Bohemian Rhapsody

For quite some time, the Czechs liked to portray themselves as more enlightened, democratic, Protestant, and Western-oriented than the Slovaks, who were accused of being generally backward and Catholic. After the fall of Communism in 1989, Slovaks were also painted as dangerous "populists" and probably Russophiles. 

I used to believe something like this myself. Then, I started digging into Czech history...

It *is* true that Slovakia was something of a backwater for about 1000 years. It´s also true that Bohemia was a culturally advanced region, Prague in particular, during the a portion of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Emperor Rudolf II´s court is famous in this regard. But note that this wasn´t an exclusively Czech thing. It was equally German (or Austrian). Bohemia was a kingdom within the "Holy Roman Empire".

Czech nationalism during the 19th century was to a large extent pan-Slavist and pro-Russian. During World War I, the Czechs got the best of all possible worlds. They were oriented towards both France, the United States and...Czarist Russia. The Czechoslovak Legions played a prominent role in the Russian Civil War. For this reason, the relations between the Soviet Communist regime and Czechoslovakia were originally quite non-existent.

During the 1930´s, Czechoslovakia changed its foreign policy and entered an alliance with Stalin´s Soviet Union. Note that Czechoslovakia was at this point still a capitalist democracy. There was also an alliance with France. 

During World War II and the period 1945-48, Czechoslovak president Eduard Benes (a moderate Czech Social Democrat) headed a "national front" dominated by the Communist Party. In the elections after the war, the Communist Party became the single largest party in the Czech lands. It did *not* become the largest party in Slovakia... 

The bad experience of Communism (1948-1989) made the Czechs pro-Western, pro-American and anti-Russian. Playwright and pro-Western dissident Vaclav Havel was elected president of post-Communist Czechoslovakia and then transitioned to president of the Czech Republic. However, then something odd happened...

The next president, Vaclav Klaus (who originally claimed to be a Milton Friedman neo-liberal), turned out to be a pro-Russian Euro-skeptic climate change denialist. The third president, Milos Zeman, is apparently a former Communist and also regarded as soft on Putin. And in 2017, the Czech Republic voluntarily elected a "populist" prime minister, one Andrej Babis. What makes this even more piquante is that Babis is ethnically Slovak! So after accusing their Slovak cousins for being "Russophile populists" for 20+ years, the Czechs eventually elected one of these hideous Slovak populists Czech head of government!

Am I the only person who thinks we may have been played by Czech propaganda all this time?