Op de drempel van Europa. De Tsjechen en Europa in de twintigste eeuw by Carlos Reijnen (review)

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REVIEWS 367 Reijnen, Carlos. Opdedrempel vanEuropa. De Tsjechen enEuropain detwintigste eeuw.Klement, Kampen, 2005. 416 pp. Bibliography. Notes. Index. English summary.?29.95 (paperback). IN a speech delivered before the German Bundestagin I997, four years after the 'velvetdivorce'between the Czech and the Slovakpartsof his country,the Czech presidentVaclac Havel expressedhis longing for a 'EuropeanHeimat'. The German word Heimat has a double connotation: home and universe. Havel's Heimat was Europe, a European fatherland. Havel's successor as head of state, Vaclav Klaus, is generally known to be highly critical of European integration.The Czech nation, as he once put it, runs the serious riskof dissolvinginto 'a lump of sugar in the European coffee'. Is Havel the archetypical Euro-enthusiast and Klaus the proverbial Euro-sceptic? Not really. Neither in his capacity as prime minister nor as president did Klaus ever seriouslyquestion the integrationof the Czech Republic into the European Union; while Havel, in his dissidentpast, was highly criticalof what he perceived as the empty materialism,if not the defeatism, of (West)European culture.The Dutch historianCarlosReijnen (AmsterdamUniversity)presents the two prominent Czech personalitiesas the personificationsof the complex and ambivalent relationshipbetween the national self-identityof the Czech people and theiridea of Europe.In Opdedrempel vanEuropa (On the Threshold of Europe) Reijnen analyses the relentless self-reflectionamong Czech and Slovak intellectuals, politicians and other public figures, on their national destiny and their place in Europe, and on the intricaterelationshipof Czech nationalismand the idea and reality of Europe. The case of Czechoslovakiais not unique, Reijnen argues. It is typical of the unstable nations of Central Europe, with their weak national unity and problematic, interruptedhistory of state formation. Still, it would be difficult to find a countrywhose vicissitudeswere so closelylinkedto the largerpolitical environment,far beyond the reach of the countryitself,than Czechoslovakia. Every major turn in the history of the country, from its inception in I9I8 to its break-upin I993, has been causallyrelated to major European events to World War I and II, and to the Cold War in particular.Reijnen gives an essentiallychronologicalanalysisof the debatesand discussionson the nation's precariousself-identityand geopolitical situation.Given the existentialnature of the questions at stake, the debate has primarilybeen couched in strongly moral terms: right and wrong, authentic and hypocritical, 'real' Czech and foreign. 'Europe' is one of the crucial notions. The Czechs developed their national identityat roughlythe same time that the 'West'discovered'Eastern Europe' (the late eighteenth century).And although 'pan-Slavism'(an essentiallyEast Europeannotion)has been a popularaspect of the historyof Czech nationalthought, the Czechs have alwaysbeen extremelysensitivewith regard to the internaldivisionsof Europe, and to the riskof findingthemselveson the wrong side of the frontier. The idea of Europe, so closely related to the perception of the Czechoslovak nation, played a prominent role in the constructionand legitimacyof the country's internal political order. Reijnen carefully relates the international and domestic, the political and ideological dimensions of the discussion. Its 368 SEER, 85, 2, 2007 close identity with 'Europe' undoubtedly sustained Czechoslovakia'sremarkable isolation (an 'island of peace and stability', in Reijen's words) during the interwar years; while the diktat of Munich (I938), the war experience (whenthe idea of Europe, a Europeunder German tutelage,was employed to legitimize the liquidation of the Czechoslovak state), and the attraction of socialism under post-war conditions would stronglyreduce the identification with 'Europe'. From I948 on, 'Europe' would almost disappear from the Czechoslovak political vocabulary. The Communist leadership attempted to create an amalgam of national traditions and Communist ideas, in which Europe hardly mattered. In this respect, the Prague Spring was not a real breaking point, Reijnen asserts. The critical attitude toward the West remained. Even the dissidentsin the 'normalized'Czechoslovakiapersistedin their ambivalence.As the author concludes:both the Communist regime arid the opposition 'remained hostile and critical of the consumer culture of the West, the paternalisticrole of the United States in Europe and the process of European integration'. On the Threshold of Europeis an original study, a book which breaks new ground in the historiographyof the Czechs and Slovaksin particularand of CentralEurope in general. It gives real substance to the rather superficial, mostly theoretical debate on the idea of Europe, and on the identity of 'Central...