All in all, this makes TV Nova something more than an ultra-commercial, lowbrow TV station. It perpetuates the self-deception (see: Gott, Karel) that a majority of Czechs so nimbly practiced during the Bolsheviks’ normalization in the 1970s and 1980s: you know that something is stinking, but pretend that you don’t notice it.
Ukrainians
Officially, only 260,000 foreigners with a permanent residence permit were registered in the Czech Republic as of the beginning of 2004. Even though foreigners, because of illegal immigration, indubitably make up more than the official 2.6 percent of the population, the Czech Republic still has a markedly smaller share of immigrants than the average Western country.
This is not too puzzling, since economic immigrants still find Bohemia and Moravia more attractive as a transit area than a final destination. There is, however, one spectacular exception: Ukrainians. Because of the hopeless situation in their home country, where a tragic mixture of political mismanagement, corruption and souring criminality have wrecked the economy and caused immense social problems, Ukrainians have been flowing to the Czech Republic since the beginning of the 1990s. Officially, they number about 60,000, closely trailing the Slovaks as the largest foreign community in the country, but the unofficial number is very likely much higher.
Basically, Ukrainians have found what they were looking for: jobs. But the price they pay is high. Just like Turks in Germany in the early 1960s, the Ukrainians are doing work that Czechs don’t want, because of low pay or hardship or both. So, in all parts of Bohemia and Moravia you can find Ukrainians, some of them with academic titles, digging ditches, laying bricks or cleaning septic tanks for wages that often don’t exceed what the average Czech is paid in unemployment benefits. This drudgery is also dangerous. When a tragic accident happens at some construction site (which practically means every other day) you can bet your boots that the poor guy killed or crippled for life is a Ukrainian.
Needless to say, Czechs don’t regard these low-paid, hard-working and often also hard-drinking (who can blame them?) drudges with too much respect. According to the common and utterly cynical perception, a Ukrainian is a poor fellow who is overjoyed by the chance to do unqualified labour in a civilized country. A hundred years ago, thousands of Czechs flocked to Vienna (see: Austrians) to do the same kind of work, but that’s mostly forgotten today. “Ukrainian”, to most Czechs, has become synonymous with “miserable Gastarbeiter”.
The Ukrainians have, however, one effective image-saver at their disposal.
In 1918, when Czechoslovakia emerged from the ruins of Austria-Hungary, Trans-Carpathia (or Ruthenia), which is the westernmost region of today’s Ukraine, was declared a part of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs, who had suddenly become masters not only over the Slovaks, but also over some 450,000 Ruthenians, started to develop their new and (compared to Bohemia) backward province with great fervour. In the capital Uzhgorod, a Czech governor was installed, and Czech teachers, gendarmes, and engineers were stationed all over the small province (the writer Ivan Olbracht has written several wonderful short stories from Czechoslovak Ruthenia).
In 1939, Hungarian troops regained control over the region, which until 1918 had been ruled from Budapest for more than eight centuries, and thus scotched the Czechs’ promising career as colonizers. After the Second World War, Ruthenia became a part of Soviet Ukraine, but the Czechs have not forgotten their former eastward expansion. In school, children learn that the 20 years of Czech rule in Trans-Carpathia were the happiest and certainly most democratic in the Ruthenians’ long and thorny history.
So, to get to the point: any Ukrainian living in the Czech Republic who claims that he (almost all of them are men) hails from Ruthenia and that he deeply regrets that the Czechs had to leave, will no longer be regarded as a miserable Gastarbeiter, but as an unlucky Slav brother longing for democracy and prosperity!
Urination
Nobody would be particularly surprised to learn that the Czechs urinate in the same way as people in all other European countries. What’s surprising, though, is the incredible benevolence with which the Czechs tolerate urination in public places.
Take, for instance, this real-life situation: you are travelling by bus to a village in Western Bohemia, when the bus-driver stops suddenly because the car driving in front of you pulls over and blocks the narrow road. The chap behind the wheel jumps out of his Škoda, takes a few steps towards the ditch — and starts urinating blissfully in front of the fifty bus-passengers. Not a single word of condemnation is uttered, be it against the car driver’s tasteless behaviour or the delay he causes.
Basically, public urination is confined to two segments of the Czech population: children and adult men (most feminists would probably say that this is practically the one and the same group).
When it comes to children, the tolerance towards public urination is both understandable and praiseworthy. Contrary to Western countries, where children use diapers almost until they become teenagers, Czech parents regard it as a matter of personal honour to teach their children to use the toilet before they reach the age of two. From time to time, this inevitably implies the use of a bush in a public park or even the gutter as an improvised toilet, but thanks to the educational character of the act, nobody complains.
The tolerance towards men’s public urination, though, is not that simple to understand. Obviously, it’s fair to assume that the extremely high frequency of this phenomenon is somehow connected to Czech men’s equally extremely high consumption of beer. Consequently, the bladder of the average Czech male tends to be under far greater pressure than male bladders elsewhere.
Nevertheless, this pressure should not give them carte blanche to terrorize their surroundings through urination. Even the most run-down hospoda in the country has a lavatory of some kind, and the network of public toilets is often better than those in Western Europe (see: Central Europe). Why, then, do so many Czech men so often feel free to dispose of their bodily fluids in public places?
It’s hard to give a scientific answer. Some pundits would claim that it’s because the Czechs, not influenced or morally guided by any strong and visible nobility, are an utterly plebeian nation with plebeian behaviour. In this connection, there is a well-known story about the time that Jan Masaryk (see: Defenestration), Czechoslovakia’s ambassador to Great Britain in the interwar years, was invited to dinner at an English nobleman’s mansion. “Maybe you would like to wash your hands,” the host suggested before dinner started, discreetly hinting that the ambassador might need to visit the toilet. “Oh no, that’s not necessary,” replied the quick-witted Masaryk. “I just washed them behind the tree in your garden!”