I assume that by "neo-normalization" you mean certain stabilization and perhaps even banalization of the political landscape following a period that was, on the contrary, characterized by (post-)revolutionary dynamics and some room for socio-economic experimentation (such as the coupon privatization); the big battles had been over and at that point it was more about consolidating positions. It is difficult to associate the beginning of this "fortification" process with a specific year, but in the case of the Czech Republic we can indeed speak of the emergence of "normal" European politics around the mid-1990s, for two reasons: firstly, after the division of Czechoslovakia (1 January 1993), the nationalism of a single state-forming ethnic group, unhindered by the specificities of the Slovak partner nation, established itself as the overall framework of Czech politics. Secondly, the 1996 elections confirmed the long-standing political marginalization of the pre-1989 dissident circles: from now on, Czech politics would be dominated by two main actors, one representing the right (Václav Klaus), the other the left (Miloš Zeman), and both more technologists of power than idealists. Morally based criticism of these two figures and their political practices–including ethnic nationalism–would develop, but despite their considerable intellectual weight the representatives of “Truth-and-Love” wouldn’t be very successful politically (Václav Havel as the president had limited powers), for which some of them – first of all Havel himself – compensated by leaning towards the project of unilateral American hegemony as a projection of “morally based” politics: a fight for freedom and democracy worldwide (in contrast to Klaus and Zeman who manifested more pragmatic attitude – some might say even sympathy – to Russia and China).

In fact, my notion of nonastalgia refers to the period before the onset of this stabilization phase, but the real point lies elsewhere. As critical as the term neo-normalization is, especially from the perspective of Václav Havel’s “non-political politics”, it actually describes something that even idealists were ready to accept – the return of the Czech Republic from Kundera’s alleged “abduction” by the barbarians of Moscow: the abducted piece of the West is now returning "to Europe", integrating back into its home land mass, all the more so because now, with Slovakia gone, it does not reach that far east as the borders of Ukraine. This return to (assumed) European normality seemed to most crucial players as a historic victory, a happy ending, albeit with some “childhood diseases” – typically corruption and care-giving vision of government, usually interpreted as a legacy of socialism.

Nonastalgia is not supposed to describe a reaction to neo-normalization itself, but rather a reaction to the fact that the hard-fought normality is being lost again. Give us back our "normal world"! In this sense, of course, it is a conservative phenomenon. It should be added, however, that conservatives do not see every historical change as evil; what they really do is that they defend the achievements of the last great change, of which they feel themselves to be the actors or at least the heirs; they fear that further changes will diminish its value (and thus, of course, weaken their position or authority).

The “nine” to which the word nonastalgia refers is not only the one that stands at the beginning of the number ninety–that is, the first years of restored capitalism–but also the number that stands at the end of the last “communist year”: 1989. The heart of the nonastalgia in my understanding is the longing for this moment in which Central/Eastern Europeans suddenly became heroes of the West (co-creators of its victory over the Soviet empire)–the West being, of course, largely a country of their imagination, not a society with which they had real experience. In other words: nonastalgia is a longing for a moment in which it was possible to subscribe to the West, even to become a Western icon, without having to learn/be trained in what it actually means to "be Western"–that is, without having to undergo a cultural transformation or, possibly, self-colonization process (to relate to your second question).

But even this is not enough to fully explain it. The self-colonizing framework does not call into question the status and authority of those who count themselves among the winners of 1989; it allows them to be the agents of cultural hegemony vis-à-vis the domestic audience; society as such is the object of cultural "re-education", while they can pose themselves as educators. The problem arises when they no longer understand the West, whose historical superiority they wanted to represent, or they have trouble accepting its changing face–it no longer seems "normal" to them. They face more and more disturbing paradoxes, perhaps the greatest of them coming with the discourse of decolonization: part of the ideological “self-colonization” of Central and Eastern Europeans is to accept co-responsibility for the crimes of colonization that Western countries have committed against the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa and Asia.

In conjunction with other issues–gender equality, ecological crisis, etc.–the discourse of decolonization calls into question the basic moral scheme of Czech (Central European) exponents of the "normal West": the establishment of national memory in the double concept of victims and heroes. In this memory, Czech society is understood as a victim of the totalitarian regime, socialist ideology, Russian imperialism, all this monstrous historic abnormality, and at the same time as an heir of the heroes of the anti-communist resistance.

The mainland of the West, to which the Czech segment has rejoined after a period of its “abduction”, is today itself more and more integrated into the common world of all continents, and the Czech environment is thus exposed to a movement of people, goods and ideas that was unimaginable in 1989–or was just a vague idea, without far reaching material and social consequences. In 1989, the West listened enthusiastically to the testimony of those who had just freed themselves from the oppression of the "evil empire" and who were telling the story of suffering and heroism. It was a moment of post-communist exceptionalism–in time and in space; a fight is always site-specific, and collective memory monumentalizes its local context.

Today, that voice is just one voice among many, kind of de-localized. It must struggle for attention against others, especially those whose oppression has not yet ended, those that see as oppressors; we are no longer just victims (of Soviet communism) and heroes (of Czech anti-communism), but also, in planetary context, accomplices and villains; we are no longer just freedom-loving democrats and humanists, we are–supposedly–racists, exploiters, carriers of patriarchy and perhaps even supporters of genocide.

We were champions once. But was it truly us?

Martin Škabraha,
8.10. 2024, Prague