
This attack proved to be the breaking
point in Sri Lankan society. In a horrific
event known as the Black July Pogrom,
riots broke out across the country. For
a week, Sinhalese mobs beat, raped, tortured or murdered tens of thousands
of ethnic Tamils, burning down their
houses and forcing survivors into makeshift “refugee” camps. Between 1,000 to
3,000 Tamils, including many poor Indian Tamils, are estimated to have died.
Some Tamils felt that the pogrom was organised by the government, rather than
just a spontaneous Sinhalese reaction
to the deaths of the military personnel.
There were also numerous reports from
all over the capital, Colombo, that professional-looking men were directing the
crowds while holding official voter lists,
on which Tamil shops and houses were
clearly marked.
Most historians agree that it was the
defining event in the Sri Lankan conflict. The LTTE’s membership increased
dramatically and Tamils increasingly
began to feel that they needed some way
to defend themselves and to avenge the
deaths of their families and friends in
the pogroms. The naval division of the
LTTE, the Sea Tigers, was founded in
1984 as part of a growing anti-government guerrilla campaign. Other Tamil
militant groups also gained support, but,
perhaps learning a lesson from the divide and rule policy of the British, Tamil
leader Prabhakaran soon decided that in
order to be effective in the quest to es-
in focus
tablish Tamil Eelam there would have to
be only one, united force of militants. To
these ends, he embarked on a successful
campaign to either absorb or destroy
all other Tamil resistance groups. After
years of intense fighting, large swathes of
land in the north and east of the country
came under LTTE control, including the
important city of Jaffna.
From cease-fire to escalation
In 1996, the LTTE requested peace talks
with the government, but these were rejected out of hand. In July 2001, close
to the anniversary of the Black July Pogrom, LTTE forces attacked Sri Lanka’s
Bandaranaike International Airport, destroying eight military and four civilian
planes. This attack proved devastating to
the island’s economy. In 2002, after nearly
two decades of steady fighting and after
the LTTE had managed to capture the
strategic Elephant Pass–the isthmus that
leads to the Jaffna peninsula–talks were
finally organised and mediated by Norway, resulting in a tense cease-fire and
the establishment of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. This group, comprised
of personnel from various Scandinavian
countries, monitored the country for violations of the cease-fire agreement, though
the LTTE retained its status as a guerrilla
army. Beginning with the withdrawal of
the Indian peacekeeping force, the LTTE
began assuming quasi-governmental roles
in the regions under its control. Tamils
continue to enjoy relative autonomy under this arrangement, though they rely on
the rest of Sri Lanka for electricity, food
and other commodities.
Despite the cease-fire agreement,
foreign monitors, and the semblance of
a Tamil state in the north, Sri Lanka has
experienced a much publicised return to
heavy violence in the past few months.
2005 saw the election of President Rajapakse, a hard-liner who ruled out autonomy for the Tamils and promised to
review the peace agreement after scattered
suicide attacks blamed on the LTTE.
In August 2005, even before the elections took place, Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was mysteriously
assassinated by an unknown sniper,
causing the government to declare a state
of emergency. In April 2006, sixteen people died from an explosion and the subsequent rioting in the city of Trincoma-
lee in the north-east. Government police
were quick to blame the LTTE for both
incidents, but the Tigers denied involvement in either attack. Soon after, a suicide bomber struck a military complex
in Colombo, killing at least eight people,
which resulted in air force raids on LTTE
areas. In May, the Sea Tigers--the LTTE’s
naval division--engaged in a battle with
the Sri Lankan navy. The latest serious violence occurred in June 2006, when a bus
loaded with civilians fell victim to a mine
attack. Sixty-four people died as a result
of this incident. Several days later, this
was followed by a massive land and sea
battle between the government and the
LTTE, which left over thirty dead.
Endless conflict?
Progress towards new peace talks has
been painfully slow. Rebels met with
government representatives in Geneva
in February 2006, but a second round
of talks in April was called off when the
groups failed to agree on a safe method of
transport for rebels between areas in the
north and east of the country. The Norwegian representatives finally brought
the groups together in Oslo in early June,
but the rebel leaders refused to meet face
to face with government officials.
After retaliatory government raids on
Tamil locations, a new wave of fighters
has joined the ranks of the LTTE. The
most radicalised recruits have joined the
Black Tigers, the suicide-bomber division of the LTTE formed in 1987, which
many terrorism analysts consider the
father of modern suicide attacks. While
the first modern suicide bombing actually occurred in 1983 during Lebanon’s
civil war, the Black Tigers began using
the tactic with startling frequency, showing its effectiveness against even the
highest profile targets – their victims included Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe
Premadasa, Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi,
and many other Sri Lankan public figures and strategic buildings. Every once
in a while, the Black Tigers issue a call
for volunteers, and such large numbers
of people respond that Prabhakaran had
to institute what has been described as
a “martyr’s lottery” in which volunteers
are picked at random.
After 9/11, the international community began to crack down on terrorism
world-wide. Indeed, analysts say that one
of the reasons the LTTE agreed to the
2002 cease-fire was the threat of direct
US support for the Sri Lankan government as part of its Global War on Terror.
The fundraising network that enables
Sri Lankan Tigers to locate and contact
Tamils living abroad has also come under fire, especially for their alleged tactic
of threatening the safety of relatives still
residing in Sri Lanka. The authorities in
Britain, Canada and other countries with
large Tamil ex-pat populations have put
the network under increasing scrutiny
after the LTTE was officially denounced
by the UN and many western countries
as a terrorist organisation.
The last major hurdle for the Tigers
is their own human rights record. The
international community does not look
favourably upon the Tigers in this regard. Up to a few years ago, it was fairly
commonplace for Tiger leaders to recruit
children as fighters, especially those orphaned by government raids. Reports
were plentiful after the devastating tsunami of 2004 that the Tigers even recruited
child victims of the disaster. While they
deny that this is an official tactic, they
admit that some children were wrongly
recruited by unscrupulous officers in the
past. The UN in particular has been heavily critical of the LTTE’s record in this
area, threatening travel bans for Tiger
leaders among other punishments. The
Tigers also have been accused of ethnically cleansing Sinhalese villages that had
come under their control.
It is doubtful that LTTE leaders will
ever be brought to justice, as every Tiger
leader - and most fighters - wear cyanide
capsules around their necks, to be swallowed in case of capture. But if there is
anything that both sides of the conflict
can agree on, it is that life would be better for all Sri Lankans if the cease-fire
continued. As the government reiterates
calls for new talks with the rebels, with
or without international mediation, the
world can only hope that Sri Lanka will
eventually return to its former glory as
a beautiful, and peaceful, tropical island.

Ian S. Lamb is
a freelance journalist
and former TNP intern.
[ 35 ]
in foc u s
The Rising Clout of
William A. Cohn
In a seminal piece, the author outlines the evolution, implementation and future of international law
T
here is currently much discussion
of international law (“IL”), but scant
analysis of what it actually is. Conventional wisdom suggests that international law is illusory, because the lack of
a world government makes it unenforceable. Others contend that this reflects a
misconception of the true complexity of
international law, which exists de facto at
all times in different guises.
Evolving International Law
﹙a conceptual framework﹚
Invariably, IL raises questions regarding
the nature of law and the relationship
between law and morality. Is law aspirational as well as compulsory? Does law
establish standards beyond simply compelling compliance by threat of punishment? Black’s Law Dictionary defines
international law as “Those laws governing the legal relations between nations.”
Yet IL also serves to regulate affairs between individuals and businesses across
nations. Indeed, there are three different
kinds of IL – public, private and hybrid
IL. However, public IL, or the law of nations, is what most commentators consider as international law.
IL is founded on consent and derived
from voluntary state practices. Thus, the
traditional perspective is state-centric, in
that the legitimacy of IL is conferred by
nation-states. More recent developments
in IL such as the advent of the International Criminal Court and the prosecutions of former heads-of-state for crimes
against humanity have established
stronger universal obligations.
The main sources of international law
are treaties and conventions. There is neither an international legislature to create
nor an international executive branch to
enforce international law. Thus, it is left
to the voluntary cooperation amongst
states to act in their perceived mutual
interest, which they do by signing agreements to bind sovereign states to those
obligations agreed upon. States follow
IL because they want other states to do
the same. When voluntary compliance is
not forthcoming, then various degrees of
coercion can be used (e.g., resolutions,
sanctions, penalties, imprisonment and
threat of force).
Public International Law
Public international law is law which applies to more than one nation-state. Formerly known as the law of nations, public IL regulates relations among nations
in matters such as trade and war and has
been expanded in the past century to include rights of individuals under the aegis of human rights.
The sources of public IL are (in order of
importance): Treaties (signed and ratified
by 2 or more states) and Conventions/
protocols (treaties sponsored by international organizations); Custom (practices
between states over time which come to
be seen as binding); General Principles
of Law (those recognized by civilized nations and which are common to the national law of the parties to a dispute); and,
Legal Scholarship (judicial decisions and
writings of legal scholars provide persuasive but non-binding authority).
As with the ICC and Kyoto Protocols,
the delay between the negotiation of and
the coming into force of multilateral treaties and conventions may be lengthy. The
treaty-making process involves adoption
of an agreement/text by the negotiating
states, followed by their consent to be
bound by the agreement (requiring rati-
fication/formal adoption by their heads
of government), and then its entry into
force, generally upon the formal consent
of all signatory states. It is common, however, for multilateral agreements to allow
for a fixed number of states to express
their consent, bringing a given agreement into force. For example, the Kyoto
Protocol came into force in 2005 after it
was ratified by nations accounting for at
least 55% of greenhouse gas emissions.
As states have the capacity to attach
reservations, the negotiations involved
in treaty-making are considerable (e.g.,
the negotiations on UNCLOS, creating a
world treaty governing uses of the oceans,
lasted from 1973 to 1982, and these built
on earlier negotiations from 1958 to 1960).
The Montreal Protocol (limiting CFC
emissions in order to protect the ozone
layer) is seen as a model of conference
diplomacy in that difficult negotiations
were largely completed prior to the treaty
coming into the public spotlight. Unlike
the ICC and Kyoto Protocols, this allowed
shared interests rather than public and
political positions to be prioritized.
Private International Law
Commercial business contracts are the
largest source of international law. Private
IL addresses relations and disputes among
individuals and businesses from different
nation-states. Its sources include state law,
arbitral precedent and private contracts.
Contracts afford parties a good deal of
freedom and flexibility to utilize foreign
law. Thus, a British exporter doing business with an Indonesian manufacturer
may, given appropriate conditions, opt for
the contract to be governed by Malaysian
law and for the British courts to have jurisdiction in the matter.
in focus
International
Law
Arbitration is the chosen means of dispute resolution in the vast majority of commercial agreements. The importance of
arbitration in international business transactions is reflected in the UN Convention
on the Recognition and Enforcement of
Foreign Arbitral Awards, which binds signatory states to recognize the enforceability
of arbitral awards decided in any signatory
state in the courts of the other.
