The Czechs in a Nutshell

Admittedly, North Moravia certainly belongs among the Czech Republic’s most troubled regions. The once so dominant heavy industry is, at best, in deep recession or has already gone bust, so unemployment is souring. With larger foreign investments absent, the city has not been able to afford the massive face-lift that most other Czech cities have undergone. Even graver, the consequences of the Bolsheviks’ ecological ignorance can still be seen and felt all over the region, and Ostrava’s Fifejda district sits directly upon enormous quantities of highly explosive gas.

Photo © Arne Valen

Yet Northern Moravia’s capital is definitely not on its knees. The region, which the rest of the Czech Republic regards almost as the nation’s armpit, displays a vitality and devil-may-care attitude that’s hard to find elsewhere. It’s probably no coincidence that the folk singer Jarek Nohavica, the closest you can come to the desperate Russian Vladimir Vysotskij in Central Europe, hails from Ostrava. Indeed, there is something desperate about the entire city.

The biggest and certainly wildest pub district in the entire Czech Republic is Ostrava’s Stodolní Street. As one might expect, the average Ostravák doesn’t drink hectolitres of Bohemian beer or sip South Moravian wine, but downs one vodka shot after the other (see: Alcoholism). In Ostrava, girls take a more no-nonsense attitude towards life than their sisters in Prague, and the boys have bigger cars and definitely harder fists. Local businessmen erect private castles for themselves that dwarf the baroque business-villas that pop up in the rest of the country, and the corruption scandals, bank robberies and murders are usually juicier, bigger and far more shocking than the Czech average as well.

In short: in a country where the philosophy of the middle of the road is treated as a holy cow (see: Egalitarianism), Ostrava represents a rare oasis of unbridled extremes. Bon voyage!

Palach, Jan

It’s not hard to understand why Jan Palach’s name can be found close to the top on the list of the Czech Republic’s most respected national heroes. His boundless idealism and shocking self-sacrifice in the nation’s name is truly amazing in a country that often seems to be dominated by cynical pragmatists.

The 21-year old philosophy student entered Czech history five months after the Soviet Union’s Red Army raped Czechoslovakia with the symbolic assistance of four other Warsaw Pact countries. To stage a personal protest against the invasion and his countrymen’s growing lethargy, Palach decided to kill himself in public and in the most horrific way possible. Thus, on January 16, 1969, Palach went to Wenceslas Square in the middle of Prague, sprinkled his clothes with petrol, and then set fire to himself (see: Hus, Jan). After three days in indescribable pain — when he also had to endure interrogation by the secret police — he died.

In the short term, Palach accomplished exactly what he had intended. His living torch deeply moved occupied Czechoslovakia, and the Western world was shocked. The funeral became a nationwide protest against the occupants (see: Mácha, Karel Hynek) and their local henchmen. He even inspired others to follow suit. A month later, another living torch blazed up when Jan Zajíc, also a student, committed suicide in the same way and for the same reasons as Palach.

This time, however, the communist regime was better prepared. The news about Zajic’ death — and any additional living torch that later may have followed — was painstakingly concealed. Within a year of Palach’s suicide, the neo-Stalinists had won a full victory. Palach’s remains were secretly removed from the Olšany cemetery in Prague to the graveyard in his home village Všetaty in Central Bohemia, and two decades of grey normalization fell over Czechoslovakia.

Viewed from a political angle, Palach’s tragic sacrifice might seem completely vain and a terrible waste of a young life. This picture, however, is only partly correct. Even if it’s hardly measurable, he undisputedly represented a source of comfort for those not-too-numerous Czechs (see: Communism; Charter 77) who sacrificed their professional careers, material prosperity, mental tranquillity and sometimes even personal freedom for not paying lip service to the totalitarian regime. Symbolically enough, the London-based publishing house that fed Czech dissidents with uncensored literature was called “Palach Press”.