“Masaryk was no doubt a democrat, although his interpretation of democracy was sometimes rather peculiar,” the historian Antonín Klimek says. “He claimed that democracy, in certain situations, is compatible with dictatorship, and he considered a revival of the Austrian monarchy to be a bigger threat than Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933.”
Yet in the row of Czechoslovak presidents, starting with the alcoholised and syphilis-ridden Gottwald to the senile general Ludvík Svoboda to the tragic Quisling Gustav Husák, Masaryk represents an almost surreal ideal. And contrary to another Czechoslovak president-cum-moral-idol, Václav Havel, he has the advantage of not being viewed in a real-life context.
“To many Czechs, the words ‘Masaryk’s republic’ have become a declaration of faith and a mantra they use to declare that they are proud to be a part of this nation,” the historian Klimek maintains. “But it’s unacceptable when modern politicians glorify the legacy of Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia to use it as a whip on the Czech Republic of today.”
Mogilevich, Semyon Yudkovich
It’s 11 o’clock in the evening, on the 31st of May 1995. At the restaurant U Holubů (the Dove) in Prague’s Smíchov district, some 80 people, most of them Russians, are celebrating a birthday party with loads of caviar, champagne and oysters. Suddenly, the doors burst open. Almost 200 heavily armed policemen from the special squad fighting organized crime storm into the premises. Tables are turned over, furniture smashed, and all the party guests are handcuffed and arrested.
Photo © Terje B. Englund
The now-legendary police action, which most Czechs know as the Raid at the Dove, was meant to be a daring and devastating blow against the Russian mafia and its operations in post-Communist Central Europe. It turned out, however, to be mostly a failure. All the men in Armani suits and their half-naked “hostesses”, who were marched to black marias, were released within eight hours, and only three of them were later expelled from the Czech Republic.
And the biggest disappointment: Semyon Mogilevich, the Russian mafia’s alleged godfather in Central Europe, was not even present at the party. Because his flight from Israel was delayed, Mogilevich arrived at the spot some minutes after the raid had started (at least, that’s what he later told in an interview with the BBC). True to his reputation as a level-headed and resolute fellow, chain-smoking “Seva” immediately caught a cab and didn’t stop until he reached Budapest.
Nevertheless, the unsuccessful raid at The Dove confirmed what most Czechs already guessed: the Russian mafia (which in this context should be interpreted as Russian-speaking, since its members come from all parts of the former Soviet Union) has a strong foothold in the Czech Republic. They even feel secure enough to gather at a giant party in the middle of Prague. And Semyon Mogilevich, while absent at The Dove, has had the dubious honour of becoming the mafia’s “face” in the Czech Republic.
The mafia, however, could certainly have picked a duller boss. Through his rare appearances in the media, Mogilevich — also known as “Don the Brain” — fully confirms the rumours that he is extremely clever, cynical and witty. If he is also guilty of all the crimes which police investigators and secret services in numerous countries accuse him of, he is extremely ruthless and dangerous as well.
The Russian mafia’s Central European boss was born in Kiev in the Ukraine in 1946. His parents belonged to the “working intelligentsia”, but instead of pursuing an academic career after receiving his diploma at Lviv’s Faculty of Economics, young Mogilevich moved to Moscow, where he started working for a state company that ran public toilets at the city’s railway stations. The rather unglamorous job offered “Seva” a convenient cover for his real profession as a currency dealer on the black market.
In 1974, Mogilevich was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for his black market activities. This was at the time when criminals in the former Soviet Union started to organize themselves, so when “Seva” was released three years later, he had emerged a boss of a gang now known as the Solomon Mafia. Mogilevich earned his first millions under Gorbachov’s glasnost in the early 1980s, when Soviet Jews, who mass-emigrated to Israel, needed “professional assistance” to get their hard currency and valuables — of course, minus a fat provision for “Seva” — with them across the Iron Curtain.
The Soviet Union’s implosion in the early 1990s led to an immense boost of organized crime. Mogilevich, who by now carried an Israeli passport, settled in Budapest, where he was protected against deportation through a marriage to a Hungarian citizen. Based in the middle of the Carpathian basin, “Seva” and the Solomon Mafia started, according to police sources, to entangle all countries in post-Communist Central Europe in a criminal web. Their alleged main activities were drugs, prostitution, arms, nuclear material, antiques, gold and jewels. The profits that this criminal activity yielded, the police reports, were laundered through a network of legal businesses — including The Dove restaurant in Prague — which all belonged to Mogilevich.
It was his extraordinary capabilities in money laundering that earned Mogilevich his nickname Don the Brain. There are even strong indications that he personally masterminded the Bank of New York scandal, which in 1999 linked the then Yeltsin regime to extensive money laundering. FBI’s forensic accountants started investigating the case, but no charges were ever raised against Mogilevich. This is Don the Brain’s comment in the interview with the BBC in late 1999:
“If there have been committed crimes and the police suspect that 1 have committed them, I can only say one thing. Please show your evidence. If I really had been involved in all those criminal acts and the police had disposed evidence of this, they certainly would have put charges against me. But they haven’t!”
So, officially, Semyon Yudkovich Mogilevich is only an extremely successful businessman trading in wheat, ceramics and shoes. To most Czechs, however, he remains the very icon of a Russian godfather and a kingpin in organized crime in Central Europe.
According to a Czech police spokesman, foreign mafiosi booked, in 2001, a turnover approximating 418 billion korunas, which corresponds to 20 percent of the whole country’s GDP. Even if this figure seems wildly exaggerated there’s no reason to doubt that organized criminals — with or without Semyon Yudkovich Mogilevich’s brains — are doing quite well in the Czech Republic.
Moravia
The Czech nation has from time immemorial been divided into three historic regions: Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. As in every other country on this planet, the Czech Republic has also witnessed a certain competition among its regions. A neutral observer may, however, quite often have the impression that the Vysočina, the highlands that divide Bohemia in the west from Moravia in the east, is a kind of buffer zone between two implacable rivals.