Private sector actors may also be bound
by evolving public IL. For instance, businesses may face liability for human rights
violations, which occur in countries where
they operate joint ventures. In a 1997 case,
the US based Unocal Corporation was sued
by Burmese workers on the basis of human
rights abuses carried out by its joint venture partner in Myanmar and a US court
allowed the case to proceed. Also, freetrade agreements such as NAFTA have
brought legal challenges and debate on the
application (or lack thereof) of labor and
environmental standards. Overseas subcontracting by foreign-owned business
entities has also led to litigation against
leading companies in the garment, apparel
and sportswear industries for allegedly violating applicable legal standards.
Hybrid International Law
Hybrid IL encompasses state action
with IL consequences, which is heavily
influenced by private commercial interests (e.g. trade agreements and taxation
treaties). Trade has become a lightening
rod of IL controversy. The debates raging
over the proposed free trade pact for the
Americas, EU agricultural subsidies or
the World Trade Organization (WTO)
are but a few examples. The WTO has
become a powerful international organization (IO) able to influence the eco-
nomic fortunes of nation-states. It serves
as the ultimate arbiter of the rules of
global trade and has developed a judicial
mechanism to render binding decisions
upon its more than 130 member states.
If a party does not comply with a WTO
decision, member states are permitted to
impose retaliatory trade sanctions. The
result is a judicial mechanism with sufficient bite to ensure enforcement.
The US has brought and won WTO decisions against Japan, Brazil and the EU on
subsidies and other protectionist barriers
to free trade. In 2001 the EU successfully
challenged US tax code provisions concerning the running of exported goods to
Europe through US tax haven countries.
By ordering the US to dismantle this tax
subsidy, the WTO gave its most significant ruling to date repealing hundreds
of millions of dollars in tax breaks given
to Microsoft, Boeing and other large US
exporters. This case illustrates the interdependent nature of domestic state law and
IL, and also demonstrates the growing
potency of IL, even upon the world’s most
powerful industrialized nations.
The negotiations concerning LDC
(lesser developed countries) debt reduction and debt forgiveness provide another example of hybrid IL. Most of the bad
loans were made by private commercial
banks, yet governments and IOs were
intimately involved in the negotiations
over the treatment of these loans.
The war in Iraq has seen an unprecedented role played by private defense contractors in traditional state military operations, and thus may be seen as de facto
hybrid IL. To some this is a sensible way
to utilize market forces in order to supply
needed services. To others, subcontracting sovereign duties violates IL by allow-
ing human rights abuses to occur with
impunity as private sector actors are not
held accountable under the military chain
of command and applicable treaties.
The UN and International
Organizations
Over the past 60 years, the rise of international organizations has led some observers to argue that IL has evolved to the
point where it exists independent of the
consent of nation-states. Confronted with
two world wars within 30 years, powerful
nations established IOs under the ideal of
collective security -- from the League of
Nations to the UN System and beyond.
The number of IOs has grown some
six-fold since 1945, totaling more than
500 IGOs (Inter-Governmental Organizations such as the EU and OPEC) and
tens of thousands of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International).
The UN is the closest to a global government that the world has yet witnessed.
Its Charter affirms the principle that states
are equal under IL, and that states have
full sovereignty over their own affairs
and territories. The proliferation of UN
“peacekeeping forces” around the world
has been contentious on many levels.
Peacekeeping forces are not mentioned in
the UN Charter, but have been used frequently since 1991. Might they one day be
used to enforce World Court rulings?
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, UN membership more than doubled as African and
Asian colonies became states. Until the
mid-1960’s, the USSR was the main power to use its veto in the Security Council
as the General Assembly regularly sided
with the US. But by the 70s and 80s,
the growth of newly independent third
[ 37 ]
in foc u s
Significant touchstones in the history of IL – a timeline:
ca. 340 B.C. – Aristotle’s Politics, followed by
the writings of Saints Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas, addresses just cause and conduct of
war (jus ad bellum and jus in bello). Aristotle
also makes the distinction between positive
law and natural law
1215 – England’s Magna Carta, establishing rights of citizens and legal constraints on
monarchy/rulers, begins the historical process
of creating the rule of constitutional law
1576 – Jean Bodin’s Six Books of the Commonwealth places the sovereign state as the
central institution for avoiding international
anarchy
1625 – Hugo Grotius’ Three Books on the
Law of War an d Peace sets forth the sources
of international law and its role in regulating
relations among states
1795 – Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace envisions an ethical international law reached by
a federation of nations. The Metaphysical Elements of Justice (1797) states freedom exists
only if universal moral laws govern, thus free
will depends on universal laws
1868 – Saint Petersburg Declaration, 1st
formal agreement prohibiting use of certain
weapons (those which cause unnecessary
suffering) in war
1883 – Paris Convention provides international patent and trademark protection, Berne
Convention of 1886 provides intl. copyright
protection
1899 & 1907 – Hague Conventions, formal treaties on laws of war and war crimes,
viewed as founding modern international humanitarian law
1919 – League of Nations built on principle of
collective security
1928 – 62 states sign Kellogg-Briand Pact,
defining ‘just wars’ and ‘wars of aggression’
1944 – Bretton Woods Conference founds
World Bank and IMF
1948 – Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) adopted by UN General Assembly;
Convention on Genocide
1949 – Nuremberg & Tokyo trials of WWII
war criminals conclude; Geneva Conventions
prohibit cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of civilians or combatants during armed
conflict.
1959 – Antarctic Treaty turns southernmost
continent into international scientific preserve,
today shared by 45 nations
1967 – Outer Space Treaty states that “The
exploration and use of outer space... shall be
carried out for the benefit and in the interests
of all countries”
1968 – Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
creates IAEA and a framework for controlling
the spread of nuclear material and technology
1972 – UN Conference on the Human Environment begins era of global environmentalism; Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I)
signed
1976 – International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights
1982 – Law of the Sea Treaty (UNCLOS) governs use of the oceans
1984 – Convention against Torture
1987 – Montreal Protocol protecting the
ozone layer
1996 – Nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty; World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Phonogram Treaty on digital technologies
2002 – International Criminal Court (ICC)
2005 – Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas
emissions comes into force
na Carta
The Mag
UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan
world states led to the US becoming the
main user of the veto. Since then, there
has been tension between the main financial contributors to the UN and the
majority of its states. Developing countries assert that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (US,
Britain, France, Russia and China) have
been usurping powers from the General
Assembly (in which all members are represented) and are demanding either a reversal or an expansion of Council membership. Wealthy countries say that those
who pay should have a greater say.
Emerging Perspectives
When the British House of Lords delivered its verdict against former Chilean
President Augusto Pinochet in late 1998,
the use of the new concept of universal jurisdiction and the rejection of Pinochet’s
claim to immunity was a groundbreaking
moment in international justice. Headsof-state are usually viewed as immune
from prosecution for acts undertaken in
their official capacity. Yet Britain’s highest court reaffirmed the Magna Carta and
Nuremberg principles, in which no individual is above the rule of law – not even
a former president. The following year,
former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic became the first serving headof-state to be indicted and tried by an
international tribunal. This year, former
Liberian president Charles Taylor will be
tried for war crimes by a UN tribunal.
The International Criminal Court
(ICC) was established in 2002 as a permanent international tribunal to prosecute
perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and
other crimes against humanity as defined
by international agreements. Several recent
ad hoc war crimes tribunals (1993 in the
in focus
former Yugoslavia, 1997 in Rwanda and
1999 in Sierra Leone) mark the first time
since WWII that the UN Security Council
set up international war crimes tribunals.
The calls for a permanent court of this nature grew following WWII. To some the
ICC is an important and much needed step
forward in establishing international rule
of law. Others contend that the ICC lacks
accountability other than to its member
states, and as such is too political and an unacceptable imposition on state sovereignty.
US concerns about ICC prosecutions of its
forces have led it not only to refuse to join,
but to also actively lobby other states from
joining. Israel and China have also voiced
strong objections to the ICC.
The objections raised about the ICC
have also been raised with regards to socalled state universal jurisdiction statutes.
Universal jurisdiction means that any
state may arrest and try any individuals
who commit specified crimes under IL –
regardless of where they occur. These statutes exist in eight European countries and
most recently were applied by a Spanish
judge who indicted a Guatemalan general
accused of killing a quarter of a million
Mayan Indians in the 1990s, for crimes
against humanity. However, the concept
of universal jurisdiction remains controversial as many traditionalists see it as an
illegitimate exercise of judicial power.
Conceptual Debates
The age-old debate between realism and
utopianism continues to pervade perspectives on IL. US president George Bush’s appointment of John Bolton, known for his
harsh condemnation of the UN and international treaties, as US ambassador to the
UN has polarized the debate concerning
the role of IL. Bolton has said “If I were redoing the Security Council today, I’d have
one permanent member because that’s the
real reflection of power in the world.” He
and other “realists” view participation in
many international agreements as misguided. Such views underline ideological
tensions between those who see national
interest as the sole legitimate exercise of
power/influence and “idealists” who support the ascendancy of a more globallyoriented rule-of-law.
Realists view IL as the sum of state
actors pursuing their individual self interests. From this perspective, states may
view IL as a mere tool of convenience. In
this climate, numerous violations of IL
occur, essentially without sanction. The
Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and US interventions in Chile,
Grenada and Panama are examples. Likewise with China’s occupation of Tibet,
Russia’s actions in Chechnya, and Israel’s
continued occupation of the West Bank
and Golan Heights. The Rwandan genocide and the ongoing atrocities in Darfur,
Sudan, further underline that the question of IL enforcement remains murky.
Many see international law as a powerful and sorely needed external constraint
on states’ pursuit of their own short-term
interests. They contend that unrestrained
state action is lawlessness, and as such is
self-destructive and irresponsible. After
all, the argument goes, national borders
stop neither acid rain nor nuclear fallout. In the words of former US Supreme
Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, “Power
not ruled by law is a menace.”
��st Century Issues
Issues relating to IL continue to dominate
the international agenda. From intellectual property agreements on the use of
the worldwide web to issues of organized
crime and money laundering; from people trafficking, to protecting fish stocks –
all of these issues underline the fact that in
a globalised world, international law and
global co-operation are becoming increasingly important. AIDS and other public
health epidemics have also placed global
co-operation at the top of the agenda (the
need for affordable drugs vs. the licensing
rights of pharmaceutical companies holding patents raises many IL issues).
The US-led “war on terror” has undoubtedly challenged the relatively new
and evolving standards of international
humanitarian law. Critics point out that
states continue to violate human rights,
civil liberties and democratic principles
with impunity, often using the “war on
terror” as a pretext. Proponents of the
methods used in the current war assert
that new challenges demand new responses. They also add that the failure of the
UN system to effectively respond to the
threats posed by aggressors and those who
pursue weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological and chemical weapons)
underscores the failure and impotency of
IL. Critics, however, contend that recent
history only reinforces the need for effective IL, as neither hegemony nor anarchy
have proven viable options. Most recently,
the US Supreme Court affirmed the role
of international law by ruling that the proposed military tribunals of Guantanamo
detainees violate the Geneva Conventions
and are thus unlawful.
It is fairly easy to discount international law by pointing to numerous seemingly
flagrant violations thereof. However, if IL
is seen as an evolving historical process,
there are certainly developments suggesting its increasing potency. Following
WWII, domestic rights violations were
simply internal affairs. Neither states nor
IOs had any right to criticize how a government mistreated its own people. That
is certainly no longer the case today. 
