Čtvrtek 28. března 2024, svátek má Soňa
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Lidovky.cz

Uncomfortable past: Confronting the psychology of communism

  14:35

Book presents point-by-point diagnosis of pathology inflicted by a regime that presented Czechs with a fundamental moral dilemma

Jindřich Kabát, author of ‘The Psychology of Communism,’ is ‘trying not to judge people’ — the notion of trauma is central to his thesis — while giving them a methodology to ask tough moral questions about their relationships with the dictatorial regime foto: © Dominik JůnČeská pozice

The communist experience left a deep wound in the Czech psyche, and the effects are largely being purposefully avoided rather than confronted. So thinks Jindřich Kabát, psychologist, professor, former culture minister (1992-1994) and author of a 2011 book called Psychologie Komunizmu (The Psychology of Communism).

The book undertakes a rather probing – some might say discomforting – look into the Czech mind and how it was essentially corrupted by 40 years of communist rule between 1948 and 1989. Sub-headings such as “Self-censorship”, “A Permanent Sense of Fear” and “Human Compromises” illustrate the blunt point its author is seeking to make.

“You might be surprised, but I never had personal issues with the post-communist era, nor do I think that I was traumatized by communism, so it wasn’t for personal reasons,” Kabát told Czech Position, reflecting on why he decided to write such a book. Rather, the decision came from the comfortable distance of five years spent in the United States teaching psychology. 

“I was often asked many questions related to the communist era, primarily related to issues of human freedom; about decisions by people about whether to cooperate or not with a dictatorship… so it was almost a challenge presented by these American students, and I felt that I had to explain it somehow.”

The book presents a point-by-point diagnosis of a kind of pathology inflicted by a dictatorial regime and one that presented Czechs with a fundamental moral dilemma: cooperate and get on with life in the best way possible or resist and face the consequences. “It is the mentality of a nation that was under occupation for 300 years under Austria, then six or seven under Germany, then 40 years under Russia and a tendency has developed in the Czech people to be less than honest. But it is a way how to survive — a very specific Czech way. I am Czech and can’t judge my brothers and sisters around me, but I do have to say that living in the US was a kind of therapy for me.”

Whether it’s contemporary stories about supermarket employees brazenly re-labeling out-of-date food or politicians taking bribes or simply being afraid to complain that your beer is “under the line” (a pub has poured less than it is supposed to), the particular pathology, argues Kabát, continues to manifest itself in Czechs today. “During the ‘normalization’ era of the ’70s, pragmatism and a tendency to find a way to survive were much more important than morality. People found a network of friends and tried to start their own alternative internal trading systems. And now, although the regime has gone, the strategy of this behavior remains exactly the same.”

These deeply ingrained notions of an alternative sub-system for self-survival or self-enrichment deliberately separate from the “corrupt” official one are arguably at the heart of understanding the Czech Republic’s widespread and ongoing problems with corruption. And preventing change is the other key lingering factor: fear. “Primarily, communism was a totalitarian dictatorship and this kind of a system relies on fear so it my book is mainly about this emotion,” notes Kabát.

‘[If I make a compromise then how does my personality come to terms with that? And how do I feel honest and survive this traumatic experience?’

“It is a book about the artificial conditioning of human behavior. But it is also a book about people and their personalities and the question of what to do: what to do now; what to do thirty years ago, how to decide and if I make a compromise then how does my personality come to terms with that? And how do I feel honest and survive this traumatic experience?”

The notion of trauma is central to Kabát’s thesis. In The Psychology of Communism, the pressures of living under a totalitarian system are described as including the following side-effects: “A tendency to view ownership and material riches as a form of personality … a tendency towards apathy and a hands-off approach to matters that demand active participation. Following matters from afar, with a rich commentary but an inability to actually act to influence these events … minimal willingness to be interested in whatever might lead to internal conflict and lead to the positing of questions related to what I believe, what are my convictions, what are my values and to what extent do I wish to be guided by them.”

At the end of the 1996 movie Kolya, two members of the communist authorities that have been persecuting the main character (played by Zdeněk Svěrák) are seen joining the Velvet Revolution crowds in Prague’s Wenceslas Square. But their symbolic key shaking is a result of seeing which way the wind was blowing: blatant opportunism rather than bravery. Today, questions over who was the genuine key-shaker, who was not, and who simply stayed at home remain deeply uncomfortable subjects for many older Czechs, especially when today’s politicians are viewed as practicing many of the same negative “In it for my own self-enrichment” tendencies that existed during the communist era.

“Very importantly, I am trying not to judge people,” says Kabát. “But there is still a problem that people remain even today unable to find the right answers and they prefer to suppress these kinds of questions and suppress their own problems with dishonesty. I don’t think that we can say that somebody was or was not honest, but everybody, each personality has to put this question to themselves and try to find the answer in their own minds. Because without the right answer, they cannot educate the younger generations and their families and explain to them what this regime really was and what they did in it.”

And what of the ongoing questions of just who did what in order to survive? Western concepts of public displays of confession and contrition (for example Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair) are almost alien; examples such as former Social Democrat (ČSSD) PM Stanislav Gross battling corruption allegations until the bitter end before finally being forced to resign are far more common.

“In my view, it is very important to study the history of West Germany,” says Kabát. “Because Nazism was a national catastrophe and it was necessary, once it was finished, to find a clear expression of what had happened and to publicly say that this and this was bad. But nothing like that ever happened in our country. We tried to speak about the future; about love like hippies, about a nice tomorrow, but not about the past. We preferred to forget.”

But Kabát is also eager to note that finger-pointing is not the best way to achieve the sought-after catharsis: “In the early ’90s, I worked as first deputy minister in internal security responsible for investigations. And at that time, one officer offered to show me different files about people from churches that co-operated with the regime. And I excused myself and said that I don’t want to know. Because I do not need to know. I think that it was such a specific situation and we can’t judge people who collaborated at that time or refused to. I think we have to really appreciate the heroes who had many troubles because they said no, but we shouldn’t judge people who decided to say yes.”

— Dominik Jůn is a Prague-based freelance journalist

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