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Passenger without a ticketCzechs, by definition, are more western and European (although not neces-
sarily pro-EU), more democratic, more liberal, wealthier and more emancipated
than other Central Europeans. This megalomania, which was embodied by Presi-
dent Václav Klaus in the 1990s, to a great extent contributed to the success of the
Czech transformation and promoted it abroad, including Poland. Czechs did well
because they believed they were heading for success and that they are the only
ones who are truly Central European.
The paradox lies in the fact that – and here Snyder is certainly correct – the
Czech “advantages”, or the Czech contribution to Europe, facilitate survival in the
age of globalisation. If we place the transformation of the post-communist coun-
tries in the wider historical and international context, mysterious elements of this
social and political landscape fall into the right place. It is especially true in the
case of countries located between Europeanised Germany and authoritarian Rus-
sia, and which were lucky to join the EU and hence finish the process of Europe-
an reunification initiated in the 1990s under the aus-
pices of the United States.
At the same time, when Milan Kundera set the tone
for the discussion on the fate of several Eastern Europe-
an countries – that were created after the First World
War in accordance with the will expressed by US Pres-
ident Woodrow Wilson, and enslaved after the Second
World War by Joseph Stalin – the process of post-fas-
cist Greece, Portugal and Spain’s accession to the Eu-
ropean Community was already in place. Citizens of
those countries were never asked what they could give
or offer Europe, as this kind of question would be in-
appropriate. After all, without those centres of civilisation and their overseas ex-
pansion, there simply would be no Europe at all. At the same time, the countries
of Europe’s East are generally perceived as passengers with no valid tickets for the
European history train. They are allegedly subjected to inertia and underdevel-
oped, peasant societies for the most part of the modern era; they are deprived of
their own statehood, ruled by foreign dynasties and subject to blind imitation of
the West and colonial exploitation under the euphemistic name of modernisation.
The power of this stereotype is overwhelming. It was not questioned in Kunde-
ra’s essays, which evoked cultural criteria (the Latin tradition, the Roman religion,
and Habsburg modernism), or the works of Polish economic historians, such as
Marian Małowist and Witold Kula. Those works were developed 20 years earlierThe countries
of the EU’s east
are generally
perceived as
passengers with
no valid tickets
for the European
history train.Poles and Czechs across generations The Czech paradox, Aleksander Kaczorowski