IOM SUMMER

SCHOOL ON

MIGRATION 2014

UNIVERSIT Y OF

SOUTH BOHEMIA

EMIGRATION. FROM CZECHOSLOVAKIA TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC .

20/08/2014

ANNA MARŠÍKOVÁ

HOW IS EMIGRATION FROM COMMUNIST

CZECHOSLOVAKIA RELEVANT TODAY?

MOVIES, SERIES

DOCUMENTARIES

LITERATURE

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS in 2013…

THE ISSUE OF EMIGRATION IS STILL

PRESENT IN THE CZECH SETTING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHsCTIXNzRk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qegb-ZJaFWU

“I always care about one and only thing, which I said

many times before the elections, long time ago, now,

and I will say it tomorrow and I will say it after the end

of elections. I care simply about electing a president,

who belongs to this country, who is a part of this

country, who spent his life here, periods difficult,

better, best, worse.”

Václav Klaus

CURRENT DISCOURSE

“In 1974, after a serious illness died my father, whom I loved (and perhaps I did not show it to him enough) and

after August 1968 my sister Alena emigrated to Switzerland, which did not improve my vetting report

neither. I haven´t seen her almost for two decades. I was not even once able to travel to West since 1969 to 1985, allegedly it was not “in the interest of the Czechoslovak

Socialist Republic” to provide me with the exit permit, as they repeatedly told me at the Passport and Visa

Department of our police. At the same time, also Livia´s (note – wife) sister Štefka emigrated to Australia.”

Václav Klaus

CURRENT DISCOURSE

http://zpravy.idnes.cz/klausova-sestra-alena-jarochova-nezalezi-jen-na-tom-kde-clovek-zije-1fo-

/domaci.aspx?c=A130119_192311_domaci_brd

IN FAVOR

Martin C. Putna

AGAINST

Ivo Strejček

“It depends on what the person did in his/her life. And there

are people who are trying to earn money their whole life, or

have fun, and there are people who dedicate their lives to

what I call little bit pathetically the service to the

homeland.”*

“I think that from a distance, from abroad it is possible to

observe many things, but the authentic historical

experience... […] it is possible to gloss from abroad, but the

gritting one’s teeth is from here, from this history, it comes

from this country.”*

“[…] It means to support the matters of the homeland from

abroad, […] to lobby for it, […], to publish Czech books, to

support exiles who are in a worse position, […]. It is exactly

what Comenius and others exiles did in the 17th century,

what Masaryk did during the WWI, what the Czech exile did

during the WWII, and what the third exile did during the

communist era.”*

“[…] It is without doubt praiseworthy, the work and

achievements [that Mr. Schwarzenberg did] in abroad.

However […] also my conception is that the President of the

Czech Republic should be a person, who was born in this

country and, to exaggerate a little, lived through every

minute of its history. Established a family here, raised

children here, knows what are the sorrows and distresses of

this country, understands its history, understands its

evolution.”*

“It means, those people are not somehow less Czech. On the

contrary, they are in this sense more Czech. These are the

people who were risking, these are people who deserve our

highest respect.”*

“[Try not to take into consideration that I am a politician]

[…]. I am a person who was born here, who got married

here, I have two children, I am a normal citizen of this

country, […]. I really wish that the President of the Czech

Republic knew the Czech language, that his wife spoke

Czech.”*

CAN A REEMIGRANT BECOME THE PRESIDENT OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC?

EMIGRATION

vs.

POLITICAL EMIGRATION

vs.

EXILE

vs.

REFUGEES

DISCOURSE

Not only the reason(s) behind the emigration itself is

important for being perceived as a refugee/political

emigrant/emigrant etc. The differentiation is based on

the individual´s activities in his/her new country and

their relation to the homeland, such as the

involvement in anti-communist movements, publishing

of the samizdat literature etc. (and probably more

importantly the level and intensity of activities, or the

visibility of involvement).

EMIGRATION – POLITICAL EMIGRATION – EXILE – REFUGEES

This categorization (made by the public, researchers or

even emigrants themselves) then leads to the

attribution of certain social, political or economic

status.