William A. Cohn is a lecturer
at University of New York in Prague
US Ambassador
to the UN
John Bolton (centre)
[ 39 ]
spotlight on the baltic
The Memory
of Estonia
In Estonia, Russia is still
everywhere
E
stonia, along with neighbouring
Lithuania and Latvia, is regarded
as a small peripheral country at the
edge of Europe. Throughout their histories, the Baltic states have frequently
been at the forefront of attempts at external domination. With the brief exception
of Lithuania (which existed as a Kingdom since the Middle ages and which incorporated parts of modern Belarus and
Ukraine to grow into an independent and
multi-ethnic Grand Duchy of Lithuania
between 1316 and 1430 –Ed.), the Baltic
states have had very little opportunity
to play any sort of historical role on the
world stage. Estonia is the smallest of the
Baltic states, but is larger than Belgium,
Denmark, Switzerland or Holland, yet it
has a mere 1.5 million inhabitants.
For centuries, foreign armies have
laid claim to Estonia. Danes, Germans,
Swedes, and Russia (from the beginning
of the 18th century) all dominated this
country. Russian imperial politics was
(and some say still is) based on the notion of never relinquishing that which
the country “acquires”. WWII and postwar events continue to be a source of
trauma for many Estonians, with differing interpretations hindering closure.
For Estonia, the end of WW II did not
entail the kind of liberation experienced
by Western Europe. What ensued was
a brutal occupation by the Soviet Union,
one that the West entirely overlooked,
and the Western part of Eastern of Europe was lucky to escape. These events
(which Moscow regularly dismisses),
though propagated by the Baltic states,
are often uncomfortable for many Europeans to accept.
After declaring independence in 1992,
the Baltic states were still hindered with
the burden of their Soviet heritage. Just
as in 1918, when the Baltic states also
declared independence, the longing for
national independence contributed towards the development of Estonian society. Economically, GDP has hovered
around 5%, reaching 8% in 2005. The
country is benefiting from external investment, unemployment is falling and
the state budget is regularly balanced.
Reforms of the pension system have been
implemented and the country has even
adopted a controversial flat tax. Estonia
has also become a member of NATO and
the European Union (in 2004).
However, despite such good news,
a certain level of disharmony bubbles
beneath the surface. Such disharmony is
primarily the result of negative historical
experiences with its eastern neighbour,
namely Russia, which Estonia still fears
is seeking to dominate it.
Language equals citizenship
In the capital Tallinn – in streets, parks,
trains and buses, the Russian language is
heard everywhere. Half of the capital has
Russian as its primary language. Heading
east, the figure rises considerably. In the
north-east region of Ida-Virumaa, 75%
Miloš P�elovický
of people speak Russian. The national
figure is 26%. Most of those who speak
Russian came with the Soviet army or
Russian administration. In pre-war Estonia, despite centuries of Tsarist occupation, the number of Russian immigrants
numbered around 8% of the population.
The indigenous Estonians (less than
one million) hoped that after independence, their Russian compatriots would
return to their country of origin. Following independence, a significant part of
the former Soviet military manufacturing
structure collapsed, and unemployment
among the Russians skyrocketed. Despite
this, the Russian populace stayed put.
Estonians have let it be known that the
Russian population must integrate into
Estonian society. The basic legal premise
for this is that Russians accept that Estonian is the single official language of the
country, a testing demand in itself. Without the fulfilment of this requirement, Estonian citizenship is no longer granted.
This system brings with it many problems. Many Russians still hark back to the
greatness of their Russian motherland,
and thus scoff at the idea of learning the
language of what they view is a petite and
insignificant country. Moscow has officially requested that Russian be made the
second official language of Estonia. Secondly, many Russians are ageing labourers, without higher education. For them,
Estonian is a difficult language to learn.
A large number of Russians have therefore not been able to apply for citizenship. The numbers of such “non-citizens”
are estimated at 150,000.
Then there are approximately 100,000
Russian citizens who have permanent Es-
tonian residency. They enjoy even cooler
relations with Estonians, since it was
this population that made up part of the
Soviet military and administrative presence in Estonia. The oldest members of
this community receive healthy pensions
from Russia, ones which reflect their
“service” in this country. The younger
generation, meanwhile, is highly active
in all kinds of Russian-related business
activities in the country.
However, naturalisation is taking place
at a slow pace. So far 138,000 people have
been naturalised - approximately half of
the former “non-citizens” living in the
country.
Big neighbour, big ego
According to many, Russia has not yet
come to terms with the loss of its Baltic
neighbours, as it continues to pursue its
“interests” in the region. The complicated status of Russians living in Estonia
as well as in Latvia provides the perfect
excuse for such steps. Russian politicians
FOTO: DANA KYNDROVÁ
A memorial
to the fallen Soviet
“heroes” that
“liberated” Tallinn
in September 1944.
have made frequent protests about what
they view as repeated human rights violations with regards to Russian minorities living in the Baltic states. However,
international monitors and NGOs have
been largely dismissive of such claims.
Indeed, Russians within Estonia – now
part of the European Union, enjoy far
greater rights and freedoms than their
Russian counterparts back home. For example, these Estonian “non-citizens” are
allowed to vote in regional elections. This
may partially explain why the Russian
minority has not organized any widescale revolts.
Another area of tension between Estonia and Russia is the issue of a border
agreement, which stipulates a universally
accepted border between the two countries. The agreement was signed in May
of 2005, following years of negotiations
and several key concessions by the Estonian side. During the ratification process, the Estonian parliament put the
agreement through a so-called pream-
ble process, which automatically leads
to parliamentary discussions and comments, but does not alter the text of the
agreement. Because Estonia has insisted
on the continuation of its right to statehood since 1918, the preamble affixed
comments on the aggression of Soviet
forces in 1940, decades of illegal occupation and annexation into the USSR as
well as the Tarter agreement of 1920, in
which the first borders between Estonia
and Bolshevik Russia were established
– borders far more advantageous to Estonia than today’s.
This preamble caused immediate anger back in Russia and President Putin
immediately halted the Russian ratification process. The Russians did not agree
with the Estonians framing the Russian
presence as an “occupation,” nor did
they accept the notion of the unbroken
line of Estonian sovereignty from 1918,
or the Treaty of Tartu (signed in February 1920 after the Estonian War of Independence, in which Russia renounced
[ 41 ]
in perpetuity all rights to the territory of
Estonia. –Ed.)
The Russian position has been universally condemned in Estonia, chiefly because Estonian territory, ceded to Russia
as part of the treaty, is largely occupied
by Russians. Incorporating this territory
into Estonia would thus only increase the
problem of Russian integration.
The “freedom fighters” issue
Part of the Estonian tragedy, is that during
WWII, Soviet dominance led many Estonians to fight alongside the Nazis against
the Russians, a fact that some Estonians
continue to glorify. These sentiments led
to a bill in parliament suggesting that
Estonian soldiers who fought in the German army be described as anti-Bolshevik
“freedom fighters”. The bill was ultimately
defeated.
In the context of “overseeing” the
democratic activities of its Baltic neighbours, Russia has often commented on
the “glorification of Fascist figures” and of
attempts to renew the fascist “struggle” by
today’s Estonians. Russian politicians and
the Russian press frequently bring up such
issues, with young Muscovites even demonstrating against the problem. Despite
this, no mainstream Estonian politician
has ever made public pronouncements
that would indicate Fascist leanings.
Such is the tragedy of a small nation,
which in essence lacked a viable and positive choice and which was abused by two
dominant neighbours. A recently published “white book” has confirmed that
between 1939-45, the Estonian population lost up to a quarter of its populace
as a result of both wartime casualties and
emigration.
Many Estonians want to have national
heroes at all costs. They argue that Estonian soldiers that sided with the Nazis
were fighting for a noble cause. Though
attempts were made to erect monuments
to these wartime figures, a pro-European
current eventually frustrated such moves.
In the last several years, Estonian politicians have made moves to condemn Estonian involvement with Nazi Germany.
At the same time, the admirers of
these “freedom fighters” can hardly be
described as proponents of Fascist ideology. Instead, the issue can be seen as one
in which the accusations from the Russian side stem far more from self-denial
about Russia’s own barbarism than from
true moral indignation.
Unlike other post-communist countries, in Estonia, Russia is still everywhere. Not a day goes by without an
unfortunate reminder to be seen of the
Russian presence. Though the Soviet Union may have collapsed, in Estonia, suspicion and antagonism towards Russia
will remain for years to come.

Miloš Přelovický is an economist.
The Sun and
the Blacksmith
Michal Šebek
A psychologist’s look
into the Lithuanian soul
A
ccording to an old Lithuanian legend, long ago, the world was engulfed in perpetual darkness. Then,
a blacksmith took it upon himself to
forge the sun. He took a shiny piece of
metal, and hammered away at it until six
years later, he finally managed to create
the sun. He then climbed the tallest ladder he could find and threw the sun up
into the sky - and that’s where it hangs
to this day. However, in Lithuania, even
the sun itself is not enough to cast light
on the dark moments this land endured
during the last century. For that, one
needs to cast light onto the Lithuanian
soul itself.
Below the sun
During the last two years, I spent considerable time with several Lithuanians
who wanted to become psychoanalysts
dedicated to psychotherapy in their home
country. During the communist era, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis were not
considered valid fields of study. Individual psychological space was replaced with
a mass-oriented and politically driven
conformity. When the Baltic states gained
independence from the Soviet Union, the
professions of psychology and psychiatry
had to be built up from scratch.
During WWII, many thousands of
Jews were killed in Lithuania. In 1952,
following the defeat of the resistance
movement by Soviet forces, approximately 400,000 people were transported to Soviet gulags. During this time,
a third of the Lithuanian population
perished and was replaced by an influx
of Russians and other Soviet nationalities into the country. Today, ethnic
Lithuanians make-up 80% of the population. The Lithuanian experience of democracy during the 20th century lasted
a mere twenty years (1918-1940).
In Lithuania, there is an overriding
historical sense of psychological unease.
I first travelled to the country in 1999
and the journey had a profoundly depressing effect on me. The small Sovietstyle airport in Vilnius, tattered panel
apartments, streets full of impoverished
people, all underlined the suffering that
this place had endured. Even the hastily
reconstructed and renovated historical
centre of Vilnius failed to shake off my
sense of unease. The fact that Lithuania had a large number of suicides only
added to my discomfort.
My hosts put me up in a sanatorium.
The windows were cracked and poorly
insulated, so there was a permanent draft
in my room. The logic of having the central heating on the lowest possible setting
continued to elude me. In fact, it seemed
that the bigger the room, the lower the
setting. My attempts to find a warm
apartment were fruitless – the locals managed to persuade me that even in a rented
apartment the cold would be unbearable.
The local food floated in fat, so I ended
up cooking for myself. The attempts
of many Lithuanians to speak to me
in English usually ended up morphing into Russian, a language far
more commonly understood in this
country; my psychoanalytic presentations ended up being mostly in Russian.
For Lithuanians, I was like a missionary
from a country that during Soviet times
had represented the “West” of the Soviet
bloc.
ing with and becoming like one’s abuser.
