DISHARMONIOUS RELATIONSHIP: SOME CAUSES AND EVENTUAL REMEDIES

(Prepared for delivery at a Conference of the Czechoslovak Society for the Arts and Sciences, held on April 24-26, 1999, Minneapolis, MN.)

Five years ago, the Section for Ethnic and Non-Governmental Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic contacted several Czech exiles with a request to express their opinion on the ways how to improve relations between the nation and its numerous minority that had settled abroad without, however, severing all ties with the native land..

Because of my substantial interest in the problematics of integration and assimilation in the new environment, I gladly consented to respond. I started my statement mentioning the biological fact that in the course of seven years all the cells in our body do change. In one of my books I introduced a "concept of a broken clock": with the departure from a native environment , one`s wristwatch get smashed over the frontier marker and thus ceases the immediate genuine understanding of the country left behind. Its future development can be understood only in a diluted, derivative, non-authentic way. This then leads to a formation of different generations of exiles who search with difficulty for a common language, for a mutually acceptable hierarchy of values. Such political - not biological - generations are formed by different experience, by a different trauma - hence, the generation of World War Two (Munich, the Protectorate), the post-February one (the Communist coup), the post-August one (Soviet invasion). Those who fled from Hitler had a difficulty to identify with the radical, emotional anticommunism of the 1948 exile wave whose members, in turn, harbored some reserve, even distrust toward the 1968 wave of refugees viewed as somewhat contaminated by the two decades spent under communist domination. Not even a subsequent stay of many years and an intergeneration coexistence did entirely overcome such a psychological distance.

The more misunderstanding is to be expected in relation to those who have never left the native turf. An exile sees his original home with different eyes: the same language, the same roots but an entirely different experience through years of emancipation acquired in a pluralistic democracy, in contrast with life under totalitarian conditions. After my first return in 1990, the moment I entered whichever office or shop in my native town, I was immediately recognized a foreigner. It was not my language or attire, it was my demeanor of an individual not used to the socialist ways of approaching the "authority".

The estimate number of those who moved to foreign lands, vary from source to source. Regardless of the accuracy of the final count, so much is certain that since the White Mountain battle in the seventeenth century, not even Hitler moved so many people to emigrate as did the builders of the shiny socialist future. There is hardly a family left in the country without an exile among its relatives or close friends.

Defection of one person was likely to create existential difficulties for another person. It could have caused a political catastrophe. Property left behind, if it was not confiscated and/or stolen, provided some compensation to the family members who stayed behind. A successful flight from the country was also viewed with satisfaction that someone was brave and lucky enough to fool the hated political system. Moreover, the cause of one-time political problem was in time becoming a source of material assistance (sending goods and hard currency for purchases in special stores). Further on, the weakened totalitarian state started to allow some applicants to visit the forbidden West upon invitation . The government managed to sow discord in the exile community with an initiative of the so-called úprava vztahu - "an adjustment of relations." By filling out a detailed questionnaire at the Czechoslovak consulate and providing information of quite a denunciatory character, the applicants were rewarded with a permit to visit the country with immunity. For example, in Toronto, Zdena Škvorecká, a publisher of Czech exile literature, was informed by one of her subscribers, that no more books will be purchased, for two reasons: the lady in question signed a pledge at the consulate and she must save money in order to pay for her new dentures to impress old friends in the old country. State- sanctioned visitations commenced, establishing an equation that the less successful exile, the more ostentatious effort was made to impress the native neighborhood - the arrival in a rented Mercedes car, invitations to expensive restaurants with a gesture of the legendary count Esterházy.

After the November 1989 revolution, exiles started to arrive in droves. The original euphoria , sooner or later evaporated , and disappointment, even a kind of hangover, set in. The original reaction, namely ADMIRATION - what kind of marvelous, courageous chaps we were, who did not get lost in the world and how well did we succeed - could not, naturally , last forever. It started to be nibbled away by comments betraying more than a miniature trace of ENVY - that our defection was, after all, a cowardly deed, to run away from the misery and leave the nation behind to cope. Even elements of HATRED became noticeable in this context. Under such circumstances there has been no shortage of less than flattering judgmental generalizations. From the West arrived some predatory entrepreneurs such as Viktor Koený. On the other hand, the country left unpunished the perpetrators of totalitarian misery, the former torturers were awarded with higher pensions than their victims. Legions of home-grown crooks started to inundate the landscape.