“While the word ‘emigration’ is by majority of Czechs

understood as a denomination of more or less

voluntary abandonment of home from economic

reasons, the term ‘exile’ contains much higher moral

and ideological quality”

Jiří Pernes

EMIGRATION – POLITICAL EMIGRATION – EXILE – REFUGEES

WE WANT A PRESIDENT WHO HAS

ALWAYS BEEN WITH US…

http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/290712-komu-

daji-v-prezidentske-volbe-hlas-janda-hradilek-ci-

patrasova.html

http://aktualne.centrum.cz/domaci/politika/clanek.phtml?id=518447

http://aktualne.centrum.cz/domaci/

politika/clanek.phtml?id=518447

Contribution Implications of argument

Michal Pražák, Česká Lípa

And what does it have to do with the article on flooding? And be aware that

you emigrated voluntarily. Water took everything away from them whether

they wanted or not.*

Emigration from Czechoslovakia was voluntary

Jaroslav Končák, Prostějov

Only a coward and a characterless person leaves his/her country in its worst

moments – and in addition makes him/herself look as a poor person.*

Emigrants from Czechoslovakia were cowards

leaving the country/homeland in difficult period

Emigrants are pretending to be martyrs

Tom Bukovský, Polná

Dana Braumann... well, if someone is fleeing own homeland as a coward and

then adopt a surname of Heydrich´s tribe, s/he can´t be surprised by

anything.*

Emigrants from Czechoslovakia were cowards

leaving the country/homeland in difficult period

Emigrants are traitors

Josef Kulich, Praha

Communists did not take you anything. Only you took everything from

yourself. Emigration is a voluntary decision, not an unexpected natural

disaster!!! You went to seek something better, so shut up. You are good for a

beating-up. I am a peaceful person, but I hate bullshits like this.*

Emigration from Czechoslovakia was voluntary

Emigrants are opportunists seeking something better

Blanka Klempířová, Nové Město na Moravě

I don´t know under what circumstances you “had” to emigrate, but if it was

your decision, don´t mention it here now!!! I don´t like when every emigrant,

who out of his/her own will “sought something better” is now pretending to be

a martyr!!! (And it was you who left the family and friends here.)*

Emigrants are opportunists seeking something better

Emigrants are pretending to be martyrs

Emigrants are to be blamed for abandoning family

EMIGRATION IN AN ONLINE DISCUSSION

Contribution Implications of argument

Eva Šetinová, Nejdek

First, it does not belong in here and second, it was only your mistake, your

pity. You could have stayed here as every decent person.*

Emigration from Czechoslovakia was voluntary

Božena Vytasilová, Praha

It is a question whether someone emigrated voluntarily or not. He could have

serious reasons, such as a bad “vetting report”, […]. There were adventurers

among emigrants, but also the elite of the nation and it was a huge loss for the

society. Me personally, I would not take the risk, because I would harm the

rest of my family at home, even though I was quite skilled in languages. […]*

There are differences among emigrants

Emigration of national elite was a loss for society

Emigration harmed family

Blanka Adámková, Praha

[As a reaction to Jaroslav Končák] You are a very silly person – you have no

idea how some people suffered here – their children could not attend schools,

they were monitored and harassed by StB – I fully approve that people were

fleeing for their lives – and I regret up until now that I didn´t do it as well.*

People had the right to emigrate, because they were

threatened by the regime

IMPORTANCE OF EMIGRATION

• NUMBERS OF EMIGRANTS?

• DEMOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION?

• APPROACH TOWARDS EMIGRATION?

WHY IS THE ISSUE

OF EMIGRATION STILL PRESENT?

NUMBERS OF EMIGRANTS

The Communist coup in February of 1948 caused new flows of

emigration. The Soviet occupation in August 1968 further

reinforced emigration.

According to rough estimations approximately 550 000 people

left the country between 1948 and 1989 (Pehe 2002: 23,

Murad 2003: 100).

Unreliable statistics

Population census

Highly -skilled professionals and representatives of the

Czechoslovak intelligence and elite who did not leave after

1948 formed a large part of post-1968 emigration.

“Many top -f light artists, writers, journalists, athletes and former

politicians had to go into exile. Some of them worked actively in

exile on weakening the communist regime; many tried in various

ways to help people who had decided to stay in communist

Czechoslovakia.”

(Pehe 2002: 23)

DEMOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION

APPROACH TOWARDS EMIGRATION

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and

residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his

own, and to return to his country.

THE UNIVERSAL DECARATION

OF HUMAN RIGHTS (1948)

THE RIGHT TO EMIGRATE WAS DECONSTRUCTED AND

BECAME PROBLEMATIC, AS THE RIGHT TO IMMIGRATE

HAS ALWAYS BEEN QUESTIONED

APPROACH TOWARDS EMIGRATION

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

BORDER PROTECTION

PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES – EMIGRANTS

PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES – FAMILIES

DISCOURSE

POSTERS AND PICTURES

TV BROADCAST

PRINTED MEDIA, LITERATURE, ART

OFFICIAL APPROACH:

TOOLS OF PROPAGANDA

“A plethora of laws against the gathering of information,

subversive connections, treasonable disloyalty, sabotage,

subversive organization of a group and agitation, resistance to

government measures, unlawfully crossing borders, rowdiness,

rioting, forming an organization with illegal goals, illegal

contacts (talking to foreigners) and defamation of the state

(including political jokes) were used very effectively against

those who would not conform, particularly the young. The

principle was one of divide and rule on both external

international and internal national levels.”

