Václav Klaus, the Pražák: A controversial politician’s very personal Prague

Václav Klaus is known internationally as a politician who has never shied away from controversy, from questioning policies designed to fight climate change to his views on Russia’s war against Ukraine. But this episode of Czechast reveals a more personal side of the former Czech president: Václav Klaus the Pražák. Born and raised in Vinohrady, he looks back on more than eight decades of life in a changing Prague – and has some typically strong opinions about the city of today.

For decades, Václav Klaus has been one of the most recognisable – and controversial – figures in Czech public life. As finance minister, prime minister and later president, Václav Klaus played a central role in the country’s post-Communist transformation. Long after leaving Prague Castle, Václav Klaus has continued to attract attention with outspoken positions on subjects ranging from climate change and European integration to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

But there is another Václav Klaus – one whose story is closely intertwined with the city where he has spent most of his life. Before our Czechast conversation turned to politics, economics and the wider world, we talked about Prague. Václav Klaus was born in Vinohrady in 1941 and grew up not far from the Czech Radio building. His childhood memories reach back to a capital that would be almost unrecognisable to people navigating Prague today. One of his most vivid recollections is of Legerova Street, now part of the heavily travelled north-south artery cutting through the centre of Prague.

“The famous Legerova street was really a street with no ends, with no connections on both sides. And there was no one there. There was one car in ten minutes going.”

From Vinohrady to Communist-era Prosek

Václav Klaus remained in Vinohrady until he was 30, when he moved with his family to Prosek in the north of the city. It was a very different Prague. Prosek was part of the rapidly expanding Communist-era capital, where large new housing estates of prefabricated concrete apartment blocks – the ubiquitous paneláky – were being built to accommodate a growing urban population. For someone brought up among the traditional streets and apartment houses of Vinohrady, moving to Prague’s northern outskirts meant entering a very different environment.

“So I moved when I was 30 years old. I moved from Vinohrady to Prosek, which was for me at that time almost an unknown part somewhere in the north of Prague. So, it was a typical Communist experience.”

The contrast between the Prague Václav Klaus knew as a young man and the city that subsequently grew around it remains striking to him. Today, Václav Klaus works in Hanspaulka, the distinctive villa neighbourhood in Prague 6. It is one of the places where he believes something of the atmosphere – the genius loci – of an older Prague has survived.

“Really, this is special for me. Typical example of an old, not in the historical sense, but of an old Prague. Then it was still a normal city, not destroyed by building new apartment buildings and new offices.”

The Prague of today

Nostalgia, however, is only part of the story. When our conversation moved from the Prague of Václav Klaus’s memories to the way the Czech capital looks and functions today, the famously outspoken former president quickly re-emerged. Roadworks, street repairs and the overall management of Prague are particular sources of frustration.

“You know, everyone is crazy. We are crazy with the way how the streets are repaired and the roads are made here in Prague. It’s absolutely crazy. The management is absolutely irrational.”

The Prague that emerges from Václav Klaus’s memories is therefore not simply a backdrop to a political career. It is a city experienced over more than eight decades: from the almost traffic-free streets of his Vinohrady childhood, through the Communist housing estates that transformed Prague’s outskirts, to Hanspaulka and the congested, constantly changing capital of today.

And while listeners may agree or disagree with Václav Klaus’s politics, this Czechast conversation offers a different perspective on one of Czechia’s most prominent public figures – not primarily Václav Klaus the politician or former president, but Václav Klaus the lifelong Pražák.