In the end, he destroyed the family that
had been waiting for him for so long.
The daughter lacks a positive male role
model, and ends up selecting the kind of
sadistic partners that most resemble her
father.
A patient prefers to talk to me in broken English than Russian – the suspicion
towards the occupying power remains.
A small boy never knew his father,
a Russian officer who abandoned his
mother shortly before he was born. The
father was sent to a distant part of the
Soviet Union. The boy’s closeness to
his mother prevented him from gaining close relationships with other adult
women. The son was forced to carve out
his sense of manhood through contact
with his grandfather, teachers and a stepfather. But the desire to find his long lost
father survived into his adult years, and
in fact only grew stronger.
I repeatedly encountered a lack of stable fathers. Families were able to survive
only because of the near total dominance
and leadership of grandmothers, who
were responsible for the emotional upbringing of the entire family (a typical
model throughout the former Soviet
Union). The result of this is a consistent
sense in children that they somehow were
not valued enough by their parents to
merit closer attention. This identity crisis
leads to depression and alcohol abuse. In
a society in which the individual did not
matter, families often behaved as if their
children did not matter either.
There was a family, in which one son
fought for the German army and the other in the Soviet. Both brothers had long
since been taken to the gulags, but their
feuding ancestors had yet to make peace
with each other.
A small girl had an alcoholic father.
The family lived in a communal, sub-divided flat shared with two other families,
lacking any privacy. The father would repeatedly rape his wife in front of the children. In later life, the notion of a partner
or a meaningful sex-life became unthinkable for the girl. A sense of isolation
developed, in which she avoided forming
personal relationships with others, and
low self-esteem became the norm.
Not all Lithuanian society is deeply
traumatised. Some traumas can, in fact,
lead to positive outcomes. Indeed, such
historical traumas can cause a nation to
become strong and proud. The majority
of middle-aged Lithuanians that I spoke
to were proud of their country, it’s culture and its natural beauty, and expressed
a willingness to contribute towards its
de-Sovietisation. A few even felt that that
this process does not necessarily mean
deliberately forgetting the Russian language.

Michal Šebek is a psychologist
who teaches at Charles University, Prague
A monument erected in
the Lithuanian concentration camp known
as Salaspils, where an
estimated 100,000 people
lost their lives.
Case vignettes
FOTO: DANA KYNDROVÁ
A three-year-old girl’s father was arrested and sent to the Siberian gulag. Several
years later he returned, suffering from
many forms of post-traumatic stress. He
had become a different person - sadistic,
abusive – and suffering from the common psychological tendency of identify-
[ 43 ]
Peter Zvagulis
Parliamentary elections and
a strong Russian populace
are the key unknowns
for this young EU and NATO
member
latvia report
T
hough it’s a little early to speculate
on the outcome of the Nov. 7th 2006
parliamentary elections in Latvia,
it’s a good time to reflect on the present
state of affairs and the similarities and
dissimilarities that come with this election year as compared with 2002.
In the 2002 pre-election period, Einars Repse, the country’s most respected
central banker and one of the icons of the
pro-independence struggle in the 1990s,
announced his decision to quit his post
and join the political sphere. People were
clearly tired of the endlessly reoccurring
corruption scandals within the government. Enjoying a reputation of a corrup-
Riga
tion-proof official, Repse and his Jaunais
Laiks (JL) party created a political force
over just a few months, that went on
to win most of the seats in parliament.
Latvijas Cels (Latvia’s Way), which had
been the ruling party for most of time
since Latvia’s 1991 independence, wasn’t
able to pass the 5% threshold needed to
get into parliament. Repse’s success was
astonishing but the story itself was not
new. What will be the surprise 2006?
Latvia is one of the new NATO and EU
members, enjoying its new privileges and
stretching out to meet its new obligations.
It is one of the post-communist countries that joined the US-led anti-terrorism coalition and sent its troops to Iraq
and Afghanistan. Since it regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991,
Latvia has been at odds with its powerful
neighbor, Russia, over the treatment of
the large Russian-speaking minority of
Latvia. With only 2.5 million inhabitants,
the country may feel safer from within
NATO and the EU.
Latvia’s hopes that EU and NATO
membership will cure many of its problems have not materialized in exactly the
way it was anticipated. But though Latvia,
as one of the poorest EU countries, may
be struggling with its economy, it´s current problems are far fewer than four years
ago. Just as in 2002, Latvia is readying itself for a NATO summit later this year. At
the Prague summit four years ago, Latvia
hoped that it would be accepted into
NATO. Today it is a full member preparing to host the next summit in Riga. Just
a year ago EU membership was still a goal
to achieve; today Latvian politicians have
a say in Brussels. Despite all the political
intricacies and sometimes questionable
media standards, Latvia is a functioning
electoral democracy with a press that is
free from any government control.
Incorporated into the Soviet Union after the World War Two, Latvia regained
its independence with the collapse of
the USSR. The 50-year long Soviet rule
substantially altered its demographic
makeup and left it with the legacy of an
ethnically and linguistically divided society, with just over half of the population Latvian and the other half Russianspeaking. The years of Soviet oppression
and the politics of nationalistic revenge
after the collapse of the USSR, has left
both communities with a sense of resentment towards each other.
Both the Latvian and the Russian press
within Latvia misuse this sentiment to
some degree for their own commercial or
political reasons. Both sides see the other
as “them” versus “us”. This virtual reality, that most of the time exists mainly in
the media, finds its embodiment in a few
public events that take place around certain commemorative dates.
March 16th is one such date. This day
marks the notorious gathering of the
Latvian Waffen SS veterans in Riga. For
a few days, the ethno-linguistic polarization within Latvian society becomes
such a political “hot potato” that many
leading politicians prefer to simply leave
the country so as not to take sides. Other
commemorative dates, although provoking different and perhaps less intense
emotions, follow a similar pattern. This
focus on commemorative days is linked
to the sense of a cultural identity and the
fear of losing it. Latvians fear that because of the very large Russian minority
and proximity of Russia, the Russian language could take over. Russians, in turn,
fear that Latvia’s new education laws requiring gradual transition to a Latvianlanguage school system will strip their
children of their cultural heritage and
identity. The nationalistic rhetoric preceding the commemorative dates usually
gets more intense in the election year.
The Latvian Saeima (parliament) is
a 100-seat, one-chamber legislature,
whose members are elected for a fouryear term. The threshold for political parties is 5 percent of the vote. In the 2002
elections 20 parties competed for seats,
but only 6 actually made it. The big winners became a newly formed party Jaunais Laiks (New Era) with 26 seats; ceding 25 to PCTVL (For Human Rights in
United Latvia); 20 to TP (People’s Party);
10 to another new party – LPP (Latvia’s
First Party); 12 to ZZS (Coalition of the
Greens and Farmers); and 7 to TB/LNNK
(Fatherland and Freedom/Latvian National Independence Movement). The
leftist PCTVL block formed three separate factions within parliament.
Since 1991 Latvia has had four parliaments and 12 governments. The current
Prime Minister, Aigars Kalvitis, took office in 2004 from Indulis Emsis who
managed to stay on a job for just a few
months. Einars Repse, the hero of the
2002 elections, became the first prime
minister of the 8th Saeima, but his fame
as corruption-fighter faded almost as
soon as he took office.
Just as in other post-communist countries, the creation of ever more political
parties around well-known personalities
shortly before elections has been a reoccurring trend in Latvia’s recent electoral
history. This phenomenon, which indicates
a certain immaturity of the electorate, obviates the need for politicians to strongly
focus on the social part of their election
programs. The popularity of the various
leaders, combined with the promise of
a new and cleaner style of politics (with
a touch of the nationalism) has proven to
be an almost unfailing recipe for success.
In 2006, the nationalistic agenda may
still play an important role in Latvia’s
ethno-linguistically divided society. TB/
LNNK on the Latvian side, and PCTVL
on the Russian side, have traditionally
relied on votes from the nationalistically oriented segments of the electorate. Though one part of the population
seems to be tired of the self-serving ethnic rhetoric of the radical politicians,
the potential polarization of society before the elections is a factor to be taken
into account. Protest rallies by Russian
high-school students and their parents,
now traditionally held on September 1st,
provide very convenient timing before
the upcoming elections. An unknown
factor affecting the whole power-balance
may again be a new and emerging political force, which can still form and which
may well determine the agendas and calculations of the current players.

Peter Zvagulis
is a writer
and journalist.
[ 45 ]
culture
On Tom Stoppard’s latest play and its
connection to his Czech birthplace
Neal Ascherson
Revolution in the
T
om Stoppard left Czechoslovakia as
a baby. Now, 68 years later, he has
written Rock’n’Roll – a brilliant exploration of liberty, rebellion and identity that captures the spirit of the Sixties,
from the Prague underground to the
fragile genius of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett
“At last he’s written a play about
Czechoslovakia!” So they say, in a tone
which, perhaps unconsciously, has smug
and patronising notes. The implication,
both nasty and ridiculous, is that Sir
Tom Stoppard, born Tomas Straussler
in the Czech town of Zlín, has finally acknowledged that he isn’t really English,
has ended a long pretence which never
convinced anyone, and has faced up to
foreignness.
But is Czechoslovakia – that country
which no longer exists – really the place
Stoppard is writing about? It’s true that
Rock ‘n’ Roll, which began previews at
the Royal Court recently, is partly set in
Prague, between the Soviet invasion of
1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
It’s true that Stoppard, who came to
know Václav Havel and many other persecuted figures in that miserable period,
has dramatised the conflicts and dilemmas of the underground Czech opposition with a rare empathy. And yet, after
reading it, I felt that, in the end, this was
a play about England.
Stoppard left Czechoslovakia in 1938,
when he was still a baby. He has no memory of his birthplace, and does not speak
Czech. His father was killed in the Far
East in 1941, after the Japanese conquest
of Singapore, and his mother brought the
children up to feel themselves proudly
English. This is the landscape, the culture, the tolerant old society in which
he feels at home, and which he intensely
– sometimes anxiously – loves. It is England, with its very special ways and references, which he is writing about.
He has said that he is “English now,”
but that at some level he has never
stopped also being Czech. His mother’s
death a few years ago may have subtly
freed Stoppard to explore himself for
traces of his origins. But no sudden selfdiscovery led to this play. It seems to
have been prompted by reflecting on his
friend Václav Havel’s moral and philosophical writings, and by reading about
the background to the Czech ‘Chartist’
dissidents in the 1970s.
One of the central figures in the play
is Jan, a man of Stoppard’s age who also
spent a wartime childhood in England,
but who was taken back to Czechoslovakia in 1948. Jan comes to Cambridge in
the 1960s as a student. But in 1968, when
the Warsaw Pact armies invade to overthrow the “Prague spring” and Alexander
Dubček’s “socialism with a human face”,
he returns to his country. Stoppard said
to me: “Jan is a sort of shadow life of my
own life. If I had gone back in 1948 and
stayed, what would my life have been?”
With Stoppard, all kinds of political
or philosophical ideas, and regions of
learning which at first seem unrelated to
the play’s outline – in Rock ‘n’ Roll, it’s the
texts of Sappho or materialist theories of
brain function, in his dazzling Arcadia
(1993) it was chaos theory – somehow
poured together into a compost out of
which unforgettable characters grow.
