In the Letná Park, Prague. Photo: Zyphichore/Flickr

The age of disenchantment

The Czech president’s controversial European policy is a telltale sign of the crisis and demoralisation that has paralysed the country. What is worse, however, “mafia capitalism” has set in and is rotting society, laments ex-president Vaclav Havel.

Published on 28 October 2009 at 19:18
In the Letná Park, Prague. Photo: Zyphichore/Flickr

20 years after the Velvet Revolution, in which the Czech people put an end to 40 years of Communism, Vaclav Havel wears a melancholy smile. We meet at the Café Louvre in the centre of Prague, where an autumnal shade of red now bedecks the Czech capital. The smile that never leaves his face during our entire conversation belies the fact that he is weary at heart: in the Czech Republic as in other ex-Soviet satellites, after 20 years of transition, democracy still hasn’t fully taken hold.

Post-Communism has engendered a general state of demoralisation brimming with aggressiveness: witness the conduct of the current president, Vaclav Klaus, on several occasions. According to Vaclav Havel, you can feel it in every domain, from politics to day-to-day life.

The triumph of the nomenklatura

The former Czech president confesses that in his own country he feels as though caught in a nightmare peopled by liars and nouveaux riches. “After the collapse of the totalitarian system,” he recounts, “a transitional stage began in the former Soviet bloc. That was post-Communism. A phase of massive, rapid privatisation, in which the former Communist nomenklatura controlled the information as well as the contracts, which made them the core and the most important group of the new managerial class.”

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Once they had enriched themselves and hoisted themselves into the upper echelons of democratic power, these people proved past masters in the art of curbing freedom of expression and assembly. Accustomed to exercising the power to constrain that of others, these new classes, born of the erstwhile executive administration, surreptitiously hold the reins of economic and political power and the means of communication. “This is how they managed to establish what I call mafia capitalism,” resumes Vaclav Havel.

Post-Communist depression

None of the countries that rid themselves of totalitarianism 20 years ago was able to ward off the two characteristic concomitants of post-Communism: corruption and demoralisation, and the loss of any sense of ethics. In the countries long subjugated to the Communist yoke, the population is now sunk in wholesale frustration and apathy.

Vaclav Havel calls this atmosphere of societal paralysis “post-Communist depression”. A one-time political prisoner himself, Havel likens this eerie state to the psychosis of a released ex-convict: “when a prisoner, after years of living in a narrow cell under iron discipline, leaves prison and gets a taste of all the strange sides of liberty.”

Two Europes

All of that leads us to the realisation that profound differences still exist between the two Europes that were once divided by the Wall. “Nowadays when someone says he’s from the West, that bestows a sort of halo on him. On the other hand, if you tell people in the West that you’re from the East, they look at you askance. Being from the East really doesn’t carry any prestige.”

Furthermore, people from post-Communist countries generally have a more conservative outlook than Western Europeans. They are wary of any ideas that smack of Communist propaganda, like universal access to education and health care. According to the ex-president, that is essentially a reaction to the previous regime: “People criticise any and every form of government regulation: it seems Communist to them. We need balance and future prospects. And we need new generations.”

CORRUPTION

Wholesale resignation

Even as the Czech Republic gears up to celebrate the 91st anniversary of the birth of Czechoslovakia, on 28 October 1918, Respekt warns against “demagoguery and corruption”, which have become the “norm to which everyone tries to adapt rather than trying to change it”. The cartoon accompanying the article aptly illustrates the country’s current state of mind 20 years after the Velvet Revolution: Justice, obese, sporting a bathing suit and wading through the muck, insouciantly holding a balance in one hand and the sword of Justice in the other.

Respekt is exasperated by the Czech parliament’s umpteenth abortive attempt to regulate the gambling industry. But the Greens, the only political party bent on fighting corruption, won’t make it into parliament in the next spring elections, foresees the weekly. “The public prosecutors and judges are involved in corruption scandals”, and “courthouse mafia” has become a household word. “As to the police, its ability or its willingness to take on corruption and the crimes of the powers-that-be is practically nil.” Nowadays, concludes Respekt, it is not a “lack of effective solutions and experience” that prevents us from combating corruption. It is a “lack of will”.

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