Czech Republic

THE LANDS THAT became the Czech Republic in 1993 were part of communist Czechoslovakia from 1948 to the collapse of totalitarianism in 1989. During that period all right-wing political activity was persecuted. During the 1950s, political opponents of the regime were killed and imprisoned. But the late communism of the 1970s and 1980s suppressed dissident initiatives more mildly. Dissidents lost their jobs and their children were barred from higher education. Some came under pressure to become informants or emigrate. But only a few were jailed for considerable periods of time. In that environment, the dissident human rights movement of Charter 77 came into being as a coalition of anti-communists from Hapsburg monarchists on the right to reform communists on the left.

The philosopher Jan Patocka, who was one of the first three spokespersons of the Charter 77 movement and died following a police interrogation in 1977, was particularly influential in dissident circles. Under the influence of his teacher, the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, Patocka blamed the decline and self-destruction of Europe on the scientific-instrumental concept of politics, devoid of values and meaning. Following Martin Heidegger, he considered modern society to be alienating human beings from their essence. He considered sacrifice and the solidarity of those ready to sacrifice themselves (dissidents) as ways to overcome alienation and materialism. Vaclav Havel applied this philosophy to analyze communism as a form of alienation. Other right-wing dissidents were influenced by Catholicism or Hussite-Protestant theology and the natural law tradition.

Economists, who were neither dissidents nor communists at the Institute for Economic Prognostication of the Academy of Science in Prague, were in a privileged position in the communist system by having access to literature in “capitalist” economics. This group of economists, including Vaclav Klaus, was influenced in particular by free-market economists like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, and Milton Friedman.

In November 1989, student demonstrations that won popular support brought down communism. Civic Forum, an umbrella movement led by Havel that included all anti-communists, replaced the communists. Civic Forum was an uneasy coalition between former dissidents, intellectuals, and professionals mostly from Prague who were concerned with human authenticity, ethics, and values, and others who were more concerned with economic reforms and personal advantages for themselves and their supporters. This tension dominated Czech right-wing politics.

Initially, the former Charter 77 dissidents led Civic Forum and the Czech half of Czechoslovakia. Playwright and philosopher Havel became president, and historian Petr Pithart (who translated Roger Scruton's book on conservatism) was prime minister. Of the economists, only Vaclav Klaus served in the Czech cabinet as minister of finance. In 1991, Klaus and his supporters advocated liberalization of price controls and reduction in subsidies. This led to the division of Civic Forum and the founding of two right-wing parties, the Civic Democratic Party, led by Klaus, and the Civic Democratic Alliance, led by another economist, Vladimir Dlouhy. The nonpolitical dissidents formed the Civic movement led by Pithart, Jiri Dienstbier, and Martin Palous (a follower of Eric Voegelin).

The 1992 elections resulted in a right-wing victory in the Czech lands. New Prime Minister Klaus formed a coalition with the Civic Democratic Alliance and the more centrist Christian Democrats that ruled the Czech Republic until 1997. Since the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia elected a nationalist government, tensions between the two halves of Czechoslovakia were resolved by the division of Czechoslovakia into independent Czech and Slovak Republics.

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