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Saints and sinners
A proper study of human rights abuses should include Masaryk and Beneš
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May 28th, 2008 issue
By Peter Josika
One of the key ingredients of any modern democracy must be a critical and unbiased evaluation of history. While nations like Germany, Italy and France have been busy coming to terms with their past in recent decades, the Czech Republic has so far been conveniently shifting all guilt for the dark chapters of its history on to “foreign invaders.” The story of the good and peace-loving Czechs, who have always been the victims of their “evil neighbors,” remains a popular and deeply ideologized belief. Hence it is hardly surprising that a new Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes is limiting its research to the period of Nazism and communism. The basis of modern Czech identity is a nationalist and pan-Slavic ideology introduced in the 1920s and ’30s by the political leaders of the time — Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš. Both are mentioned in the Constitution as persons of great importance. Masaryk, especially, enjoys an almost godlike status in the country today. A critical evaluation of Masaryk’s role after World War I remains a taboo. However, there were a number of totalitarian aspects to the nationalist policies of Masaryk and Beneš that disadvantaged large population groups, cost many innocent people their lives or livelihoods and impacted negatively on the historic cohesion in Central Europe. With a German-Moravian mother and a Slovak father, Masaryk was in fact more Central European than Czech. His mother tongue was German and he only learned to speak proper Czech as an adult. In some respects, Masaryk was undoubtedly a man ahead of his time. He adopted his wife’s surname, Garrigue, which was groundbreaking in the late 19th century. His work as a critical scholar, and his resolute — and, at the time, rather unpopular — intervention against racist and anti-Semitic tendencies in Czech and Austro-Hungarian society must also be commended. At the same time, Czechs need to be more critical of his obsession with Czech nationalism. When Emperor Charles called for the reorganization of Austria-Hungary into a federation at the end of World War I, Masaryk could have become one of the leading progressive figures of a powerful new Central European state. This, in turn, could have laid the foundation for a much more painless transition to a United Europe, without the perils of Nazism and communism. However, instead of utilizing his multi-ethnic background to assist the reconciliation process in Central Europe, he began to lobby for the breakup of the Habsburg Empire and the creation of new artificial boundaries.On the one hand, Masaryk fought for the incorporation of majority German-speaking areas into his new state on the basis of the historic boundaries of the Bohemian lands. On the other hand, he lobbied for the complete dismemberment of historic Hungary, with new boundaries based on ethnicity and geographical features. While he demanded “self-determination” for the Czechs and Slovaks, he repressed any attempt by Germans and Hungarians to exercise the same. Czechs today know very little about the massacres committed by Czechoslovak militia in German and Hungarian towns after World War I. These massacres, and the coercion of German and Hungarian opponents into the forceful incorporation of their territory into Czechoslovakia, should become part of the research conducted by the new government institute investigating totalitarian crimes. It should also be mentioned and condemned in Czech schoolbooks.After its founding, Czechoslovakia started to minoritize and disadvantage its German and Hungarian citizens. Although Germans and Hungarians constituted 40 percent of the population, Masaryk and Beneš refused to invite them to the country’s constitutional assembly. Representatives of almost half the population had no input when the country’s new constitution was drawn up. This was certainly undemocratic, and it casts a big shadow over the current Constitution and its democratic legitimacy. In the 1920s and ’30s, Masaryk and Beneš continued a policy that strongly disadvantaged the large German, Hungarian and Polish minorities. One of the most controversial pieces of legislation was the introduction of “Czechoslovak” as the national language. German, Hungarian and Polish became minority languages, even in areas where they were spoken by the overwhelming majority of people. Signage in these areas had to first list place names in Czech or Slovak, and only second in the native language. Worst of all, thousands of German, Hungarian and Polish government officials lost their jobs, as they could not speak the “new official language” and were replaced by Czechs, causing strong anti-Czech sentiment in all affected areas.Masaryk and Beneš also deceived the international community and the country’s large ethnic minority groups when they promised to turn Czechoslovakia into a Swiss-style federation during the Paris peace conference after World War I. Instead they turned the country into a Centralist monolith, even abolishing the three traditional regions — Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. If they had stood by their word, giving some autonomy to the Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Slovaks, these population groups would have been substantially less prone to irredentist propaganda. Masaryk and Beneš therefore share responsibility for the rise of separatism and Nazism among the non-Czech population.The post-World War II expulsion of more than 3 million Germans from Czechoslovakia remains one of the biggest cases of ethnic cleansing in history. The architect of this crime was Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovak president at the time, who lobbied tirelessly for his plan while in exile during World War II. No doubt there was legitimate hatred against the Nazis, given the enormous magnitude of atrocities they committed. However, the collective expropriation, mistreatment, resettlement or even murder of people — most of them unquestionably innocent — based only on ethnicity is a major case of ethnic cleansing, and any attempt to even partially excuse this crime must be rejected. The current Czech policy of brushing this atrocity under the carpet is at variance with all human rights standards. The laws that legalized this crime are still in place today. If the Czech Republic wants to become a genuine advocate of human rights on the international stage (a declared goal of the modern Czech state), it needs to deal with all the dark chapters of its history, including human rights violations committed by the Czechoslovak state in the interwar and postwar period. The most important aspect of this is a more critical and balanced re-assessment of the roles and policies of people like T.G. Masaryk and Edvard Beneš.— The author, a resident of Biel, Switzerland, is coordinator of the Network of European Bilingual Cities project and a correspondent for Eurolang, the news agency of European minorities (www.eurolang.net).
