Jaroslav PESEK: The Kremlin’s influence is still strong in the Czech Republic

We constantly talk about Ukraine’s need for internal integration, and that it must learn about itself. Europe needs this as well, especially its artificially forgotten and marginalized Eastern part. This is precisely the goal of the public organization Union of Young Europeans, founded and headed by the veteran Czech journalist Jaroslav Pesek, who correctly assumes that Europe, and especially the Czech Republic, know little about Ukraine and vice versa. In order to overcome this barrier of ignorance Pesek has been working on a book that will tell Czechs the truth about the history of the OUN-UPA.

“This book will probably be called Between the Beetle and the Block,” Pesek tells The Day. “I refer to both Ukrainian and Polish sources in it. No objective materials about the OUN-UPA have ever been published in the Czech Republic, only a few books from the socialist times. So I suggested such a book to the publishers. Now they keep telling me: ‘Jaroslav, the main thing now is for you to be objective!’ Why wouldn’t I be objective, I ask surprised — there are facts, there is access to all the necessary materials, the SBU archives have been opened…”

Is the book ready?

“Not yet. I’ve been working on it for a long time. Enough time for Stepan Bandera to get the title of Hero of Ukraine and to be deprived of it. However, interestingly, I feel some fear on the part of the director of the publishing house with which I have a contract for the book publication. He is afraid that the reader is not yet ready. But, after all, someone should start this discussion.”

What does he mean by readiness? What does your publisher fear?

“He thinks that Bandera’s soldiers were bandits. Czechs know very little about Ukraine, and the UPA in particular. In addition, the Kremlin’s influence is still rather substantial. This can be seen on specific examples. The publishing house, to which I previously offered my book, published a Czech translation of a rather critical book about Putin by a German author not long before that. A few days later the representatives from the embassy of the Russian Federation called this publishing house. With their faces smiling, speaking good Czech, they said that the book about Putin had not used the best possible sources. And they kindly provided different ones. You ask what the publisher fears? Elderly people remember the times when visits of such people meant a trip to the North. In a word, after the visit of the employees of the Russian embassy the publishing house published another book about Putin — authored by a deputy of the Russian parliament. Shall I mention that it elucidated the personality of the current Russian premier in a quite different light? To be honest, I was ashamed of cooperating with such a publishing house. So I moved to another one.

“We plan to open an information source (the working title is ‘kobzarpress’) in the near future for Czechs to learn more about Ukraine, where we will publish materials from Ukrainian liberal-democratic periodicals (in particular, The Day), that are necessary for an intelligent Czech reader to understand what is happening in Ukraine and why.”

A few years ago, during a meeting with the British journalist Edward Lucas, you asked him a question, saying that the Czech Republic still didn’t solve its post-communist problems. And that this concerns not some people who were “building communism,” but the entire generation. How is Czech journalism dealing with this heritage?

“During the meeting with Edward Lucas you have mentioned I was speaking first of all about the sense of responsibility, which should be inherent in the entire generation. This concerns both the Czech Republic and Ukraine. Since in Ukraine the sense of responsibility is absolutely not enrooted in the society.

“In the Czech Republic some measures were taken to this purpose. In particular, in the then Czechoslovakia a law was adopted recognizing the communist regime as being criminal. Then there was a law on lustration which also played its role. Currently Czech mass media discuss how children should now be taught history, since people who speak about the past relying on their personal experience still teach. This is a subject for discussion. Therefore, in the Czech Republic there is an institution similar to the Ukrainian National Memory Institute, which helps history teachers to get ‘reformatted,’ in particular, it publishes materials on methodology.

“One more important issue. Czechoslovakia and Poland were, one can say, colonies, they were directed from Moscow. If certain illegal processes were taking place, they originated from Moscow through advisors and embassies. And people from the party, adherents of the so-called Czech way, were removed. GDR was an occupied country altogether, every second person there worked [in some way or other] for the KGB, because they didn’t have any other choice. Regarding Ukraine, it was a part of the Soviet Union, and this is a different situation.”

What is the role of journalism in overcoming the post-communist past in the Czech Republic?

“In Ukraine the owners of the major mass media are local oligarchs who make profits, in particular, by participating in political processes. The Czech situation is different in the sense that our media belongs not to Czech oligarchs but foreign ones. In my opinion, this is a lesser evil. Foreign investors aren’t interested in politics, at least it is not their top priority. Their priority is profit. They don’t care if their newspaper stamps on some minister’s foot, what is important is that it increases circulation and hence ads. In such circumstances direct political pressure on mass media is impossible.”

Do you feel that society needs moral purification?

“All archives of the former Czech KGB, as well as lists of KGB employees and officers are digitized. This information is available on the Internet. If you need a folder, you can make a query, and get it for a small fee.

“When after the collapse of the USSR they started disclosing these already historical layers, there was a serious fear that people would want to find out who had denounced them in the past, who had prevented them from entering a university or immigrating — and would seek revenge. But this didn’t happen. Do you know why? Because they took a folder and were horrified to learn that their brother, wife, neighbor or some other close person had denounced them. Could anyone else do it except for those who knew the details of their life? This is very dirty stuff. And people started thinking on whether they need at all to know about it and how they will live with this knowledge. Lenin managed to increase human envy and hatred, this is also a part of the Slavic ‘mentality,’ but I’d say that the root of this ‘mentality’ is in the early 20th century. And it still works. There are even attempts to use it for political gains. For example, a political crisis happened, so let’s impose additional taxes on millionaires. And people support it.”

The Czech Republic has had lustration, but the Communist Party is still active, and received 11 percent of votes in last year’s election. How can this be explained?

“This party appeared already after 1990 [it was founded in 1989 – Ed.], after the velvet revolution. It even has a different name – the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia. Its members repeatedly apologized for the past and say that they are based on different principles than the Comintern, that they deny class struggle and revolutions. But this party has about 300,000 members. And in terms of membership it’s the biggest, since people for whom communism is a religion (as some of them say, ‘I was and will be a communist!’) are still alive.”

However, unlike the Ukrainian communists, your communists don’t identify themselves with Stalin.

“No. Since from their viewpoint it would be a tactical error. The problem is that it is difficult to discern the danger of such communists. But no Czech party will form a coalition with the communists. That would be the ‘death’ for the political force. In Ukraine the Party of Regions, which is essentially a party of oligarchs, is in a coalition with the communists. This can mean one thing — they are children of one mother. It’s easy to get to the core of your Symonenko, it’s much more complicated with our communists. Seemingly, they struggle for rights, justice and so on.

“A small detail: before the elections in Ukraine I saw a big billboard where Lenin showed the way to the glorious future to me, and under his picture there was an ironical statement: ‘How do you like living in capitalism?’ That is why in a number of Ukrainian higher educational establishments I deliver lectures with a somewhat provocative title: ‘Capitalism and Ethics.’ I already visited higher educational establishments in Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Nova Kakhovka, Kharkiv and Sumy.

“In one of universities they asked me a question: How does Europe see the Holodomor? I had to think on it, and as a result I came to the conclusion that in the Czech Republic a book on the Holodomor should be published. I chose the book by Stanislav Kulchytsky Why Did He Kill Us? (from The Day’s Library).

“By the way, regarding symbols. If you go by car from Kyiv to the Crimea, you actually travel down an unbroken Lenin street. And in the Lavra’s refectory there is a huge chandelier where one can see the old tsar’s symbol. It was there all this time – during socialism, the Germans, after the war, and it is still there in independent Ukraine.”