The other setting of Rock ‘n’ Roll is
intellectual Cambridge, home of Professor Max Morrow and his family. Max is
a hot-hearted, unrepentant veteran communist, “the last white rhino” (as he describes himself) who refuses to abandon
his faith in the Bolshevik Revolution as
the Soviet Union and its Czechoslovak
henchmen commit one crime after another. His quarrels with everyone around
– with the Dubček supporter Jan, with
a young Eurocommunist, with the Czech
intellectual Lenka who believes in the
blissful 1968 revolution of the imagination – are monumental.
In this play, the Czech woman Lenka
– speaking in Max’s house in 1990 when
democracy has triumphed in her own
country – bitterly warns Jan not to think
culture
head
[ 47 ]
culture
of returning to Cambridge. “They put
something in the water since you were
here.” The English, she says, have become
obedient, apologetic about everything,
frightened to use their minds.
What was it that was “going on now”?
“When you try to grasp the way the
Western world is going, you see that we
are on a ratchet towards a surveillance
state, which is coming to include the
whole population in its surveillance. This
is our reward for accepting the restraints
on the way we live now. And those restraints, all that, would have been completely unacceptable, unthinkable, when
I was young.”
Cautiously, as Stoppard talked on, he
began to draw the Czech and English
wings of his new play together. “When
I was young [a phrase he uses a lot now,
and not always with nostalgia] I was very
condescending to East Europe and East
Europeans because they seemed to be
unembarrassed by what had happened to
them. And they seemed to have no sense
of what they had given up, of how gullible they had become.”
Stoppard repeated an anecdote in the
play (“actually, I got it from Mandelshtam; it’s Russian”) about Czech schoolchildren who simply couldn’t grasp the
notion that in some countries people
were allowed to live wherever they liked.
“When I read that, I felt that the real evil
out there was that they had persuaded
an entire population that such restraint
on freedom is normal. Thirty years ago
I had a somewhat patronising attitude to
cruel, grotesque humour, things like airbrushing Trotsky out of photographs. The
fact that people could go along with that
made me feel quite superior. But now, 30
years on, I feel we are halfway there.”
For all of Stoppard’s anxiety and his
distrust of utopian faiths, he seems to
keep a belief in the goodness and generosity of ordinary people when they are
left to themselves. Even if, as Lenka says,
“they” (governments, establishments)
have put something in the water, the
English remain deep down the same nation Herzen loved for their tolerance and
self-respect.
We talked about the novelist Milan
Kundera’s notorious “‘Finis Bohemiae”
article, written in the 1970s when he was
an exile in France. It suggested that, after
the Soviet invasion, the whole experi-
ment of creating an independent Czech
nation and culture might have to be considered a failure. In a century’s time, the
language spoken in Prague could well be
Russian. I remember listening, in that
city, to the fury of other Czech writers at
Kundera’s “loss of nerve”. Harassed and
spied upon, they were still turning out
novels and plays “for the drawer” or for
smuggling abroad. How dare Kundera
hint that Czech culture was extinct?
And yet, perhaps, there are two sorts
of national culture in Europe. There are
those who can imagine their own extinction – a region once called the Czech
lands, where 100 years ago people spoke
and wrote a language which can now
only be understood with a dictionary.
That was Kundera’s nightmare, which
also haunted the great Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean. And then there are others
– France, Britain, Poland, for instance
– for whom the idea that the French,
English or Polish languages are mortal is
too absurd to be imaginable.
And is there really anything “true” and
indestructible in “national character”?
When I visit the Czech Republic these
days I keep meeting Czechs who complain that communism has permanently
deformed the nation, leaving indelible
habits of cheating, selfishness, corruption and greed. I put this to Stoppard. As
he often does in argument, he quoted his
friend. “Havel said, that to live in such
a system turns people surly, out of joint.
That sense of a national character being
altered is true. And yet I am optimistic.”
Rock ‘n’ Roll is a subtle, complex play
about ways to resist “systems” and preserve what is human. At its core is a succession of arguments between two Czech
friends, Jan (who holds some of Kundera’s
attitudes) and Ferda (who more clearly
represents Havel, and borrows lines from
some of Havel’s famous utterances). Jan,
forced to work as a kitchen porter, at first
despises Ferda’s petitions against arrests
and censorship as the self-indulgence
of an intellectual clique. A devout rock
enthusiast, he sees the persecuted rock
band the Plastic People of the Universe
(who actually existed) as the essence of
freedom because they simply don’t care
about anything but the music. They baffle the thought police because “they’re
not heretics. They’re pagans”. Ferda at
first dismisses the Plastic People as longhaired escapists who have nothing to do
with the real struggle. But later, when
they are arrested and imprisoned after an
absurd trial, he comes to understand that
the heretics and the pagans are inseparable allies.
Leaving the band’s real-life trial, Havel
famously said that “from now on, being
careful seems so petty”. Soon afterwards
a few hundred brave men and women
signed Charter 77, the declaration of
rights and liberties which earned them
prison sentences and suffocating surveillance but which was read around the
world.
Patiently, Stoppard explained to me how
historic disputes between Kundera and
Havel were reflected in the play. Kundera,
in the first confused year after the invasion,
had hoped that the experiment could still
continue, working out a society in which
culture
uncensored freedom could co-exist with
a socialist state, a new form of socialism
which still needed to be devised. “Havel
said that it wasn’t a question of making
new systems. “Constructing” a free press
was like inventing the wheel. You don’t
have to invent a free society because such
a society is the norm – it’s normal.”
I asked if this notion of freedom as
“normal” and “natural”, something which
doesn’t need designing, wasn’t close to the
anarchist vision. But this was not what he
meant, it seemed. Stoppard’s trust that
people will behave well when left on their
own has its common-sense limits.
Rock’n’Roll is, naturally enough, full
of talk about rock music, about Jan’s
precious albums brought from England
and smashed by the secret police, about
memories of mighty bands of the 1970s.
But the play has one extra character who
never comes on stage, yet haunts the im-
agination of the other characters. This is
Syd Barrett, once the marvellous young
leader and songwriter of Pink Floyd,
who was dumped by the band for being
unmanageable, went back to his mother’s
semi in Cambridge, and fell silent. Today
an elderly balding man whom nobody
recognises, he lives as a recluse. It’s not
clear if he knows that someone has written a play about him.
I asked Stoppard why he used Syd. “I
wanted to write about somebody who
had simply “got off the train”. A friend
lent me some books about him. Those
deceptively simple songs! Some said he
was a genius, others that there was nothing in them ...”
But it’s about more than the songs. It’s
about other things which are prowling
through the play behind its philosophical
sparkle: beauty, death, transience. Stoppard says: “I found the pictures in those
books very moving. There’s a photograph
of him like a dark archangel.”
Syd, in Rock’n’Roll, is made into the
shadow of the lost god Pan. One woman, bewitched by him a quarter-century
ago, remembers him as “the guarantor
of beauty”. But Tom Stoppard’s play says
that in politics, in families, in physical
existence, there are no guarantees.
Rock ‘n’ Roll is playing at the Royal
Court Theatre, London until 15th July,
then transfers to the Duke of York’s in
the West End from 22nd July to 24th
September

Editor´s note: On 11th July, it was announced that Syd Barret had died aged 60.
Reprinted from the Observer © Guardian
Newspapers Limited 2006
Slightly edited.
ADVERTISEMENT
National Gallery in Prague
Veletržní Palace
Collection of Modern
and Contemporary Art
Rudolf Sikora
AGAINST
MYSELF
June 9 – September 10, 2006
www.ngprague.cz
National Gallery in Prague
Dukelských hrdinů 47
170 00 Praha 7
transport: tram 12, 14, 17 – Veletržní
[ 49 ]
culture
Public TV – The Last G
Ond�ej Aust
What Jacques Rupnik, Václav B�lohradský, Ladislav
Jakl, Ivo Mathé and other
members of the debating club
Osma had to say about the
role of public service TV in
a changing world
D
uring its eighty years of existence,
Czech public service television
(Česká televize) has had a particularly tumultuous existence. Many voices
and pressures have repeatedly attempted
to redefine and re-shape both Czech Television as well as the Czech public radio
(Český rozhlas). This very subject was
discussed at Prague’s Osma debating club
earlier this year.
According to journalist Karel Hvíždala, the discussion about whether a democratic country needs public media is
taking place at a time of fundamental
change in the Czech Republic. “The media is becoming less of a cultural estate,
and its owners are ceasing to feel the so-
cial consequences of their products. To be
a producer or publisher is more like being
a manufacturer of boots” said Hvíždala,
who went on to say that today’s media
is so abundant, that it is now staffed by
what he sees as an “academic proletariat.”
Politics, he added, is built upon finding the most acceptable solution for the
greatest number of people, and has thus
transformed itself into an instant form
of politics; the central role is thus played
PR agencies and pollsters. “The state has
lost its former function. The world is becoming more globalised. New information highways have robbed the state of it
monopoly on truth.” added Hvíždala. He
also quoted the Czech author Milan Kun-
culture
dera, noting that today, Europe is only
connected by culture and values. “Public service media should, amongst other
things, reflect these changes. It should
alert us as to which boundaries we are
tearing down, and in the instances when
private media seek only to entertain us,
they should ask what these changes are
doing to us,” added Hvíždala.
Jiří Příbaň, professor of philosophy of
law at the University of Cardiff, pointed
out that the presence of public service
media in itself is demanded by the public
– so long as it views the services offered
by the public sphere as crucial to its own
understanding of the world. Přibáň noted
that the relationship between society and
the media is inter-related and that where
the public sphere is absent, one cannot
expect that any media will replace that.
“Media by itself can change very little.”
warned Jiří Přibáň.
Media that can exclusively teach and
even bring up the populace can only be
seen in totalitarian regimes, or in societies that are changing from farming to
manufacturing, such as in India, where
during the 50s and 60s television played
a key role (and continues to do so) in
public information and education. In
developed countries, however, the media
has lost its role as a teacher, and as Jiří
commercial television station derided by
Czech cultural critics and frequently accused of shady, shallow and biased journalism –Ed.) and we saw what it meant
regarding the notion of political pluralism in this country.
According to Rupnik, after the 1989
revolution, Nova served as a hope that
free market media would bring about
a more pluralistic content. “We now have
more channels, but in essence they play
the same programmes, the same serials,
the same reality shows.” He went on to
quote Patrick Le Lay, general director of
TF 1, the most popular French television station, privatised twenty years ago.
Television, he noted, was merely about
creating space and opportunity for advertising to influence the viewer. “We all
suspected it, but he came out and said it
straight. Before, they would say: we need
commercials so that we can make programmes. Now they say: we make programmes so that we can get advertising
revenue in order to make the brain amenable to advertising.”
Rupnik’s final point concerned the
fragmentation of society. “Before, people
spoke of the classes. Today no-one is interested in that anymore. Communities
have now sprung up all over the place –
ethnic, religious, sexual. Each has its me-
meetings in a democracy can be maintained. They are crucial, as they are also
the only ones able to define themselves
against the commercial market.” And in
this sense, the debaters noted, they can
also maintain their independence from
political power at crucial points. During
the build up to the US-led invasion of
Iraq in 2003, noted Rupnik, the British
public service broadcaster the BBC was
far more independent of the British government, than private television stations
in the US – which, according to the boss
of the BBC, chose to wrap themselves up
in the American flag instead.
