CLOSEPRAGUE SUMMER: AFTER THE REVOLUTION
Within moments of landing in Czechoslovakia on a recent trip, I could sense a country in hurried, dramatic transition, yet keeping intact a quirky and ironic soul. The currency clerk at the Prague airport seemed befuddled over the exchange rate between U.S. dollars and Czech crowns, and gave me a tiered rate, roughly averaging the market rate. An hour later, as I was checking into my hotel, the same fellow appeared in the lobby, looking even more flustered. He had tracked me down because he needed a few hundred crowns back, or would have to pay the difference out of his own pocket. A week later, as I was leaving the country, the same teller exchanged my crowns back to dollars, with a shy smile of recognition.
Even after forty-plus years of Communism, Prague strikes a visitor as a truly great European city: not as beautiful as Rome, as grand as Paris, or as deep and diverse as London, but graceful and kind to the senses; a walkable city, of Medieval buildings spared by World War II, gentle hills cloven by the river Moldau, chestnut-filled courtyards, strong coffee, and fine pilsner beer. There are also bleak reminders of the Communist era, especially the high-rise complexes in outlying districts. But central Prague, with its castles, bridges, churches, and monuments, bears the unmistakable 14th-century stamp of Charles IV, Bohemia's most remembered king. A university town since 1348, it is also the city of Kepler, Smetana, Dvorak, Kafka -- and Havel.
Czechs are friendly and forthcoming, and seem reasonably well- off; most stores are full. Judging by the department stores, fishing and camping are popular.In fact, at first glance, many Czechs could be mistaken for Americans. What marks them in a crowd is not their features or clothing but their cigarette: this is a country where chain-smoking is pandemic.
Prague is still a great bargain for the visitor. A party of six can eat in one of the better restaurants for about $35-$40 -- although for a Czech guest, that might represent several weeks' salary. Vladimir Vodicka, the venerable director of the Theater on the Balustrade, a center of avant-garde political drama, notes that many in the intelligentsia have cars and second homes in the lovely Bohemian countryside, but can't afford the gas to get there. As Vodicka observes with a wry smile: "Economics is a mystery."
Vodicka has guided the Theater on the Balustrade since the 1950s, and was Vaclav Havel's theatrical mentor, offering him a job there when his plays were banned. On a recent summer evening, after a performance of Havel's "Largo Desolato," Vodicka attended a reception, abuzz with young actors and actresses, in the anteroom of the theater.
At about 11 p.m., a rumpled, paunchy man of middle age paused before a mirror in the outer foyer, licked his hand, and wiped it nervously across his wavy hair, like a teenager at a prom. Elsewhere, he might have been mistaken for a bartender or a high school coach; not here. President Vaclav Havel, the playwright, essayist, and revolutionnaire who once roamed the streets of Greenwich Village, melted easily into the throng. This was his theater, and his crowd.
The next afternoon, a cool, bright Sunday, the President reappeared in a huge crowd that packed the magnificent Baroque confines of Old Town Square. Rafael Kubelik, the Czech ÇmigrÇ conductor who had once vowed never to return, led three orchestras -- one each from the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, and one from Slovakia --in Smetana's twin classics, "The Moldau" and "Ma Vlast" (My Homeland).Despite the throng, it was an almost eerily subdued celebration. Here, at least, it seemed that the weight of the past exceeded the lightness of being in a post- Communist society.
At this odd transitional moment, Czechs are reckoning with the past, and girding for the difficult changes to come. Elation is fading; realism, not pessimism, holds sway. Pavel Tigrid, a self- exiled writer, editor of the leading Czech émigré journal "Witness," and an advisor to Havel, visits from his home outside Paris to find his books on prominent display in bookstores. Gregarious and witty, Tigrid, now 73, has been in exile since 1948 -- half a lifetime.The euphoria has passed since his lifelong goal was achieved in December 1989. He no longer even feels the need to write; he now prefers fishing. The dancing eyes, the lively and informed conversation, are not those of an old or tired man. But it's too late for him to repatriate to Czechoslovakia now; exile has made him a Frenchman.