James Aulich and Marta Sylvestrová

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Law n° 231/1948 Sb. on protecting the Democratic People´s

Republic defined the “unauthorized abandonment of the

territory of the Republic and refusal of return after the

appeal” (§40) as a criminal act against the international

relations

Directive on adjustment of legal relations of the Czechoslovak

socialist republic towards citizens staying in abroad without

permission of Czechoslovak authorities (1977)

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Resolution of the government of the Czechoslovak Socialist

Republic related to the approval of the above mentioned

directive

The government required among others to:

prevent the unauthorized abandonment of the republic

form a hostile public opinion towards the unauthorized abandonment

of the republic

systematically overcome fixed illusions in minds of people about life

conditions in capitalist states

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

BORDER PROTECTION

“Permanent disabling of the crossing of state borders to the

capitalist world using whatever means, including firearms,

electric barbed wires, dogs etc. The border protection was

officially presented mainly as a protection against the

external enemies. However, in order to understand the

reality, it was enough to see the direction of the bending of

the electric fences upper parts, and what was the direction

of the border zone or the plowed soil belts” (PRUŠA, 2011,

p.297)

BORDER PROTECTOIN

Frontiers were surrounded by barbed wires, electrical wires

and other types of barriers and guarded by patrols, border

guards with dogs, police and soldiers.

282 people died on the border between 1948 and 1989. 145

people were killed directly by the border guards, another 96

died because of the electric and barbed wires. 16 people

committed suicide shortly before or after their capture. One

man was shred by dogs. Among ‘victims of the border’ were

also children (Lustigová 2004, Šulc 2004).

Property loss

Loss of citizenship

No return policy (with exceptions)

PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES OF

EMIGRATION – EMIGRANTS

Imprisonment

Restrictions on travelling

Monitoring of activities

Questioning by the StB

Limitations at work (the risk of discharge or degradation)

Limitations in studies (prohibition)

Monitoring of communication (calls, letters and packages). In

1971, postal fees were increased by 260% within non-

communist countries (Diamant 1995: 39).

PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES OF

EMIGRATION – FAMILIES

“The principle was one of divide and rule on both external

international and internal national levels. The visual rhetoric,

while passionate, was traditional and programmatic and would

have been familiar to any nineteenth -century socialist, with its

images of heroic revolutionaries, mythical monsters, snakes, fat

capitalists and triumphant workers.”

James Aulich and Marta Sylvestrová

POSTERS AND PICTURES

TREACHEROUS EMIGRATION SERVES WESTERN IMPERIALISTS

PROPAGANDA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKoQMrjDYZE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGpnyH0H8uY

The aim of the socialist propaganda was to disseminate the

belief that “only a fool may wish to escape from the best

political regime in the world” and that one who did it is a

characterless materialist .

(The quotation of a border guard who arrested a man moving in

the borderland (in Navara 2006: 44)).

PROPAGANDA

IMPACT OF PROPAGANDA?

NOTION OF

EMIGRATION AS

BETRAYAL OF NATION

IS APPEARING

FREQUENTLY

The ambivalence in the perception of emigrants in the

Czechoslovakia:

“On the one hand, emigrants are a source of national pride in

that they demonstrate that Czechs can become successful even

in the competitive West. Czechs point out with distinct

satisfaction that people like Tomáš Baťa , Miloš Forman, and

Robert Maxwell are or were once Czechs and that in the 1930s

Chicago had a Czech mayor. On the other hand, any comparison

of the situation in their old homeland with their experiences in

the West, which often implies criticism of many practices with

Czechs at home take for granted, is detested. Emigrants are

expected to display supreme loyalty to the nation.”

Ladislav Holý

PERCEPTION OF EMIGRATION

“The government´s attitude to emigration was straightforward:

it was a betrayal of the country, the nation, or socialism.

Although people may not have always agreed with what the

Party construed as being betrayed (particularly if it was

socialism), the notion of betrayal was not culturally alien to

them. It was an appropriate gloss for abandoning the whole of

which one was inherently a part – a morally despicable act

paralleling the violation of the Christian Fif th Commandment:

‘Honour thy father and mother’.”