The controversial philosopher Václav
Bělohradský agreed with Hvíždala’s assessments about the state losing its function, but was far more fatalistic. He noted
that the national state, just like democracy is at an end “We can no longer save
democracy, but is important to battle for
the most important tenet – the division
of power.”
An abundance of information, according to Bělohradský, is in fact, the
most dangerous form of totalitarianism.
Though information is plentiful, very little is translated into social energy. This
is, according to Bělohradský, the basis of
the notion of public space. It is precisely
the media of the public sphere that can
Guardian of Democracy
Přibáň added, we can hardly expect this
to change.
The noted politologist Jacques Rupnik
noted three aspects of public service media in an era of globalisation, commercialism and de-regulation. According to
Rupnik, the fall of the monopoly held by
state media during totalitarianism did
not bring about a greater independence
of reporting in the Czech Republic as was
anticipated. “I remember the atmosphere
that was predominant here in 1989. The
end of the monopoly of information; at
last we would have private television and
radio therefore greater freedom, greater
independence from the government and
state. Then came Nova (populist, ultra-
dia, its radio, and even its case for having
a television station.” Rupnik underlined
his point with a recollection. “When my
friend, the French philosopher Alain
Finkelkraut, visited the USA at the beginning of the 1980s, he was shocked
to find Marcel Proust in a bookshop
under the category of “gay literature”.
Even culture is fragmenting because of
these sub-communities.” argued Rupnik. This has led to a loss of public space
and common language: “Everyone can
communicate more easily within their
community, but what has disappeared is
communication between communities.
“So public service media” stated Rupnik
“are now the only places where public
help the formation and maintenance of
a united world, by sorting through, adding context, and framing and legitimising information, argued Bělohradský.
“Information must have weight and this
is given to it by the public space. If the
public space is lost, then information becomes a kind of repression.....it is robbed
of its function to transform itself into social energy.”
The debate about the general aspects
and changes of public service broadcasting, led the members of the Osa club towards a more concrete sub-theme, the
question of the need for and ideal form
of Czech public media, primarily Czech
Television.
[ 51 ]
FOTO: KRISTÝNA URBÁNKOVÁ
culture
The current Secretary of the Czech
President, Ladislav Jakl does not regard
the continued existence of public media
as a certainty. “We inherited Czech Television” said Jakl, who argued that public
service broadcasting is based on an era
when the state had a monopoly of information (Editor’s note – this statement
is erroneous. Czech public media pre-date
both the Soviet and Nazi occupations, going back to the democratic era of the socalled First Republic (1918-1938)). So
who, according to the President’s secretary still needs public service broadcasting? “Those who would not survive in
the free-market, who like to live off institutions, and who get money via forcibly
mandated payment from citizens. There
are political powers that are convinced
that through institutions not dependant on the market, they have a chance
to push their ideology, which they
could not do in a process of normal free
competition....[Public TV is for] people
who are convinced that they know best
what values should be and who use public broadcasting to attempt to force these
values onto others.” argued Jakl, who is
convinced that the public does not need
public institutions such as Czech Television or Czech Radio.
According to former Director of Czech
Television Ivo Mathé (1992 to 1998), the
law specifically formulates the goals and
the mandate of public service broadcasting. Mathés view was opposite to Jakl’s
view of supremacy the free-market. “The
market cannot provide everything. Especially in broadcasting, when even after
digitalisation, we will not have a freemarket in this field.” added Mathé.
His quarrel with Jakl reflects the current situation in the Czech television
market (see TNP Winter 2006). The vulgar economic liberalism represented by
Jakl, in which the media are dominated
by an all powerful market and in which
commercial stations are geared primarily
towards financial gain, is one that Mathé
and the other debaters opposed strongly.
A public-service system that is emasculated (such as that in the Czech Republic) is at the whim of parliament, who on
the winds of popularity can choose to
cut its funding at any time.
The debate about public service media, warned Christian S. Nissen, is not
one that can be decisively answered with
oversimplifications. Should electronic
media be an instrument for the enrichment of culture and popular enlightenment or just another activity of the commercial sector? Should the recipient of
this be a citizen or a consumer? How
does individual choice balance itself
against public need? These questions, ac-
cording to Nissen, needed to be answered
by society in general.
Even if national boundaries are being
blurred, the current director of Czech
TV Jiří Janeček believes that respecting
cultural boundaries is crucial. “In the
European sense, public service broadcasting is viewed as a classic attribute of
the nation state. It is absolutely crucial
to the nurturing of culture and also the
language of its citizens, and in this sense
is irreplaceable´,” said Jiří Janeček.. “As
long as we don’t give up on the idea of
a sovereign Czech Republic, we will not
go without Czech Television.”
As the debate wrapped up, the majority of debaters agreed on several points:
Stations, whose priority is financial gain,
cannot place cultural programming or
quality at the forefront. Private television stations can create successful programming which viewers will watch.
Programmes that can have positive consequences on society can also be popular
too even though they are placed between
blocks of advertisements, which they
merely help to sell. At the same time, as
Janeček noted, theatre, classical music
concerts, educational programming as
well as classic Czech television programs
and cinema are nowhere to be found on
Czech commercial TV.

culture
The Ghost of Europe
A story set in the Czech
Jaroslav Veis
Republic in the year
��
“I have some snail mail for you” said
Vendula, calling to Madey from the reception. Before he could answer, Vendula
had already switched off.
Snail mail, as she called it, was any
message that didn’t arrive electronically.
Such mail could only be good news when
it didn’t come as a surprise, like when
you expected a package that you ordered.
If you got unexpected mail, usually there
wasn’t much point in getting excited.
Madey sighed and made his way to the
reception. Suddenly, it occurred to him
what it might be – a letter from the company Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC),
who still preferred to use paper.
Not long ago, Madey and Tom had
calmly decided over breakfast that they
really didn’t know each other anymore,
and that they would annul their registered partnership. They decided that the
division of their property was best handled by specialists, who knew how to
deal with such matters. But in the end,
they ended up untangling the whole
mess themselves.
The world had been like that for a while
now. There was a big wall between owning property and administering it. When
they finally requested that their property
be divided, PWC proved to be true experts. They even had a special branch of
post-divorce audits called “Fair-share”.
It wasn’t really an audit. The thick envelope had the header of the Parliament
of the Czech Republic and didn’t come by
mail, but by a courier in a blue uniform
studded with golden buttons all of which
were emblazoned with the letter “S” for
Senate. He confirmed Madey’s identity
by scanning his irises and then handed
him the envelope.
Madey had never had anything to do
with the senate. He had no idea whether
the news would be good or bad. He was
about as curious about it as the last time
when...in fact, he couldn’t even remember why he had been so curious. And the
somewhat overweight Vendula, sitting
behind the reception, was as noticeably
curious as he.
“Have a good one” said Madey with
an artificial level of sweetness. The point
had been made – Vendula wasn’t going
to find out anything from him. He took
the papers and returned to the screen in
his cubicle.
It was flashing like crazy. He looked at
the microphone and with a voice that had
the tone of a honey-laced summer morning in the mountains said (in English)
“Good day. You have reached the information centre of the Rainbow Ray Eastern division, operated by Lenovo and the
ČEZ group. How can I help you?”
As he waited for a response, Madey
took out a nail file from a wire mesh container nearby and jammed it into the side
of the letter. It felt like good, strong, quality paper.
“It won’t work!” said a voice from the
nearby speaker, belonging to a man with
a mid-West United States accent. It was
as if he Madey could see him: Fifty years
plus, ninety kilos plus, knowing everything and anything there was to know
about this world.
“I’m here to assist you. Can you tell
me what make or code it has?”
The paper inside the envelope had
been signed by the Highest Official of the
Notary Office, one JUDr Jurij Stankovič.
In it, Dr Stankovič was informing Madey
that as of the 15th November 2046, on
the basis of an honest and non-partisan
lottery, he had been appointed a senator
in the Czech Parliament for the number
twelve voting district. The authorisation
code was hidden under a silver patch.
“Where am I supposed to find it? You
know what, screw this!” shouted the
American.
“You’ll find the name of the product
and the designated code on the leaflet
stuck to the original packaging. I’m sure
you’ll find it. Just be calm, I’ll wait. Naturally, we are paying for this telephone
call.”
Madey Googled district 12 and found
out where it was. It took in a piece of the
south-west Czech Republic, roughly between the town of Blátno in the north
and the Šumava region in the south. It
occurred to him that the town of Bruntál
would have been much worse.
“Can you hear me, you schlock? Hello!
Damn it, hello?!? Where am I supposed
to find the damn code? There’s numbers
everywhere!”
“I’m sure you’ll find it” replied Madey,
putting down the phone. No whitlow
who couldn’t find a product code was going to talk like that to a new senator.
Unlike the American, Senator Madey,
was able to find the code relating to his
senate decree. He tore off the strip and
typed it into the computer. Under his
name and authorisation code he found
a description stating that he had been
assigned a mandate for the Communist
party of Bohemian and Moravia. He had
never heard of them.
He tried Google again. In the last four
parliamentary terms, the Communist party (KSČM) hadn’t even had a seat in the
corner by the toilet, never mind anywhere
[ 53 ]
culture
else. However, this time, it had already
twice been selected to the senate. Madey
was to be the third communist senator for
the third voter lottery-draw in a row.
He tentatively clicked on a few more
links. When he finished reading them,
it occurred to him that he should try to
exchange Šumava for Ostrava or even
Bruntál. Perhaps there, some other better-known party had won.

Shortly after the European constitution had opened up the possibility of
forming representative bodies using lottery-draws, the debate had erupted, as to
whether this was the end of democracy.
A lottery draw is no election, said conservatives from Dublin to Minsk. Elections without voters are a farce, cried
the Left from Narvik to Limassol. “And
that’s not just the democratic elections,
but also all those post-democratic one’s
too,” exclaimed the texts of emails sent
out by the Prague Center for the Evaluation of Post-democracy CEP. The truth
lay on both sides: in some regions, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe, voter
turnout didn’t exceed 7%. Not even voter
incentives, such as allowing voters to
combine their votes with their favourite
reality show contestant, helped.
Segal Wilson, the European Commissar for semantics and translation, finally
ended the discussion by stating a view
accepted by all: the lottery draw could
be viewed as something equally valid to
the way voting had been undertaken in
Europe in the past. And in the end, it always came down to money: voting via a
lottery draw cost a fraction of what it cost
to set up the old style elections.
Thus, as of 2034, all countries within the
European Union elected their parliaments
through lottery draws. Only affiliated nations such as Belarus, the Ukraine, Moldova and Transnistria held true elections, and
only because they were bound by a special
agreement with the Russo-Siberian Union.
This organisation had it’s own purely practical reason: the governments in Moscow
and Irkutsk knew full well that with good
marketing, elections were far easier to influence than lottery draws.
