The Czechs in a Nutshell

Half-empty liquor bottles and boxes with tranquillizers were strewn about the floor, and on the minister’s night table, there were two books — a closed Bible, and an open Švejk. The subsequent autopsy confirmed that Masaryk was killed instantly by the impact, and that both of his heels were crushed. To the investigators from StB — the secret police (see: Lustration) — the conclusion was unambiguous: Jan Masaryk had committed suicide.

The verdict was immediately met with massive disbelief among common Czechs. How could “Honza” Masaryk, son of Czechoslovakia’s first president Tomáš G. Masaryk and, thanks to his witty and biting radio speeches from London during the war, the country’s most popular politician, leave his people when they needed him most?

Two weeks earlier, the communists had taken power in Czechoslovakia. Fear and uncertainty about the future prevailed. Thousands of democratically-minded Czechs had fled the country (see: Emigrants), and Masaryk, as the single non-communist member of Klement Gottwald’s government, was the last hope for those who had decided to stay. True, people close to Masaryk later recounted that he had been very depressed in the days prior to his death, but still: in this fateful hour, Masaryk could not have died by his own will. He must have been killed!

The mysterious death of Jan Masaryk was thoroughly re-investigated both during the Prague spring’s thaw and after the Velvet Revolution. The conclusion remained unchanged: suicide. In the middle of the 1990s, however, things started to happen. The special police commission established to document crimes committed by the communist regime ascertained two important facts: on the night when Masaryk died, a group of unknown persons forced themselves into his apartment in the Černín Palace. And secondly, Masaryk had not fallen from the window, but from (he cornice, several feet away from the window. Could Masaryk have tried to escape the intruders by climbing out on the cornice, where he slipped and fell to an accidental death?

A fairly convincing answer to this question was presented in March 2002 by a professor in the somewhat obscure discipline of biomechanics. After several months of experiments, the renowned scientist concluded unambiguously that Masaryk had been killed — or defenestrated.

Why? If Masaryk — at 61, somewhat corpulent, soggy and out of shape — had jumped consciously and of his own free will, he would allegedly have landed about 70 centimetres from the building wall. The distance between the wall and the place where the body was found measured about 2.2 meters. Add the fact that the body didn’t rotate during the fall, and the only explanation, according to the professor, is that one, or more likely, two persons pushed Masaryk to his death.

This explains how Masaryk died, but it’s not very likely, that we will learn any time soon who committed the crime. The Czechoslovak communists are probably innocent. To them, Masaryk’s presence in the government was an enormous political victory, and they had no reason to liquidate their one and only democratic alibi. There are, though, some signs pointing to Moscow and the NKVD — the forerunner of the KGB — but it’s foolish to expect that institution to open its archives.

Yet it’s tempting to draw some historical parallels. While the First Defenestration in 1419 marked the start of the Hussite Revolution, and the Second Defenestration in 1618 heralded the Thirty Years’ War, the Third Defenestration — Jan Masaryk’s tragic death — symbolized the start of a 41-year communist tyranny. Hopefully, it was the Czechs’ last experience with a totalitarian regime, and also the last time that defenestration was used as a political modus operandi.

Dogs

To some people, four-legged, barking creatures are a delight and a blessing. Others hate them like poison. Irrespective of which of these two groups you belong to, prepare for the reality: the Czech Republic is the ultimate dog country.

The exact number of hounds running around in Bohemia and Moravia is hard to come by, since owners do not always bother to register their pets with the Czech Canine Association. But anyone who has spent a day or two in this country will probably conclude that it must be close to the number of inhabitants.

Some foreigners have compared the Czechs’ relationship to dogs with the Hindus’ worship of cows. That’s by all standards a bit exaggerated — the Hindus don’t eat their cows, while dog meat is considered a delicacy in Valachia in Moravia. What we can say for sure, though, is that dogs are serious business to many Czechs.