The nation-at-large while recapitulating its deeds and misdeeds over the past forty years under the communist management, has not many reasons to rejoice. A great number of people placed their bet on a lame horse, they wasted a substantial part of their lives in mandatory political meetings, in a host of less than purposeful engagements. The majority of the nation, though not mesmerized by unworkable ideas of the bearded prophets of the nineteenth century, did nonetheless conform and kept silent, not to endanger their little socialist niche. A man-in-the-street might have rooted - very silently, discreetly - for the few dissidents around, but would hardly love them. After all, they were the bad conscience of the very silent majority not willing to take any risk for the sake of changing the unloved status quo. The dissidents, if not behind bars, wasted their talents as stokers, window washers, night watchmen. There was nothing to be envied - in contrast to the sons and daughters of the same nation who had the courage to take off for the unknown world and succeed. How then was likely to be the feeling of a life-long conformist citizen and resident in one of the numerous, identical prefab boxes when thinking of his former classmate, remembered as a thoroughly inconspicuous timid little fellow, now a multimillionaire luxuriating in California? Last year, during my stay in Prague, I took part in several radio and television interviews. In one show before live audience, the first question addressed to me, was: " Who financed your studies ?" ("I financed myself, working as a waiter," was my response.) Envy is an exceptionally serious morbus bohemicus, cemented with a long, enduring tradition of plebeian egalitarianism. Even if a miracle would occur and the entire nation would be able to change the Trabant for Mercedeses, there will be no way of how to compensate for the forty wasted totalitarian years.

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Petr Pithart writes (in the periodical Listy, No.1/1993) about "a lack of interest, unconcern, an envious suspicion toward the emigrants" as well as " a haughty indifference as a foolish compensation for one`s loss of self-confidence." The almost universal dislike to respond to letters received from abroad is a case in point. When not even a short Thank you note is forthcoming, many of us are then discouraged from further correspondence. Example: our Binghamton University is in charge of publishing the Political Handbook of the World, a thorough, annually updated compedium of information of all countries of the world and all international organizations - over one thousand pages and sold for over one hundred dollars. I bought with discount ten copies and sent them to several editorial offices and ministries. Only one addressee bothered to acknowledge the receipt of the gift. Naturally, a year thereafter it was I who did not bother to repeat the experience. A Czech couple, both medical doctors, and so are their two children. Altogether annually they spend several thousand dollars on subscription to professional medical journals. After reading the latest issue, the journals are discarded. To do something about this waste, the family approached the late Olga Havlová who most willingly made the right kind of contact to arrange for transporting the periodicals to Prague. Yet, no interest was forthcoming. The same patriotic volunteers managed to obtain an expensive hospital equipment known as an "artificial kidney" in order to have it donated to the Czech Republic. Alas, the Ministry of Health was not interested, it did not respond to their two letters. The spurned donors then contacted Bratislava. The Slovak authorities responded immediately with gratitude. The machine was already delivered, installed, and to serve to good use.

A change in attitude both on part of the nation and its representatives will be most welcome. Such a transformation in a societal sphere is likely to be of longer duration than that in the executive and legislative sphere. Not the nation-at-large but the state bureaucrats can be ordered to respond to letters . The general lack of popularity of the exile community does not have to be emulated by the political elites. Populism is a temptation that hardly provides for salutary long-term solutions. The less than joyful current state of the Czech economy illustrates the point.

