7 2 April 2016
A
flons Mucha’s Slav Epic enjoys glori
-
ous pride of place in the Czech
National Gallery in Prague. It is a
cycle of twenty large and porten
-
tous paintings completed between
1910 and 1928 recalling the history and myths
of a heterogenous people inhabiting territory
from the Asian steppe to the shores of the Medi-
terranean. The artist imposes his peculiar
predilections and aspirations in broad strokes
to produce imagery simultaneously troubling
and enthralling: a peaceable nature is empha-
sised but a belligerent Germanic ‘other’ is also
apparent.
The first painting has a contemporary reso-
nance. Mucha claimed his intention was to
depict the Origin, the Adam and Eve of the
Slavs. The English guide says: “He portrayed
them crouched down like defenceless refugees,
wearing expressions of fear”. On the hill behind
we see a hostile horde that has plundered and
set fire to their village. Implicit is recognition
that all peoples have at one time sought refuge
from invasion.
But that understanding is
sorely lacking in the Czech
Republic along with other coun-
tries across Central and Eastern
Europe today. Not since the US
invasion of Iraq have attitudes
differed so greatly between
what Donal Rumsfeld referred
to in 2003 as ‘Old’ and ‘New’
Europe.
Many in Western Europe are
exasperated by the attitudes of
their Central and Eastern Euro-
pean counterparts, regarding them as hypocrisy
considering the number of Central and Eastern
Europeans who have migrated west as both
workers and political refugees. Central and
Eastern Europeans appear to be from Mars and
Western Europeans from Venus; but there is
hardly a genetic basis for the intracontinental
differences.
Perhaps most surprising to Westerners are
attitudes in the Czech Republic - a state, geo-
graphically and to an extent culturally, Western
European: Prague’s architectural splendours
are further to the west than Berlin’s and revolu-
tions have been
pacific West-friendly
Velvet affairs.
The State of Czecho-
slovakia was the only
democracy in conti-
nental Europe apart
from France in 1939.
But successive opin
-
ion polls have shown Czechs to be
overwhelmingly opposed to receiving refugees
despite shocking scenes that have generated
strong feelings of empathy elsewhere.
Four factors ground this apparent
imperviousness to the suffering of others: the
first is the historical and current relationship
with minorities; the second is the enduring eco-
nomic fallout from the Communist era; the next
factor is the malign influence of the current
Czech President Miloš Zeman; finally, after a
twentieth century during which the Czech
people have been unwillingly controlled by
three empires – the Hapsburg, Nazi and Soviet,
there is a strong sense that the Czech people
should be allowed to control their own affairs.
The Czech Republic has produced statesmen
of international renown. Former playwright
President Vaclav Havel was one of the heroes
of the struggle against Communist dictator-
ship; although his equation of the extension of
US power with the expansion of liberty, culmi-
nating in support for the US invasion of Iraq in
2003, was naïve at best. Nonetheless his
emphasis on individual autonomy and artistic
expression was an antidote to the conformity of
the dark Communist years.
Polar Czechs
Czech national temperament fluctuates
between ancient national prejudices and
slavish foreign imitation
by Frank Armstrong
INTERNATIONAL
Czechs are
overwhelmingly
opposed to receiving
refugees
Mucha: after the battle of Grunwald