Lottery-drawn senators and MPs
could, in exceptional circumstances,
excuse themselves from assuming their
positions. But this didn’t happen very often; if the Highest Official Notary Office
didn’t accept the refusal, the new candidate could formally be sentenced to several months jail on charges of contempt
of post-democracy.
In itself, the job was pretty easy. During the last twenty years, the legislative
process had calmed down considerably.
These days, it was far more about honing existing legislation than actually
attempting to make new law. Further-
more, the whole process had become so
specialised that it had been taken over
by advisory teams of European Commissars and the representatives of multinational organisations from the Union. An MP or a senator always received
several recommendations on how he
should vote, and it was then left up to
them to decide.
On the occasion that the senators
could not manage, an easy solution was
always at hand: heads or tails. The elegant
Parliament Boutique based in Prague’s
old town, sold gold Versace voting coins
in practical imitation goatskin cases for
just such occasions.

Madey took an immediate liking to
his new office in the rear wing of the
Valdštejn palace. It had windows facing a
well-kept garden, with a large ornamental pool in the background. Compared
with the glass cubicle where he had spent
his last few years, it was a pleasant tonic
for both the eyes and soul.
His assistant Dana was equally pleasant
and direct. “You’re gay aren’t you Mr Billig?” she asked after lunch in the senatorial cafeteria, as they made their way to the
negotiating room so that she could show
him where he would be sitting. It was the
fourth row near the edge, only a few meters from the gallery for celebrities.
He nodded. “You too?”
“No. But I once worked for an MP
for gay initiatives. He wasn’t gay himself
though. But in the end, he really got into
the issues, and he actually ended up doing more for gay rights than half the activists put together. That’s probably why
they put us together.”
So it wasn’t because she had something
about Commies, he thought. “I’m afraid
that I probably won’t have as much gusto
for this problem as him.” He added.

During the few days since he had accepted his post, Madey only managed
to develop negative feelings towards the
party to which he had been assigned.
What he had read in the Parliamentary
Guidebook and what he had seen in the
3D polit-clips only strengthened these
feelings.
culture
In the last century, the Czech communist party had seized power for forty
years, as a result of a mixed sense of naive
enthusiasm coming from the post-war
populace as well as heavy pressure from
the East. Within a mere few years, the
communists spent this capital of naive
trust. Then, when they started imprisoning and executing their opponents and
letting their orders be rubber-stamped
by Moscow, things went rapidly downhill. Despite this, they didn’t lose their
absolute power until the end of the 20th
century.
For the next twenty years, they maintained basically the same support base
as they had had until WWII. How they
managed to maintain even this support
could be described as something of a
miracle. Despite this, their share of actual power was minimal – they had very little to offer careerists, and their program,
with only a few exceptions, was largely
negative. Despite this, they still managed
to cast a large shadow on the political
spectrum.
It could be said that they were actually
quite useful to all the other players. They
were the ideal targeted allies, with whom
it was possible to horse trade, especially
in instances where the vote was secret.
From the time when even the presidential vote came to be decided by lottery
draw, they began essentially to function
as a devil in disguise. Even those children
that knew there was no hell were still
afraid that the communists could take
them there.
And so they failed to get any seats
in parliament. In 2028, when they were
finally returned to the playing-field, noone was particularly interested.
“Dana, do you know any communists?
I mean ones that didn’t have to be communists because of the draw?” Asked
Madey.
The question seemed to surprise her.
“You mean someone who makes a living
out of it?”
“Someone who believes in it.”
She shook her head.
“Try and ask somewhere. And find
me something about communism in the
parliamentary library. See if they have
something historical on paper.”
Half an hour later, Dana knocked on
his door. She was carrying a thin green
book with a number on its spine.
“The hotel with the Doxy healthcare
clinic helped me out. They’re just outside
Prague. They specialise in looking after
retired politicians. Apparently the last
leader of the communists is still there.
But he’s pretty old.”
She handed him another booklet. “I
also borrowed this. It’s the Communist
manifesto. Seeing as you wanted something on paper. It hasn’t been borrowed
for a long time.”
He looked inside – published in 1970.
Yellowish-brown pages, with a musty smell
of old paper. He scanned through the book
and stopped at a sentence that was written
in italics. “Europe is being haunted by a
ghost – the horror of communism.”
Pure horror right from the start, he
grimaced.

[ 55 ]
culture
It took around a quarter of an hour
to cycle to the Doxy hotel from the last
stop on the metro. When he put his bike
in the stand, he realised that he was not
only out of breath, but also somewhat
curious.
A nurse wearing a blue uniform spoke
in soft Ukrainian Czech. “Mr Filip is
in the garden at the back of the building. When it’s warm, he and Mr. Vlasta
Tlustý cut and trim the lawn together.
You know, on Sundays we usually have
a political debate on the lawn, and everyone always hopes the weather will be
nice. They will be very happy to have a
visitor. You know how it is, not many
people come by here.”
For a man of 91, the last leader of the
Czech Communist party looked pretty
good. He was sitting in some sort of hovering mowing machine riding up and
down the lawn, clearing it of leaves and
stones. He had a thick mane of white hair
and his white implanted teeth from the
Denticare company – one tooth cost at
least 5000 Euros- shone in the sun.
These politicians have quite a decent
retirement, thought Madey, momentarily reassessing his own position.
He stepped towards the man with
his hand reached out. “Good day. I am
Madey Billig and I was just recently selected a Communist Party senator. Could
we possibly talk for a few moments?”
The old man lifted his head, but he
kept the machine running. “Can’t you see
I’m working?”
Madey gestured with both arms as
if to indicate that he was unflappable “I
would be glad to help.” He replied.
“Selected by lottery.” said the old man
with a notable degree of disdain as he
carried on clearing leaves. “You know
shit about what a true political tussle
means, comrade.”
“I don’t tussle. And to be honest,
I’m not even really a communist.” said
Madey as assertively as he could. “But if
that’s what I have to do, then I’d at least
like to do it properly.”
“The Comrade is an austere worker?”
“The comrade is a senator. Listen, I
didn’t invent this lottery system. You’re
responsible for that. It was because of
you that people stopped going to vote.”
“Because of us? Because of them!” Finally the long serving communist pressed
a button, and his machine touched the
ground. “The rabble of the corrupt Civic
Democrats is to blame. That’s the truth,
comrade!”
“It was because of you” said a voice
behind Madey. He turned around. An
old bearded man was leaning on a pair
of French canes. His Harley Davidson
Electra Blue T-shirt betrayed a large belly
spilling out from the base. “If you didn’t
spend all your time yanking around,
then people would find politics far more
attractive.”
“Stop yanking yourself, Vlasta. Can’t
you see that we have a guest.” The old
communist tried to straighten up. “Just
so you know, this comrade is our new
senator.”
“Drawn by lottery.” said the bearded
man with the same contempt that Filip
had shown him. He waved his cane with
such ferocity at Madey that he lost his
balance and started to fall. Madey ran up
and caught him. “Come and sit down instead” he said and led the bearded man
to a bench by the edge of the lawn.
Vlasta was as peaceful as lamb as he let
himself be led to the bench. It wasn’t long
before the old communist party leader
edged next to them with his gardening
machine and proceeded to sit down next
to them.
“How was it back then?” asked Madey.
“What were you trying to achieve? Surely
it had no point...”
“You really think that social justice
and the battle against exploitation are
pointless?” said Filip.
Madey didn’t so much as twitch a
muscle. “We wanted to continue to carry
on the legacy of the comrades that had
begun to change the world. We would
have succeeded too. But then they came
along and took all our plans.”
“What do you mean they? We took
them off you!” Interrupted the old bearded man.
“Hey Vlasta, you were also with us,
after all. But you betrayed the working
classes.” He turned to Madey. “Mr MP
here was once a communist too, before
he turned into a conservative.”
“Don’t provoke me.” said the old man.
“You see, he figured out what would
get him more money.”
“You’d do it too if you could. But you
couldn’t with all your trademarks.” The
bearded man turned to Madey. “A cross
between Gottwald and Grebeníček. Do
you know who they were?”
“No. So you were a communist too?”
asked Madey looking surprised.
“So what.” replied the bearded man “It
was just for a while. Back then, there was
no other way. But straight after November (1989), I got out of the party. Because
even then I knew that communism had
no future and has caused so much….”
“I don’t have blood on my hands,
Vlasta! You know that damn well!” exclaimed Filip.
Madey paid no attention. “So why
didn’t you ban the communists? Was it
because you found them useful?”
“Because it wasn’t that easy. The socials, and the highbrows didn’t want it.”
“And you?”
“Didn’t want to either!” shouted out
the old former communist leader. “That’s
how it was. In fact, no-one wanted it. In
this country, at least every other person
had one grandfather who was a communist.” Then he corrected himself “Or
at least one who was with the communists. That’s how it is comrade...we were
the most ‘for the masses’ party of the all.
What’s your name again?”
“Madey”
“What kind of a stupid name is that?
And by the way, you can step down off your
luxury high-horse while you’re at it!”
“I was born Matěj (Matthew). But I
prefer it this way. My first boyfriend was
the first one to call me Madey.”
The old man looked on incomprehensibly.
“I’m gay” said Madey.
“Jeez, then I’m shitting myself.” said
the old man. “He’s gay. A gay communist!
A communist that changed his name.
What do you make of that Vlasta?”
“Well, if you had managed to change
your name, everything might have been
different, mightn’t it?” said Madey.
The bearded man waved his hand.
“What do you except from a lottery, eh
Vojta?”
He rose to his feet with some difficulty
and showed Madey the direction to the
pension building. “What if you left now
eh, youngster?”
culture
“Madey is my name. Madey Billig.”
“Sure.” said the old communist. “What
if you got the hell out of here, comrade.”

In the Metro, Madey, pulled out the
communist manifesto and began to flick
through it. He read sporadic sentences,
without really trying to see if they made
any sense. Marx is resting in a grave in
Highgate and his grave is growing over
with grass...The dilapidation of this lower
level of society can sometimes translate
into revolution...the bourgeoisie mainly
makes its own gravediggers...The main
hope of our poor city dwellers is that
their wives and daughters can be prostituted...Proletariat of the world unite!
When he closed the book, a folded
piece of paper fell out onto the floor. It
was a page from a newspaper dated 21st
February 2006. The paper was only two
months older than he was. In the centre of the page was a paragraph that had
been highlighted in orange: “This is also
confirmed by the head of the STEM polling agency Jan Hartl ‘Sixteen years since
the fall of totalitarianism, the theme of
anti-communism is no longer viewed as
an honest one for politicians. It is regarded as more of a pre-election maneuver.
People don’t understand why politicians
are suddenly threatening them with the
communists when they didn’t ban the
party right after the revolution.’”
At the bottom corner of the page was a
hand written note: “They didn’t ban it because they still needed the ghost, which
was making its way through Europe.
How else could people tell who was the
most beautiful?”
He called Dana “Can you find out
who last borrowed this communist manifesto?”
She called back quite quickly “Some
guy called Vajz. He worked in the senate.
His name is strange, I’ll send it by mail.”
He took a small portable computer
out of his pocket. It was written Veis.
He then found him in Google. In order
to narrow the search, he also added the
words “parliament” and “communism”.
