It’s been a turbulent start to the Czech Republic’s European Union presidency – and nowhere more so than in foreign policy and energy policy, both of which are intimately linked to the EU’s relations with Russia. Some European pundits are worried that the Czechs – with their Soviet bloc past, present-day anti-communism, strong emphasis on human rights, and plans to host part of a US anti-missile shield on Czech soil – are simply the wrong people to represent the EU in its dealings with Russia over the next six months.

So what does Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg think of that argument? “It comes from the erroneous perception that the Czech Republic has special prejudices or even hatreds towards Russia,” he told me and some other Brussels-based reporters in Prague this week.

“Czechs as a rule don’t have special prejudices against the Russians, even though in the period from 1968 to the 1990s the Russians had occupation forces in Czechoslovakia. Czech citizens saw that the Russian soldiers were worse off than themselves. They saw these poor boys marching towards some town and they felt a kind of compassion. There was an eruption [of anti-Soviet sentiment] in 1968, but many Czech travellers went to the Soviet Union and saw conditions for themselves…”

In my opinion, Schwarzenberg is right. There was some violence after the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968, one famous incident being the attack on the Aeroflot office on Prague’s Wenceslas Square after Czechoslovakia’s defeat of the Soviet Union in the 1969 world ice hockey championships. But I remember following the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on a walkabout in Prague in 1987.

It was a powerful experience to see how the citizens applauded Gorbachev as he strolled through the streets, the grim-faced Czechoslovak communist party leader Gustav Husak trailing in his wake. For Czechoslovaks at that time, their fellow-countryman Husak, not the Russian Gorbachev, was the problem.

True, the US anti-missile shield deployment is a thorn in Czech-Russian relations. But as Schwarzenberg says, that’s mostly because Russia still can’t get used to the idea that a former Warsaw Pact state that it used to boss about is deciding its foreign and security policies for itself.

In any case, who knows? Barack Obama may drop the entire plan – or at least suggest to the Russians that he won’t deploy the shield if the Kremlin helps persuade Iran to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons.

January 9, 2009 9:46am in Czech Republic, Foreign policy | Comment