169and were introduced into the global historiography by Fernand Braudel and Im-
manuel Wallerstein. Małowist and Kula provided evidence of the significant con-
tribution that Eastern Europe made to the economic power of modern Europe. In
the case of the Czech contribution to the European economy over the centuries,
wealth was mostly generated from natural metals, particularly silver, which were
necessary for trade all across medieval Europe. Silver contributed to the power
of the Czech Kingdom, and thanks to the mines at Kutna Hora, the Czech King,
Karol IV, was given the imperial crown. In turn, the Hussite Revolution in the 15th
century saved the Czech bourgeois and Czech craftsmanship from being dominat-
ed by the more powerful German establishments, while strengthening the foun-
dations of local entrepreneurship, which impressively developed during the times
of the late Habsburgs. At that time, the Czech lands took on a leading role in the
economic life of a 50-million-strong monarchy, while the Czech intellectual elite
were responsible for the “rebirth of the nation” and created several promising po-
litical programmes, among them the liberal and democratic Czechoslovakism by
Tomáš Masaryk.
Confronting EuropeCzechoslovakism was a peculiar equivalent of Józef Piłsudski’s concept of fed-
eralism for interwar Poland, except that the Czechs made it happen. The liberal
component of Masaryk’s ideology proved to be the key as it was related to the
Americanophilia of its creator and his genuine conviction that the future belongs
to democracy. Masaryk’s liberalism turned out to be the best Czech investment of
the 20th century and proved its vitality after 1989.
Contemporary Czech liberalism, with its two extreme faces (Klaus’s autarkic
one and Havel’s cosmopolitan one), owes its cyclothymic, extreme bipolar disorder
to the confrontation with the European idea. It was under great pressure due to
the allegedly existential choices (“West or East”): Havel’s support for a European
federation or Klaus’s bastion of the nation state. Both found their supporters and
believers abroad, which otherwise facilitated convenient identification of those
who participate in ideological and identity disputes in Central and Eastern Europe.
However in the Czech Republic, the most permanent achievement was revitalising
the middle class. Having its support, they ruled for two decades and prospered.
Today, Czechs are the wealthiest society of the former Eastern bloc. Their live-
lihood is so good that they are no longer fascinated with western capitalism. That
is why they were not lured by the mirage of even greater wealth within the Euro-
pean Union of 30 or so countries, whose average size, as Snyder wrote, is today
The Czech paradox, Aleksander Kaczorowski Poles and Czechs across generations