Politics
No revolution, thanks, we're Czech
Published 02 October 2000
Globalisation may bring problems in its wake but, to the citizens of Prague, it is infinitely preferable to the communism of the past, reports Lindsey Hilsum
While young Italians, Britons and Spaniards ran riot across Prague last Tuesday, young Czechs watched in astonishment. Few in the Czech Republic felt like trashing McDonald's or lighting barricades across the steep, cobbled road winding up to the conference centre where the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were holding their annual meeting. For them, globalisation means the joys of a smaller, more accessible world: they can travel, hear foreign ideas, think, argue. Capitalism means opportunity. The young protesters who have gathered in Prague may resent their elders for being passive consumers, but Czechs who were children in 1989 can only feel grateful to their parents who lit candles in Wenceslas Square and led the Velvet Revolution.
And yet, as stone-throwing protesters were pushed back from the conference centre by Czech police armed with tear gas, they found an unlikely supporter: none other than the president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn - described as "Wolfensohn Agonistes" in a recent investment magazine, because of his soul-searching over the future of the bank. Wolfensohn told the delegates assembled for the opening ceremony of the international lending institutions' annual meeting: "Outside these walls, young people are protesting about globalisation. I believe deeply that many of them are asking legitimate questions."
These are not, however, the questions that young locals are interested in. At 26, Ivo Lukacovic is an internet entrepreneur, inevitably dubbed the Bill Gates of the Czech Republic. Four years ago, he launched Seznam, meaning "The List", the first internet search engine in the Czech language. A project that started as a university term-paper has ended up as a business, housed in a communist-era arms factory on the outskirts of Prague. Lukacovic employs 30 people, all under the age of 30. They make money by taking advertising and charging a premium to sites that want to pop up first when users punch in a keyword. He points out the protesters' paradox - if they are against globalisation, how come they are so effectively global in their use of the internet, and how come their message is global? - but he has a more meaty bone to pick.
"I spent 15 years under the communist regime. My father spent two years in prison because he was against communism," he says. "I wish all these protesters would spend 15 years under communism. Then they will maybe understand that, right now, there's no better system than capitalism."
But Lukacovic has just come up against the power of global capital. As the first search engine in Czech, Seznam attracts the lion's share of the country's internet users; but Microsoft has just done a deal with Atlas, one of his rivals. Now, when Czechs buy a new computer, they will find Atlas set up as the default search engine for their Czech-language browser.
Lukacovic shrugs. "We'll just have to keep innovating to attract new customers." But Microsoft Explorer is bundled with the Windows operating system used by nearly every PC in the world, hence the anti-trust dispute between Microsoft and the US Justice Department. If Microsoft wins that battle, how long can one 26-year-old Czech hold out against the real Bill Gates?
While Czechs may not want to start another revolution, some are starting to question the cultural impact of globalisation. The most visited capital in eastern Europe attracts tens of thousands of tourists each month. Parties of retired Canadians and dreadlocked backpackers mingle in Prague, under the mournful eyes of Jan Hus, whose statue dominates the Old Square. Hus was an early campaigner against globalisation, fighting the power of the Catholic Church in the 15th century by refusing to conduct services in Latin and insisting on Czech. In 1415, he was burnt at the stake as a heretic. What would he make of Bohemia Bagel and Uncle Sam's Clothing Company in Prague's historic centre?
The trade unionist Ladislav Binko, like many Czechs, feels confused. In 1989, he took part in workers' protests to bring down communism. Some years later, he supported the privatisation of the giant locomotive factory where he was employed. But the workforce has been reduced from 30,000 to 3,000, and the assets sold off. Binko had hoped that globalisation would mean "joining the world's great producers", but now he understands that his old factory will never produce trams or trains again. Globalisation, he says, means only one thing - that he no longer eats thick potato pancakes known as brambourak or traditional round houska bread. "Instead, I eat sandwiches from McDonald's and drink Coca-Cola, which I never liked."
The international protesters, many of whom appear to think that change will come if they shout loud enough, and keep a thin dog on a piece of string, see some of this through the fog of their own ennui. "We don't want to be consumers. We don't need 50 types of cola or 50 types of car. It doesn't make us happy. And we don't want to subject the rest of the world to it," says Cassy Wilson, a New Yorker in a long, grubby white skirt.
Meanwhile, the Czech Republic is emerging from recession into what will probably be the second post-communist boom. This is the moment the Czechs can use to define how they want their country to grow and change, after the heady chaos of the first few years of capitalist overload. None of the answers will come from well-padded Italian anarchists or those spray-painting "Fuck Capitalism" on the walls of Prague's turn-of-the-century buildings.
Lindsey Hilsum is diplomatic correspondent for Channel Four News
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