Other articles in Opinion (28/05/2008):
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Reader's comments:
add your commentAbsolutely correct. And the Czech Republic should not have been admitted into the EU until it provided proper compensation to its victims, just as the Germans have done over many years.
Prague
Furthermore, suggesting that Czechoslovakia should have become part of a new Central European Federation (or new Austro Hungarian Empire) to unite Europe, is a stretch. Perhaps all of Europe should have just given up to a Austro-Hungary and German Federation during World War I for the sake of a United Europe? The logic does not follow.
Displacing Germans and Hungarians after World War II is tragic, but is not forcing subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to fight over the Balkans more dastardly? Would not the emotional clinch after such a conflict make a Czech xenophobia even a little understandable?
This period should be understood fully and should be taken in context.
Las Vegas, Nevada
The Benes Decrees continue to be considered as a valid legal order in both the Czech and Slovak Republics -- comments such as "Hungarians are the cancer of the nation" can be quoted from politicians and the human rights of ethnic Germans throughout the world continue to be violated.
It is time for comments and attitudes such as this to stop, especially from those in public office.
It is time to treat others as people would want to be treated themselves: There is no need in this culture of human rights and equality for these Decrees to still exist.
It is time to "Love thy neighbor".
Czech and Slovak governments....are you listening???
Ashford, Kent, England
This is all theory.
With that said, I believe that history should always be taught in its entirety and from multiple vantage points so that history does not repeat itself.
Although I guess it always will repeat itself in some fashion since humans are, well human. It is a shame than people conveniently dismiss what does not promote their agenda and parts of history become minimalized or worse, erased.
Charlotte
No women, African-American slaves or representatives from tribal nations were invited to the United States' constitutional convention, nor did they have an ordinary vote.
Aspirational dominant or minority discourses have their own biases and their own sets of winners and losers.
People are complex and dynamic and full of their own successes and failures.
Influential people, such as major politicians, will be stuck with major successes and failures. Win-win for all might be a nice fantasy but if it's possible, I'm not sure Homo sapiens has the erudition to affect it.
An interesting opinion by Josika and well worth digesting as long as, as others have suggested, it's considered in a hyperlens of contextualities and dynamics of the time and of multiple perspectives.
Hills
So, the idea had been brought alive by some of the best thinkers in Central Europe.
Most recently, a variation (or a new potential beginning?) of the CEF was started by the Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall suggesting the idea of the Visegrad 3 (later V-4 when Czechoslovakia split) to Vaclav Havel in March 1990.
The potential in this association pointed to a bright future and strong defensive association on the horizon of the Central European countries - so much so that other countries in the region seriously entertained the thought of joining it.
Further, these countries cooperated in negotiating how to join NATO, and, a few years later, the European Union.
In recent years, the balloon got deflated by internal political struggles and weakened by the re-awakening of irredentism, partially prompted by the Slovakian Parliament's re-approval of the discriminatory Benes Decrees.
Millions in Central Europe and those of us who have contacts there feel that these countries depend on each other, and that sincere friendship will benefit all of them in the long run.
A few years ago, the Slovakian and Hungarian historians met to review the common history and centuries-long cooperation between these people.
I hope the politicians will learn from these efforts.
Minneapolis
"In each of the new states, there prevailed a narrow, official nationalism," and the repressive policies used against national, religious and political minorities led to perpetual internal and external divisions and conflicts.
"This state of generalized and mutual hostility provided opportunities for any great power intent on disturbing the peace." That judgment was made by the sons of R.W. Seton-Watson ("Scotus Viator"), the foremost British friend and supporter of the Masaryk-Benes plan of destroying the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. (Seton-Watson, H. and C.: The Making of a New Europe: R.W. Seton-Watson and the Last Years of Austria-Hungary (London, 1981), p. 435.)