The writer Jiri Stransky, 49, from a family of lawyers and statesmen, belongs to a younger generation also scarred by the ordeals of Communism. His grandfather, prime minister in Jan Masaryk's government in the 1940s, was hounded by the Communists, as was his brother, a United Press correspondent. His father, one of 5,000 prominent Czechs whom the Nazis shipped off to Auschwitz, was among 61 who returned. Afterwards, the Communists "couldn't accuse him of anything, so they only gave him two years."
Stransky, who now lives in a comfortable small villa on the outskirts of Prague, was himself arrested at age 21, while serving in the army, in a special unarmed unit of suspected enemies of the state. During detention, he frequently endured round-the-clock interrogations, torture, and beatings. Then his trial began.
Stransky is quick to point out that he was hardly an isolated victim: "There were thousands who lived through the same thing I did." Others were less lucky: they already had families. Stransky spent eight years in prison, and was forced to work in uranium mines, which destroyed his health. Later, his writings were banned. "I lived through it, as you can see," he smiles. His recent book of prison memoirs is titled, "Happiness."
Perhaps the biggest change in daily life since the revolution is a sense of openness in conversation; people are less afraid to talk. But as late as last summer there was still residual fear of the specters haunting Czechoslovakia: the hardline Communists and the secret police. Some people were said to have held off voting until the second day of the June elections to thwart ballot tampering.
In a secondary school, I watched as an American documentary team, with a Czech crew, filmed residents of Prague voting in open elections, many for the first time. Neither the election officials nor the voters seemed the least fazed by the presence of cameras. The sole exception was a young woman in her twenties who turned down the hallway at the sight of the film crew, hiding her face as if mortified, and convulsing with uncontrollable giggles.
Czechs are well aware that the ordeal facing their country is not that of establishing political democracy -- a project now well under way and for which they are amply equipped -- but rather of navigating the uncharted passage to a market economy, with all the attendant hardships, including inflation and unemployment. Getting there will be a difficult adventure.
There must also be an uneasy moral reckoning with the past. This was not simply a nation of heroes and quislings, but of various shades of dissidence, conformity, and collaboration with the Communist rulers. People with children, in particular, couldn't afford to be heroes. The past is not forgotten; the torturers, spies, secret police, and functionaries who held the system in place have not fled the country. It's estimated that 140,000 people served as outside informants to the Communists. Many are now under suspicion; others are being denounced as informants by their enemies, and have no way of disproving it.
A visitor is awed at the momentous changes that have already occurred here. The arguments about Gorbachev's catalytic role, and the bankruptcy of Communism, are now familiar. (Czechs enjoy the irony of saying they no longer care what happens to Gorbachev.) But there is something deeper to ponder about the events of the past year and a half. Here in Prague, a regime that remained in power through brute force and intimidation crumbled with shocking rapidity and ease, in a "Velvet Revolution." There were no killings or mass roundups; no desperate assaults on airfields or TV stations or government ministries; no midnight executions. (Police did beat students in the streets, but, incredibly, not a single death was reported.) Rather, a truly revolutionary moment arrived, when it became clear that the Czech and Slovak people could no longer be intimidated by their rulers. As elsewhere in Europe, it was a stunning reversal of the forces and principles that have defined the twentieth century.
It is hardly surprising that a sense of expectancy, without clear definition or direction, hangs over Prague in these days of epochal change.To the casual visitor it seems a blend of residual euphoria and a deep Slavic reserve about the future. However, it is no longer fear of a future drearily resembling the present, imposed by a foreign oppressor, but rather of the uncertain and complicated future that the Czechs have seized for themselves. It was summed up by an American friend in Prague who, last summer, saw a long line outside a store at dawn, hours before opening time. She asked several people what they were waiting for. One woman answered, "I don't know." Another said: "for everything."
©1996-2004 Jeffrey Scheuer