Over two years ago, Washington terminated the archaic citizenship treaty of 1928. Prague responded with procrastination and the less than convincing excuses to follow the suit. Finally, the cabinet produced an amendment that will allow dual citizenship and is to be submitted to the parliament for approval. Once this happens, I will be entitled to purchase in my native land an apartment - something thus far denied to me, though available in a number of foreign countries, communist China included. However, this amendment falls short of perfection. It refers to acquisition of the citizenship but not to its restoration. Furthermore, it does not require the submission of a birth certificate but a copy of naturalization certificate. Alas, U.S.law prohibits such copying. Implications of this nature seemed to have passed unnoticed by the drafters in the native city of Franz Kafka.

The legislative initiative of the deputies Jiøí Karas and Pavel Tollner to rescind the prerequisite of Czech citizenship in the law No.87/1999 on extrajudicial rehabilitation was defeated by the combined majority of votes of the Communists, Social Democrats, and 25 deputies of the largest opposition

Civic Democratic Party - the entire political spectrum thus represented. Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Rychetský justified this negative vote with concern to preclude an emergence of numerous family discords. Let me leave this matter with a quote from Britské listy: "I would be interested to find out whether the Czech government has returned to foreigners some of their confiscated property. I assume that this is the case. In that case, however, I have a big problem, because the Czech-Americans are in fact foreigners and therefore they should be entitled to restituton. However, because they will not received any restitution , I then may state with confidence that they are no foreigners." (Jan Hurych, "Dual

Citizenship and Dual Logic", BL, March 10, 1999).

The native land of ours denies us dual citizenship. On the other hand, it has awarded us with dual prices, a system to be found not even in the most miserable Third World countries. In the Czech case it is not a result of an initiative on part of avaricious enterpreneurs but the Ministry of Finance. In the words of Jana Furstová, an official in charge of pricing regulations, defending the discriminatory practices, an introduction of a uniform set of prices would allegedly violate the freedom of the market economy! This kind of shortsightedness does seriously damage the country`s reputation the same way, as did the greedy taxi drivers until uniform regulations curbed their predatory appetites. A hopeful sign is on the horizon: Recently, a Prague lawyer Pavel Hrdina challenged in court the dual pricing system and the district judge Zuzana Barochová ruled in his favor.

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A substantial portion of the nation and its descedants live in various parts of the world. After several decades of involuntary isolation one would expect a heightened interest in overcoming such handicap. However, the reality

does not bear out this assumption. In June , 1998, a congress of the Czechs living abroad took place in Prague at the premises of Charles University. The mass media ignored the event. In a country with managerial cadres of dubious accomplishments such as Soudek, Junek, Stehlík, or Mach, there was no interest to get acquainted with experiences of eminently successful Czech industrialists from around the world.

Czech television should give some thoughts to the usefulness of regular programing with focus on exile community: where these people live, how they live. Round-table discussions, to draw interesting people, to mull over problems of common concern, to take advantage of contacts, recommendations,

information regarding oversea assignments, stipends, grants. The Ministry of Culture should engage in such an initiative.

The Ministry of Education should also be alerted. For example, to support summer exchanges of the young involving countries with their portion of transplanted Czech roots. Hence, rather than promoting a stay in Norway, to pay attention to Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Texas, where many thousands of Czech Americans have not forgotten their ethnic origin. The young visitors would thus have an opportunity to undertake independent research, to write a saga of their respective host families. I surely would not recommend a revival of the totalitarian practice of mandatory meetings with meritted prewar Communist Party members but a thought should be given to the eventual usefulness of inviting to schools some Czech exiles, preferably from distant exotic lands, to talk and inform those among the students interested but not forced to attend.

In contrast to Poland and Hungary, communist Czechoslovakia has consistently viewed the numerous expatriot community with suspicion if not with

outright hostility. It would be a regretable waste of opportunity, should the democratic Czech Republic follow the same path. Overdue is an effort that would transform the de facto antilobby existing in the United States into an effective lobby in support of the legitimate interests of the state.

In the domestic environment a much greater effort should be made to dispose of the distrust toward the exile community. We are not facing a zero-sum situation in which there can be no winners without some losers. With the rising tide all boats do rise. It is solely a matter of mutual enrichment.

We are facing a psychological impediment that can be put out of the way but it will take some time - and our patience, willingness to do something about it.