The first link took him to the website pritomnost.cz. He clicked on it and began
to read: “I have some snail mail for you”
said Vendula, calling to Madey from the
reception. Before he could answer, Vendula had already switched off. Snail mail,
as she called it, was any message that
didn’t arrive electronically...”

Jaroslav Veis is a journalist, translator
and writer. Currently, he works
as an advisor to the vice-chairman
of the senate, Petr Pithart. This story was
written for our sister paper Přítomnost
as part of their issue which asked –
Are the communists dangerous?
[ 57 ]
then and now
French democracy Stalled
In this section, we reprint articles from our original sister
publication that show how little things have changed.
Přítomnost, 11th March 1926
I
n France, the problems of democracy
are currently rearing their head more
than here in Czechoslovakia. The unexpected fall of Briand’s (Aristide Briand
presided over ten separate and intermittent governments between 1909-29 -Ed.)
government has once again made us think
how difficult it is to maintain any kind of
government, so long as political parties
think of little else than themselves. Painleve (Paul Painlevé, Prime Minister for
a brief period in1917 –Ed.) fell because
of financial issues, and now Briand has
followed in his footsteps, whilst France
has had six finance ministers in the last
year and a half.
The French state has found itself in
a tight financial crisis, and now there are
grave concerns as to what the future of
the country will be. One financial minister after another has tried to find a way to
plug the hole in the budget. The parliament simply rejects all the suggestions.
That would be logical, if it had a plan itself, which it could then press for. But in
truth, it has little more to offer than feelings of animosity. Instead, it limits itself
to rejecting legislation, as if parliamentarians believed that they were in parliament
not to care, but simply to vote. Briand
passionately fought for his finance minister, out of a fear for his own future. This
is why he stated that he would accept any
idea that had a chance of being accepted.
There was silence. He then asked the socialists to come up with an alternative to
what they were rejecting. Again silence.
The parties are looking at the Prime Minister with the kind of disinterested fascination that we all have when we watch
a circus performer during a difficult trick.
They defeated Briand, but they feel no joy
at their victory, nor do they feel any guilt.
Here, plans are not defeated so that oth-
ers may prevail – here a plan is defeated
on the mere basis of disconcertion, indecisiveness and vexation, and parliament
becomes an assembly point for people
who simply cannot agree on anything.
One need not emphasise how dangerous
this is for the whole notion of parliamentary democracy.
French parties have nothing on their
minds but elections. In such an atmosphere, actual politics is all but impossible. The French example, clearly shows
the danger that arises from the selfishness of the political parties. The French
people can only call on these parties to
at least learn from this. Sadly, this is no
easy task. Usually, learning a lesson is the
hardest thing we do. Such lessons require
decent people. A person must be capable
of learning the lesson; a person should
also be capable of heeding criticism. Our
political parties clearly do not believe that
they need to learn a lesson. So it becomes
even more necessary to continue to point
out the dangers and damage caused by
their selfish partisanship, and to urge
the masses to not forget that ordinary
people can enter the political arena too.
Where parties put their own good ahead
of that of the nation, political agreement
becomes ever more difficult and parliament becomes characterised by little
more than chaos and incompetence.
In this nation, we have several philosophers who see the middle path as the least
desirable and who cast aspersions on any
notion of compromise. So in France today, political parties simply do not compromise, and the Left and Right simply
maintain their own world view. In the eyes
of the aforementioned philosophers, this
state of affairs would, one presumes, appear perfectly normal. But the truth, as the
public can clearly see, is that everything is
not alright. Indeed, this only underlines
the fact that a democratic parliament incapable of compromise is also incapable of
functioning properly. Democracy is in fact
a system based on compromise.
Fortunately in Czechoslovakia, our
political parties are still held together by
the recent memory of the very formation
of this country and on the importance
of sustaining it. But many of us fear too,
that this particular bond may eventually
evaporate. We cannot really depend on
our opposition, whilst the French state,
despite everything, can still depend on
its. From the start, we have warned of
the risk of excessive partisanship. We
showed how it did not help the country
and how it damaged the notion of public
administration. Now, in European parliamentarianism, excessive partisanship
is showing itself to be a danger to parliamentary democracy and also a vilifier of
its very virtues. Our senator Bechyňa said
that in our country, parties are almost
like religions. That may be true, but that
certainly is neither an ideal nor a correct
path towards finding a remedy.

lette r from...
Budapest
Dear Friends,
I was in the middle of a three-month
work placement in Prague with a group
of young people from England and a
young Spanish woman, when one of the
members of the group suggested we visit
Budapest. I knew little of the Hungarian capital city, apart from the fact that
it was the birthplace of my aunt‘s aupair Verag. We left Prague late on Friday
night, boarding the train, which would
take us through Slovakia towards Hungary. After six hours
in a hot and stuffy
train carriage we
finally arrived, feeling slightly disorientated, aching and
irritable from lack
of sleep.
Our first sight after emerging from
the train was a suspiciously friendly looking stranger waving
a hand full of Hungarian banknotes offering us a “cheap”
exchange rate. Following the rule
about “if it sounds
too good to be true,
it probably is”, we politely declined. Finding that we had some
time before we were
due to book into our hostel, we decided
to take a brief stroll around Pest. Hungary’s capital city is made up of two formerly
separate entities, Buda to the West of the
river Danube, and Pest to the East.
In comparison with Prague and its millions of tourists, Budapest seemed to be
calmer, emptier and quieter. Many of the
historic buildings mirrored those I had
seen in Prague, though they often seemed
somewhat dirtier and less well maintained,
though this, I thought, rather added to the
charm of the city. I couldn’t help but be
struck by the seemingly large numbers
of homeless people of all ages scattered
across the city. I noticed an old woman,
rocking back and forth, playing with her
messy and unwashed hair. I looked her in
the eyes, but just like me in this city, she
was lost in another world. Budapest’s more
fortunate inhabitants, however, were by in
large friendly and hospitable. In contrast
to the rudeness of many of Prague’s inhabitants, they were mostly happy to give us
directions and advice.
We crossed over the city’s famous cast
iron Széchenyi Chain Bridge that spans
River Danube and joins Buda with Pest.
This bridge is rated among the highest
industrial monuments in Europe and is
something of a cross between France’s
Arc de Triomphe and San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Bridge.
The following morning, we found ourselves sitting on the steps of St Stephen‘s
basilica, (St. Stephen (975-1038) converted the Magyar tribes to Christianity
and forged the Hungarian identity –Ed.),
a neo-renaissance catholic church completed in 1905. As we sat waiting for another member of the group to join us, we
suddenly heard a very loud scream. This
was followed by loud banging of metal. I
turned around and noticed that a rather
disturbed looking middle-aged man had
slammed shut the black iron gates in the
churchyard in front of the basilica, trapping the visitors inside. The man began
shouting hysterically; all we could make
out from the Hungarian was “Karl Marx!
Karl Marx!” It wasn’t long before the police arrived, and after some calm negotiating, the man decided to come out from
behind the gates. The police were even
kind enough to allow the man’s dog to
come along to the police station.
After the drama
of the morning, we
decided it was time
to take advantage of
Budapest’s famous
spas. The spas are
supplied by a complex network of underground springs,
unique in Europe.
Many were built in
the middle ages during the Turkish occupation. Though we
were spoilt for choice, we finally decided to try an outdoor
spa, replete with
waterfalls, a Jacuzzi
and numerous walls
which channeled the
water around in concentric circles. This
had the effect of gently floating a person around the spa to the
point that I felt almost weightless. After
this experience, it was time to try the saunas, which will forever remain the highlight of my stay. The heat was intense but
soothing. After about 10 minutes, most
of the group had fled. After much intense
sweating, I finally ran out and jumped
into a conveniently located pool of freezing water. Budapest provided several unforgettable experiences and I would urge
anyone to visit this city at least once in
their lives.
Laura Owens
[ 59 ]
parting shots
Communists in the Way
V
Czechoslovakia’s first president T.G
Masaryk said that it would take fifty
years for democracy to take root
in the country. In 1989, we got another
chance. Today, we are sixteen years down
the line. If there is a single telling barometer of just where we are along Masaryk’s
time-line today, then it is the Czech Communist party (KSČM) which, as the only
remaining communist party in Europe,
has not renounced it’s brutal past and instead represents itself as a (albeit modified) continuation of the old system. The
party and its continuing existence remains
a source of constant debate. However, a
society, in which many segments are still
mired in a post-communist mind-set, can
not be expected to resolve such a complex
issue overnight. With the help of their
still-active former communist judges,
members of the KSČM continue to evade
blame for the many atrocities of their past.
Old ties are still alive and well, and challenging them takes courage, since in essence one is not just challenging a system,
but also creating a new moral background
against which a new national identity can
emerge. For the time being, this is something that we are afraid to do – it’s simply
too abstract, aloof, and above all, dangerous, since whenever we tried to do such a
THE NEW PRESENCE
Editor: Dominik Jůn
Přítomnost Editor: Libuše Koubská
Editorial Board: Jeremy Hurewitz, John Caulkins,
Charles Bergen
Illustrations: Ondřej Coufal
Administration: Helena Vlčková
Graphic Design, Layout: Johana Kratochvílová
Printer: VS ČR, Praha 4
Publisher: Martin Jan Stránský
Contacts: Národní 11, 110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic
Tel: +420 222 075 600
Fax: +420 222 075 605
e-mail: [email protected]
Out internet site: www.new-presence.cz
ISSN 1211-8303
Distribution: The New Presence, Národní 11,110 00
Prague 1
Rates: Czech Republic: 480 Kč/1 year (15 USD, 11 EUR)
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The magazine is distributed throughout the world.
thing in our history (such as in 1938 and
1968), we always paid a severe price.
Nevertheless, there will soon come a
day, when we will be ready to take the
next step along the path. This time, as opposed to the largely individual initiatives
of senators or citizen’s groups, our entire
society will eventually come to look at the
communists through a strong magnifying glass. At that point, it will be clear to
all that the existence of such a conglomerate in its present state is incompatible
with Masaryk’s goals for Czech progress.
That’s why the current post-election
political stalemate, in which the conservative party victors of the election can’t
form a cabinet due to the seats in parliament being split evenly down the middle
between a Social Democrat coalition and
winner’s coalition, presents a deep lesson
to all. Thus far, all politicians, from president Klaus to premier Paroubek, have
prostituted themselves to the communists in order to secure their votes for key
political maneuvering. The current political stalemate is the direct result of the
continuing “dependency” on a political
party which single-handedly represents
all the evils of the past. If, however, our
politicians decided to give the KSČM an
ultimatum: either change and renounce
your past, or face the consequences,
they would soon discover how easy it is
to remove this blot on Czech politics.
Such a step would have untold positive
consequences for our national character,
not to mention for our remaining politicians. This is confirmed by the glaring
irony, that the eradication of the KSČM
would actually help the left-wing Social
Democrats the most, since it would be to
them that most of the former communist
voters would gravitate. Hence, it would
be the Social Democrats and not the
Conservatives who would today be given
the obvious choice of forming a cabinet.
And that’s an irony that is sad, but hopeful as well.
Martin Jan Stránský
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A Czech Heroine Spotlight on the Baltic

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