That plan was opposed by a number of Britons, who had both foresight and imagination. The federal reorganization of Central Europe was most eloquently advocated by Leo Amery, an adviser to Prime Minister D. Lloyd George.
On October 20, 1918, he made a last appeal to the foreign secretary, A. Balfour, against the creation of unviable, weak states.
In his opinion, the Austro-Hungarian problem could not be settled "on the principle of simply using our victory to satisfy the ambitions of our friends," since it "will inevitably create a state of unrest and instability which will sooner or later lead up to another war."
Amery had a different proposal.
"Permanent stability and prosperity could best be secured by a new Danubian Confederation comprising German Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and probably also Bulgaria.
The essential thing is to realize that whatever strategy is taken to create new units in the area now covered by Austria-Hungary must take into account that they cannot really be independent units.
To attempt to create artificial sovereignties, especially on the basis of "spoils to the victor", is only to create a new and more troubled Balkan peninsula.
The wisest course is to aim at securing the fairest and most workable re-arrangement on national lines, but at the same time actively to encourage the idea of a new union, preferably one which would include the whole of the present Austro-Hungarian Empire (excepting Galicia and Bukovina), and Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria as well.
In such a union, the different nationalities would find the solution of their nationalist rivalries and an ample field for prosperous development.
The fact is that "Middle Europe" is an inevitable and necessary outcome of this war, whatever the actual issue of the struggle or the terms of peace imposed by the victors.
In the long run, the economic and defensive factors which make the whole of this region a natural unit in the present condition of the world, are bound to prevail over the exaggerated nationalism - German, Magyar, Serb, Bulgar, Czech - which has been at the root of this war.
In any case, the various nationalities of Central Europe are so interlocked, and their racial frontiers are so unsuitable as the frontiers of really independent sovereign states, that the only satisfactory and permanent working policy for them lies in their incorporation in a non-national "superstate".
We can delay, but we cannot prevent the eventual coming of that superstate. To commit ourselves unreservedly to nationalism at the peace conference, and to ignore the inevitable coming of the larger non-national "superstate", would be to commit precisely the errors which our grandfathers committed at the Congress of Vienna, when they settled Europe on the basis of legitimism, on which the war had been fought and argued, and not on the basis of the new nationalist forces which the war had called into being.
A League of Nations based on the principle of nationalism might soon find itself as much of an anomaly and an obstacle to progress as the Holy Alliance in its day.
For the purposes of the war, we have rightly backed up Czecho-Slovaks, Yugoslavs and every anti-German and anti-Austrian movement we could find.
But for the purposes of a lasting settlement. we must regulate the satisfaction of these national aspirations by creating, or recreating, a larger super-national unity in Central and South-Eastern Europe." ("The Austro-Hungarian Problem," Memorandum by L.S. Amery, Oct.20, 1918. Public Record Office, FO, 371/3136/17223.)
Mr. L. Fulop is right, the late Prime Minister Antall and myself proposed the Visegrad Cooperation with the aim of re-creating Central European solidarity.
Géza Jeszenszky, Historian, Foreign Minister of Hungary 1990-94.
Budapest
Perhaps, from this viewpoint, anything that is said by "outsiders" is irrelevant.
From my own viewpoint, within the European Union, this semi-national entity can somewhat counter-balance self-serving states such as France and Germany.
It should be supported.
Victoria,BC,Canada
Present should reflect what we learned from the past.
Sofar, as Czechs and Europeans, we learned that stealing and looting pays, that totalitarian looter can keep his loot and the victim can be rejected and silenced.
Not only did the Czech Republic accept this immoral stand but even the EU did so.
In the Treaty Establishing the European Community the EU inserted Article 295, which states:
This treaty shall in no way prejudice the rules in Memeber States governing the system of property ownership.
They put the same article into the Lisbon Treaty under No 345.
The European Union, the new guardian of peace and justice, the new arbiter of fairness will not care about stealing and anything which goes
with it: despair, extortion and corruption, forced evacuation ? Not in the past, not in the present, not in the future?
Do not give me such a justice in Europe! Do not make me part of it! Or, otherwise, do not feel for the looter. Take the loot away from him.
Comfort the victim! Return his possessions, especially his family home to him.
By refusing to repair these wounds you only are preparing us all for future miseries!
Jan Sammer,
Secretary of Czech Coordinating Office,
1103-100 Antibes Drive,
Toronto, ON, Canada M2R 3N1
416-665-7324
jan.sammer@sympatico.ca
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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