Ladislav Holý

EMIGRATION AS BETRAYAL

HOW CZECH ARE WE?

OPINIONS OF CZECH STUDENTS AND READERS OF

LIDOVÉ NOVINY AND LIDOVKY.CZ

Donath Business & Media, Přítomnost ("Presence")

and Lidové noviny (Lidové Daily) in cooperation with

MRThink

Results of a survey (July – September 2012)

5 212 students + 4 340 readers of Lidové noviny

IF YOU COULD CHOOSE TO BECOME A CITIZEN OF ANY

COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU

CHOOSE?

Czech Republic

Great Britain

Switzerland

USA

France

Canada

Germany

Australia

Sweden

Norway

New Zealand

Austria

Italy

Spain

Finland

The Netherlands

Japan

Slovakia

Denmark

Ireland

Students (15 398 answers in total from 5 212 respondents)

IF YOU COULD CHOOSE TO BECOME A CITIZEN OF ANY

COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU

CHOOSE?

Czech Republic

Great Britain

Switzerland

USA

France

Canada

Germany

Australia

Sweden

Norway

New Zealand

Austria

Italy

Finland

The Netherlands

Slovakia

Denmark

Lidovky.cz (12 649 answers in total from 4 340 respondents)

WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOU TO STAY

A CITIZEN OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC?

Other reason

I am proud of the Czech Republic

I think, that I am doing well here

There are people as me living here, I

have what to talk about with them

The Czech Republic has many unique

historic monuments

My language is spoken here

I like it in the Czech Republic

There is a beautiful nature here

I have my family here

I am used to it here

Students (5 091 respondents) Lidovky (4 164 respondents)

TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU FEEL PROUD/ASHAMED

OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC?

I am very proud

I am rather proud

I am neither proud nor ashamed

I am rather ashamed

I am very ashamed

Students (4 975 respondents) Lidovky (4 107 respondents)

In contradiction with expectations of emigrants who dreamed

of the return to the country and of the reunion with their

friends and families, the reception by the society was

inconsistent, sceptical, cold, even deprecatory. The opinion of

Jiří Dientsbier, then minister of foreign affairs, that “no one

had to leave the country in 1968” was accepted as a general

official approach.

SITUATION AFTER 1989

No voting right during elections in 1990

No right to draw a pension

No heritability

Once lost citizenship was not granted automatically

Re-integration

SITUATION AFTER 1989

Borders protected the state by preventing people from leaving

Emigration was prevented, but disidents and other publicly involved people were forced to leave

Emigration did not influence only emigrants themselves, but family members who stayed even more

Communist propaganda was trying to convince people that only a fool may escape from the best country in the world , but the current discourse used by people is that emigrants did not suffer during the Communism with us and they don´t know how it was

PARADOXES OF EMIGRATION FROM

COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA (PAST)

The basic propagandist rhetoric was claiming that emigrants

are only imperialists´ servants and that they had no reason to

leave the country, because in the West people are living

terrible lives. Yet, the nowadays accusations outlined above

are based on claims that emigrants left the nation in troubles

and lived carefree in the wealth of the Western states.

PARADOXES OF EMIGRATION FROM

COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA (PAST)

Not only the same culture (the knowledge of language or

history etc.) but also the same ‘ level’ or ‘intensity’ of culture

is required in order to be seen as a member of Czech nation.

In the eyes of Czechs, who live in the Czech Republic all their

lives, in emigration the originally acquired (Czech) culture

fades and is substituted with an ‘imported’ culture which is

not recognized as Czech.

PARADOXES OF EMIGRATION FROM

COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA (PAST)

Communist propaganda was using those, who were forced by

the regime to leave against their will, as one of the tools of

campaign against those, who emigrated against the will of the

regime.

PARADOXES OF EMIGRATION FROM

COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA (PAST)

Perception of emigrants (economic opportunists) vs. perception

of immigrants (economic opportunists?)

Issue of acceptance

IMPLICATIONS FOR CZECH SOCIETY

(FUTURE)

ISSUE OF ACCEPTANCE

Graph: What is important for not being perceived as a foreigner?

To speak Czech

To work in the Czech Republic

To know Czech history, culture

To have the citizenship

To live here at least 10 years

To particip. in the local soc. activ.

To marry a Czech

To buy a house, flat here

To have fair skin

very important

rather important

not so important

not important

doesn´t know

(CVVM 2012)

ALIENATION FROM A NATION AS A WAY

HOW TO BECOME "THE OTHER"?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION